In a bit of legal analysis better suited for The View, MSNBC’s Alex Witt suggested on Thursday that pro-life laws violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as she guest hosted Thursday’s edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports.
Witt went all in on abortion activism as she issued more of a statement with a question mark thrown in at the end than a genuine question to New York Magazine senior writer Sarah Jones, “Sarah, the New York Times reports that 171,000 patients traveled for abortion care last year. They went from states that have bans in place. I mean, what an economic cost to women, many of whom may not have the means to afford it, in addition to the health and the mental strain they are facing. Right?”
Jones wholeheartedly agreed, “It's an extreme burden, especially on low-income women. We’ve known this for a long time. It just hasn't mattered to the anti-abortion movement whatsoever, which claims that it is for women, that it can balance the rights of the fetus with the rights of the woman and we’ve seen in practice that that's just not true. We can see it in the burden placed on these women who are traveling such extreme distances just to access a basic legal right.”
Witt concurred and turned to political analyst Jennifer Palmieri, “Yeah, right you are. Jen, here is something to think about because there's supposed to be separation of church and state in our system of government, a tenet of the First Amendment known as the Establishment Clause, which states, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,’ but the issue of abortion makes you question if that's the case.”
That’s just dumb. If Witt thinks that outlawing abortion on the grounds that it constitutes murder is akin to the establishment of a state religion, the only logical thing for her to do is support the repeal of all murder laws because “thou shall not murder” is one of the ten commandments. Witt should not be a partisan news anchor, but if she insists, she should at least come up with a logical counterargument, not this laziness.
As for Palmieri, she wasn’t much better, “The other thing from this week, Alex, is the recording that we heard from Justice Alito where a person who he does not know, at a public event, put a microphone in front of him and asked him a question that he answered and the point I'm making here is that he was very comfortable sharing this view, which was shocking, where he said he thought it was -- the United States should be a nation of godliness.”
For Palmieri, this rather tame idea means Alito must be some sort of aspiring theocrat, “You know, that is not where the Supreme Court justices have, you know, have been. That is not -- to actually say that out loud in a public setting, I think it was -- I found it jarring to see -- if you are willing to say that in that kind of setting, what's happening behind closed doors with the, you know, with the conservative members of the Supreme Court and the agenda that they are pursuing, when you are willing to be that public about it.
People on the left also invoke God and religion to justify their beliefs on a whole range of topics, but MSNBC does not find that scary. Plus, if Alito was what MSNBC alleges, he would not have joined a unanimous ruling on Thursday that ruled that a pro-life group did not have standing to sue the FDA over the abortion pill.
Here is a transcript for the June 13 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
6/13/2024
12:27 PM ET
ALEX WITT: Sarah, the New York Times reports that 171,000 patients traveled for abortion care last year. They went from states that have bans in place. I mean, what an economic cost to women, many of whom may not have the means to afford it, in addition to the health and the mental strain they are facing. Right?
SARAH JONES: It's an extreme burden, especially on low-income women. We’ve known this for a long time. It just hasn't mattered to the anti-abortion movement whatsoever, which claims that it is for women, that it can balance the rights of the fetus with the rights of the woman and we’ve seen in practice that that's just not true. We can see it in the burden placed on these women who are traveling such extreme distances just to access a basic legal right.
WITT: Yeah, right you are. Jen, here is something to think about because there's supposed to be separation of church and state in our system of government, a tenet of the First Amendment known as the Establishment Clause, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,” but the issue of abortion makes you question if that's the case.
JENNIFIER PALMIERI: Yeah. The other thing from this week, Alex, is the recording that we heard from Justice Alito where a person who he does not know, at a public event, put a microphone in front of him and asked him a question that he answered and the point I'm making here is that he was very comfortable sharing this view, which was shocking, where he said he thought it was -- the United States should be a nation of Godliness.
You know, that is not where the Supreme Court justices have, you know, have been. That is not -- to actually say that out loud in a public setting, I think it was -- I found it jarring to see -- if you are willing to say that in that kind of setting, what's happening behind closed doors with the, you know, with the conservative members of the Supreme Court and the agenda that they are pursuing, when you are willing to be that public about it.
