Dobbs ‘Was Not The End’: Democracy Forward CEO Sounds The Alarm On SCOTUS Rulings On Abortion

5 months ago

CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman joined Maggie McGrath on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion.

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Transcript

00:00 What will happen in your view if the court rules in favor of Idaho in this case?

00:05 We know it will be devastating. We are already seeing a number of women that are not able to get the care they need.

00:12 Stories about people having to have hysterectomies, having to have surgeries, their entire reproductive systems being under threat,

00:20 their lives and health being under threat because they're not able to get the care they need in these very tragic emergent situations.

00:26 So that will continue, but it will also embolden this extremism further.

00:30 And we will continue to see further and further attacks on health care and on women's access to health care.

00:37 People that thought that Dobbs was the end, we have now seen that it was not the end.

00:42 And that there is no bottom to the extreme nature that these groups are going to go to continue to deprive people of health care.

00:49 And so I think this is a very high stakes case.

00:51 And it is one where if the court were to decide in favor of Idaho, it would be devastating to the health and well-being of millions.

00:59 But it will also be a threat to our overall democracy because the court would essentially be saying that a federal protection that applies to all people

01:07 doesn't apply to people in a state like Idaho or in my home state, like Texas,

01:13 where we've also seen women like Kay Cox and others be denied the care they need.

01:20 There have been a lot of abortion related headlines over the last few weeks and including the Miffy Pristone case, the Arizona 1864 law.

01:30 It can get hard to sort through, I think, for regular consumers who might just see the headlines flashing by.

01:37 What's your overall takeaway of the activity, the legal and legislative activity we're seeing around reproductive health at this juncture in 2024?

01:47 Well, first of all, we are seeing again, as I started, that abortion is a democracy issue.

01:52 The vast majority of people support it. And in states where citizens are able to put issues on ballots, in states where there are free and fair elections,

02:01 we are seeing we are seeing an increase in people voting for protections for reproductive health care.

02:09 But we are also can see seeing concerning and emboldened attempts to restrict this access.

02:16 And so that's a lot of the headlines you're seeing. Things that were a bit unimaginable maybe a few years ago have now become normalized.

02:24 So an attempt to take a product like Miffy Pristone, which, as you referenced, is a product that is used,

02:30 a medication that is used for early termination of pregnancy.

02:33 It's used for a variety of other reproductive health care, but it's approved by FDA for the termination of pregnancy.

02:39 It has a two decade safety and efficacy record, is incredibly safe, is incredibly commonly used.

02:46 We're seeing extremists seek to go to court and have the court remove that product,

02:51 remove the approval of the product or roll back the way the product is regulated so that you can't access the product via telehealth.

02:59 We're seeing people now threaten contraception access. We are seeing extremists have to resort to laws that were passed in the 1800s.

03:07 You just referenced Arizona. We're also seeing this in broader ways with people referencing a federal Comstock Act,

03:14 which is a law that is not even should not even be applied or in effect, but that they're trying to go back to enforce.

03:22 And so I think to to break through those headlines,

03:25 it's important to know that we're in a crisis point because notwithstanding the vast majority of people support this health care and support the ability of people to access it.

03:36 And notwithstanding the harms that we see when people are denied health care,

03:41 there's nevertheless a movement afoot in certain states and in the courts to roll it back.

03:47 And so that's really all the headlines you see could boil down to that.

03:51 And it's why it's very important. And thank you for having me on.

03:54 It's important to highlight these stories and these issues,

03:57 because this is something that we all need to be aware of and using the tools that we have to support women and girls.

Dobbs ‘Was Not The End’: Democracy Forward CEO Sounds The Alarm On SCOTUS Rulings On Abortion

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