Reproductive Rights
Supreme Court
A Supreme Court Of Ethical Weasels
Supreme Court

President Joe Biden’s fiery State of the Union address on Thursday was made even stronger with some near-seamless ad-libs. None were more unexpected or more effective than when he directly took on the Supreme Court justices over their 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Biden’s prepared remarks included a reference to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, quoting Justice Samuel Alito’s excuse that the matter of abortion access should be handled at the ballot box in the states: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” Biden extemporaneously turned that passage into a direct attack on the high court.

“In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote the following—and with all due respect, justices—‘women are not without electoral or political power,’” Biden said, directly addressing the six judges attending. “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.”

“Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women, but they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and we will win again in 2024,” Biden continued. “If you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

That’s an “astonishing” moment in a state of the union, said Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC commentator and former Senate aide. “There was that moment that I think we all remember of the way he attacked—I guess, is the word for it—the Supreme Court to their faces, where the camera then goes to this shot of the six SCOTUS justices, three of whom he was very specifically attacking,” he said.

Three, that is, because Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the author of the horribly momentous Dobbs decision, didn’t bother to show. “That’s never been done before, to the extent that a president has a disagreement with the Supreme Court expressed in the State of the Union address,” O’Donnell continued. “That was just astonishing.”

It’s not just astonishing. It’s a critical admonishment to the Supreme Court, which still has some democracy-defining decisions to make this term, not the least of which is whether an insurrectionist ex-president is above the law.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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Rep. Michelle Steel

Rep. Michelle Steel

Republicans continue to flounder when it comes to protecting access to IVF, and Democrats are intent on making it even worse for them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign organization designed to elect House Democrats, released a scathing memo Monday, blasting “so-called moderate House Republicans” who seek “political cover by backing non-binding House resolutions that do nothing to actually protect access to this vital health care.”

“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is poised to make House Republicans’ blatant disrespect for women and families a defining campaign issue,” the memo continues. They’re taking particular aim at members of the Biden 17—the 17 House Republicans who occupy districts that Joe Biden won in 2020—who have rushed out competing House resolutions to say how much they love IVF, but have refused to actually protect the treatment. They are empty promises, and Democrats won’t let them get away with it.

Democratic contender Derek Tran is using the DCCC’s message and running hard at GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th District, which Biden won by 6 percentage points in 2020. Steel is cosponsoring one of the nonbinding resolutions expressing support for IVF, but she is still a cosponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which declares that fertilized eggs have all the protections of actual human beings.

Steel is a “fraud,” Tran told NBC News. “She continues to spill out lies,” Tran said. “Just three weeks ago, she signed on to the Life at Conception bill. This is the second time she’s done that. And now she’s saying that she’s pro-IVF when the Life at Conception bill is anything but. So she still is just spilling out lies in order to get voters.”

Those vulnerable House Republicans sure aren’t going to get any guidance from their leadership. Here’s mushy Speaker Mike Johnson trying to have it all ways: “Look, I believe in the sanctity of every human life. Always have,” he told NBC. “And because of that I support IVF and its availability.” Oh, and he has “many close friends” who have used IVF.

“It needs to be readily available. It needs to be something that every American supports. And it needs to be handled in an ethical manner,” he said, complaining that there is “a lot of misunderstanding” about where Republicans stand on it. That’s no misunderstanding at all—that’s Republicans refusing to say whether they believe IVF needs to be statutorily protected.

This is a potent issue for Democrats, and they know it—from the Biden-Harris reelection team down to the DCCC. In a new CBS News/YouGov poll, a whopping 86 percent of Americans said IVF should be legal. The message from Democrats is simple: “House Republicans are flagrant hypocrites who have spent their entire tenure in the majority attacking reproductive rights at every turn,” Courtney Rice, a spokesperson for the DCCC, told HuffPost. “Now, they are hiding behind toothless resolutions and empty public statements because they know their relentless attacks on reproductive freedoms will cost them at the ballot box.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.