thanks, rachel. all right, that is going to do it for us for now. i will see you again on monday. it will be back here for the rachel maddow show monday night. now it s time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. good evening, rachel. good evening, lawrence. it was, i believe, 53 long days ago when i was running through the hallways here with this leaked opinion that i couldn t believe that i was holding. you had one, and just the shock of having a leaked supreme court opinion, and then, getting it today was also shocking because the stuff that we and others pointed out in it, that could easily have been cut, was still in there. the quoting, you know, these guys from the 16 hundreds in england, who thought witches should be tried and executed. the witch trial moral authorities are still in this opinion. they are still being quoted as guidance for samuel alito. yeah, justice alito, and the majority, they were not taking pains to make sure that this would be broadly
and i think that s, i think, part of the reason that you ve had so much discussion today about what s next, because if they re willing to do this on this, which they knew would be the most divisive possible thing in the country, obviously, they would do it on things for what they think they had even more leeway to operate. that, we don t care element to this is, i think, gonna be a profoundly important part of the way this changes the country. and when you think of the presidents who made this happen, beginning with ronald reagan, but more importantly now, george h. w. bush, because he has clarence thomas on the supreme court, and the reagan justice there right now. but from george w. bush, to ronald reagan and donald trump, it is just a statistic statistical likelihood without even getting into their life histories. it s a statistical likelihood that it least one of them has personally, in some sense, participated in an abortion, possibly by paying for it. as is very commo
the majority opinion is almost unchanged from the leaked draft. alito s basic argument, as you said, is the same, what s the liberty of the constitution protects, we have to look at what price you would half in 1868, would a court of a have a pelt, i recognize the challenge to abortion in 1868, alito says no. so, you don t win. you don t have constitutional protection for abortion access now. i think there is at least two problems with this argument. first, actually, abortion that the chronological amongst americans s first generations it doesn t regulate, it doesn t criminalize criminalize abortions before quickening, which is the moment when a pregnant person first detects fetal movement, which can be as late as about 25 weeks. so, there actually isn t as consistent as history of abortion regulation as illegal alito suggests. moreover, the sources he cites for how we should think about abortion are exclusively of
and professor, let me begin with you and your reaction to the work of the amateur historians in the opinion. well, one thing there s a lot of things that you are striking. the majority opinion is almost unchanged from the leaked draft. alito s basic argument, as you said, is the same, what s the liberty of the constitution protects, we have to look at what price you would half in 1868, would a court of a pallet have recognized the challenge to abortion in 1868, alito says no. so, you don t win. you don t have constitutional protection for abortion access now. i think there is at least two problems with this argument. first, actually, abortion that the chronological amongst americans s first generations it doesn t regulate, it doesn t criminalize criminalize abortions before quickening, which is before