0 representatives just passed a bill right there. h.r. 1797. a totally and completely unconstitutional ban on almost all abortions in the country starting at 20 weeks. keep in mind, there are 12 million people who are unemployed in america. the unemployment rate has been at or near 8% for more than 4 years. there are 11 million people living in this country under the threat of deportation at any moment. we are about to start arming syrian rebels fighting in a brutal and bloody civil war even though no one seems fully capable of sorting the good guy rebels from the extremist rebels, and in doing so, we are moving toward a proxy war against russia and iran just to name a few. but tonight, those thorny problems were not the top concern of your republican-controlled house. no. tonight house republicans decided instead to focus on fake symbolically banning abortion. this vote tonight, this was not actual legislating. this is a bill that everyone, everyone on all sides agrees is unconstitutional. under the current understanding of the court that everyone knows will die in the senate, that president obama has said he'd veto even if it weren't going to die in the senate. so house republicans, they are not spending valuable time and energy and political capital getting it through the chamber because they are truly trying to change policy on this issue. they're doing it as a big, symbolic showoffy love letter to their conservative base, to the minority of americans who sent them to washington and who will probably keep them there under the current gerrymandered system for the duration of the decade. what's going on in the house tonight was make believe. not policymaking. not even an attempt at policymaking really. it more resembled one of those model u.n. retreats for young leaders where they go, play dress-up and hold a mock session where there are no real consequences to what they're doing. it's fun and they get to wear grown-up suits and feel the intoxicating ego rush that comes with declaiming one's principles in front of a large crowd. and you know what, after watching this spectacle unfold today, i honestly would take a randomly selected group of bright overachieving 16-year-olds to sub in for that republican house caucus. maybe we could grab some of the field trip students from the visitor's gallery. joining me now is congresswoman sheila jackson lee, democrat from texas. she's a member of the house judiciary committee. congresswoman, my first question to you is, explain to people the consequences of devoting legislative time and effort and capital to this kind of undertaking because my understanding is legislating hours in that body are zero sum. there's a fixed amount. if you choose to prioritize something, other stuff doesn't get done. >> well, chris, first of all, thank you and your viewers for having me. may i rename the bill as the rape doesn't cause pregnancy bill? at least it doesn't cause a lot of pregnancy bill. and i think from that renaming of this legislation, most of very clearly, a bill that is patently unconstitutional. but when i was on the floor today, i said that it was criminal. criminalizing women and it was inhumane. it was dangerous. it criminalizes women. possibly their faith leader. and as well, doctors. >> congresswoman, let me ask you this question. >> and it's unconstitutional. >> let me ask you this question. the politics of this are interesting, insofar as the house republican caucus has pushed this bill despite the fact it's symbolic but at the last minute they added minor so-called exceptions to the bill that aren't really nearly large enough, if you look at them, right? they also made sure that women were managing the bill on the house floor. what does that say to you about their understanding of the perception of their actions? >> well, i think that their actions can be described as siege on women and they can't get away from it. and frankly, the largeness of the issue that rape doesn't necessarily cause pregnancy followed them all from last week which is when it was said, into the weekend, making a critical weekend leadership decision that they had to add some form of an exception of rape and incest. but get this, chris, this is almost unbelievable. you don't get that exemption or that exception or that benefit if you don't report, if you don't run immediately to a law enforcement entity. >> right. >> after you've been frightened or brutalized or it might be an at-home situation with a 14-year-old and a family member, and you don't run immediately and report this to the authorities, you have lost under this legislation the idea of any protection. so to answer your question, it is all theater, dramatics. let me not challenge someone's heart because i said the same thing. don't challenge whether or not i feel a sense of pain about women being in a condition that they're in. don't challenge one's heart, but you have to adhere constitutionally to what has been well-stated law. griswold gave us the right to privacy. that is a protection that comes about through choice. and as well, dolby bolton, as i said, gave us in addition protection under the constitution for the impact on women's health. >> roe v. wade, of course, is the law of the land. >> that's the law of the land. we added another measure about women's health which these proponents could not see clearly. this bill does not have an exception for women's health. psychological, emotional. and familial or any other kind of exemption. it doesn't have it. what more can i say, chris? this bill is going nowhere, but more importantly, it criminalizes, it endangers women. it endangers a relationship between a physician and woman. >> congresswoman sheila jackson lee. thank you. joining me, michelle goldberg, for "newsweek" and "the daily beast." and terry o'neill, president of the national association for women. michelle, you've covered the antiabortion movement in this country, grassroots level, done a lot of incredible reporting. explain to me through that prism why the republican party is doing this. i am genuinely confused. >> i think there are two different things. i mean, first of all, you know, there are a huge number of republican officeholders who got into office specifically because they want to ban abortion. it shouldn't be surprising that that's what they're doing even if the politics of it seem wacky and counterproductive to us. >> they ran on it, they promised this and believe in it so this is what they're doing it. >> their base is demanding it, response to the kermit gosnell trial. there's actually a kind of growing pragmatism in the antiabortion movement. they're moving away from personhood amendments which are patently absurd and kind of strike people, strike most people as intuitively ridiculous. >> and the waterloo for that, of course, is when it lost in mississippi, of all places. it couldn't win in mississippi. >> late-term abortion is actually a better issue for them, right? most people intuitively know an embryo is not a human being, but most people also intuitively know that at 20 weeks or 22 weeks or 24 weeks, the fetus has some sort of value, even if not value that trumps the interest of the mother. and so this is an issue that is really uncomfortable and painful for a lot of people. and also in the aftermath of the 2007 case, gonzalez v. carhart, that allowed for a lot of new restrictions on abortion. it was the partial birth abortion case. there's a belief that the supreme court might be open to fundamentally reconsidering roe v. wade. >> right. that's the interesting strategic play here is let's get this before this court because we actually think, terri, that we think that this court, if we can get a full-frontal challenge to roe v. wade, if we get it in front of this court by provoking them this way, that we might get the answer we want. >> right. i think there are a lot of people on the sort of right wing of the conservative movement that think this is their moment when they can get roe v. wade actually overturned. i think they're very eager to do it. i think michelle is absolutely right that they think they're being pragmatic by focusing more on this 20 week abortion plan. that, frankly, is not going to work. what they have done is passed a law that is absolutely squarely violative of roe v. wade. this is not like the so-called partial birth abortion ban which banned one procedure that is done in a much later stages of pregnancy. so -- >> and i should also note that the federal courts have already struck down the arizona version of this bill as unconstitutional. but terry, there's another aspect to this which is actually this approach has been remarkably successful in the states. you have 11 states that have passed similar unconstitutional bans. in eight of those states, those unconstitutional bans, bans that we understand as unconstitutional are in effect because they have not been challenged. isn't that right? >> sure. and i think that there's real concern not just on the conservative side, on our side there is real concern about what the supreme court would do if offered the opportunity to overturn roe v. wade. what i think, though, that that focus on the supreme court misses is that women and men want roe v. wade to remain the law of the land. over 70% in a poll taken in january, and the numbers that i saw were more like 77% right after the 2012 elections. when asked, people say, no, we want roe v. wade to remain the law of the land. that includes 35% of people who consider themselves pro-life. >> right. and the fascinating thing about that, right, is that that kind of democratic accountability for the status quo, that kind of democratic support for the status quo is absent in the political calculations. >> yes and no. it is complicated on later abortions. so people are confused about these issues. or not even confused. they're ambivalent. they're strongly pro-choice. they support roe v. wade. they're also uncomfortable with abortions -- >> third trimester. >> end of the second and beginning of the third trimester. so the plan here is to essentially try to replace the viability standard. >> and start marching it backwards. >> time. >> and start marching it backwards and use the idea of fetal pain as a kind of new substitute scientific standard which will allow them, again, to kind of push the limits back further and further and also to, you know, further make people uncomfortable with abortion. >> terry o'neill. michelle goldberg from "newsweek" and the "daily beast." today congress heard from chief of the central security service and commander of the u.s. cyber command. this guy. that's right. this one. all three titles. introducing general keith alexander, next. oothes, lifts, ? 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