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Comedian Jon Stewart branded the United States Supreme Court the ‘Fox News of Justice’ after it overturned Roe v. Wade.
Stewart, 59, opened Thursday’s episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, with an angry exclamation: ‘Guys, what the f**k!’
He asked three law professors – Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw – if they immediately went into ‘solution mode’ after hearing about the dramatic political and legal shift.
Stewart then compared SCOTUS to the conservative new network – which has been accused by the left of being high partisan and spreading fake news.
He said: ‘[This decision] makes the court a cynical pursuit. It feels like the Fox News of Justice.’
‘It is a cynical pursuit in the same way that Fox News would come out with ‘we’re fair and balanced’ under the patina of what would be a high-status pursuit to the betterment of society, journalism. They are a cynical political arm.’
Jon Stewart, 59, said the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a ‘cynical pursuit’ and compared the Court to ‘Fox News.’ He said: ‘It is a cynical pursuit in the same way that Fox News would come out with ‘we’re fair and balanced”
Stewart said the decision was ‘political’ and has ‘nothing to do with scholarship or anything else.’
The comedian also criticized the Court’s conservative Justices, saying they should have made their opinions on abortion and Roe v. Wade very clear in their confirmation hearings. The Justices in question had made it fairly clear in their hearings they thought abortion rights were already a settled precedent.
Democrats are now calling for an impeachment trial into the Justices, for allegedly lying under oath.
Pro-choice Senators Susan Collins and Joe Manchin both said they felt misled by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in their confirmation hearing, as they were led to believe Roe v. Wade was set precedent.
In Gorsuch’s 2017 confirmation hearing, he said Roe was ‘a precedent of the US Supreme Court. It was reaffirmed in Casey in 1992 and in several other cases.’
‘So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the US Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other,’ he said.
At the time, he refused to say how he rule on the case, saying it would ‘send the signal to the American people that the judge’s personal views have something to do with the judge’s job.’
In 2018, Kavanaugh also said the case had been ‘reaffirmed many times.’ However, he did indicate he would consider reviewing ‘settled law,’ but said Casey was ‘precedent on precedent.’
‘It is not as if [Roe] is just a run-of-the-mill case that was decided and never reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it,’ he said in 2018.
Fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett had even advocated for the reversal of Roe in 2006, according to the Washington Post.
She said in 2020: ‘If a question comes up before me about whether Casey or any other case should be overruled, that I will follow the law of stare decisis, applying it as the court is articulating it, applying all the factors, reliance, workability, being undermined by later facts in law, just all the standard factors.
‘I promise to do that for any issue that comes up, abortion or anything else.’
Litman said that – despite what they said under oath – ‘all of their prior work to date, it totally clear that they were going to do these insane, terrible things.’
‘It would have been one thing, if they sat in the confirmation hearings and said: ‘My entire ideological bearing is that life begins at conception and that abortion should be made illegal.’ And at the very least, you would respect their honesty and integrity,’ Stewart said.
‘When you look at the ridiculous kabuki theater now of justice confirmation, where they can just go out there and just f**king lie, like if this were about debate, then they would’ve understood what perjury meant.’
The conservative Justices are under fire for the decision, and Stewart said they should have been ‘honest’ under oath. ‘It would have been one thing, if they sat in the confirmation hearings and said: ‘My entire ideological bearing is that life begins at conception and that abortion should be made illegal.’ And at the very least, you would respect their honesty and integrity,’ Stewart said
Shaw agreed that Justices were purposely placed on the court by Trump to reverse Roe v. Wade, but said they ‘didn’t say anything definite’ once at the hearings.
‘But it wasn’t necessary [to say anything definite] because Trump knew and the Senators knew that they were,’ she said on the show.
‘These three Justices were the product of a conservative legal movement who had been trained and groomed to adhere to and espouse a set of legal ‘theories’…[to] basically retrofit around a set of just conservative pet project outcomes.’
She also said stacking the court was an ‘exercise of raw power.’
‘They had the votes, so they did it,’ Shaw said on the show.
Murray joked that this is the ‘one time that Donald Trump told the truth.’
Litman went on to say that this isn’t something that wasn’t expected, as the ‘Republican Party has spent decades putting people on the court to get the results that they want.’
Stewart went on to criticize the Court for stating they couldn’t regulate gun laws, but could regulate women’s bodies.
‘I mean, there is no consistency. States can’t regulate guns, but they can regulate [uteruses], you know?’ he said.
He said the decision to overturn the decision was ‘philosophical’ rather than based on ‘reasoned debate.’ The host also said conservatives like to ‘cite the bible’ because it’s a bunch of ‘dead people’ who can’t ‘argue’ with.
‘How is this not a religious decision? They are suggesting that life is beginning at conception with no evidence other than that’s what the creator said?’
Many Americans slammed the court’s decision for combining church and state, and protests broke out across the nation.
Prominent figures, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Attorney General Merrick Garland slammed the decision, with the latter stating the decision was a ‘devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States.’
President Joe Biden, 79, said he would back killing the filibuster to pass federal abortion legislation and blasted SCOTUS’ ‘outrageous’ decision.
Protests broke out across the nation after the decision was overturn (pictured: Arizona)
Protesters in Washington Square Park in NYC after the protest. Democrats are now calling for some of the Justices to be impeached for what they say is lying under oath
Speaking to reporters at the end of a NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, earlier this week, he condemned the ruling and its impact.
America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,’ he said.
‘But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.’
He also said he would support a carve-out so that Democrats in Congress could pass laws to protect abortion rights, even without 60 votes in the Senate.
‘The first and foremost thing we should do, is make it clear how outrageous this decision was and how much it impacts – not just on a woman’s right to choose, which is a critical, critical piece – but on privacy generally,’ Biden said.
‘And so I’m going to be talking to the governors as to what actions they think I should be taking as well.’
He added that the ‘most important thing’ was his belief that the protections granted in Roe v. Wade should be codified into law.
‘The way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that,’ the president said.
‘And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be we provide an exception for this.’
The 26 states where abortion will likely become illegal now Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs Wade
The 26 states where abortion will likely become illegal if SCOTUS overturns Roe vs Wade after leaked draft opinion showed a majority of justices supported the move
More than half of all US states have some kind of abortion ban law likely to take effect now that Roe v Wade has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court.
According to the pro-reproductive rights group The Guttmacher Institute, there are 26 states that will likely make abortions illegal now that the Supreme Court has overturned the landmark 1973 ruling.
18 have existing abortion bans that have previously been ruled unconstitutional, four have time limit bans and four are likely to pass laws once Roe v Wade is overturned, the organization found.
The 18 states that have near-total bans on abortion already on the books are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
In addition, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina all have laws that ban abortions after the six-week mark.
Florida, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska, are likely to pass bills when Roe v Wade is overturned, the Guttmacher Institute said.
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin’s bans all have pre-Roe v Wade laws that became unenforceable after the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision – that would kick into effect now the federal legal precedent established in Roe has been overturned.
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Texas have further bans that will come into effect if the law was overturned. These were passed post-Roe v Wade.
They’re joined by Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming, in passing such laws.
The states that will limit abortions based on the length of time a patient has been pregnant are Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio.
There are four states that have laws that state abortion is not a constitutionally protected right: Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia.
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