Democracy Forward CEO Details The Impact That Access To Abortion Has On Democracy

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CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman joined Maggie McGrath on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the impact of reproductive health issues on democracy and the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on Idaho's near-total abortion ban.  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript   Stay Connected Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00 Get into the specifics of these cases in a quick second, but I want to start with a broad question.

00:05 What does abortion have to do with democracy? Why is an organization and someone, a leader like

00:11 yourself, getting involved on these reproductive health cases? Well, look, we know that the vast

00:17 majority of people in this country support access to reproductive health care. People are different.

00:23 They all have different views. They may have different religious backgrounds or community

00:28 backgrounds, but the vast majority of people do not believe that the government should be

00:33 interfering in health care decisions that women have to make about their lives. And so this is

00:38 a democracy issue because it is something that the vast majority of people believe in. They want to

00:44 see protections for reproductive health care, and yet there is a movement that is seeking to roll

00:49 those protections back, as we've seen with Dobbs, of course, being the most prevalent of that

00:56 example of that movement. In addition, what we know is that there is a direct connection between

01:03 the treatment of women and girls in a society and the overall strength of a democracy. And so it is

01:09 not a coincidence that at the same time that we are seeing rise in attacks on voting rights,

01:17 that we are seeing election denialism, that we are seeing these broader threats to our democracy

01:22 overall that are being reported every day and are happening in communities every day, a rise in book

01:26 bans in communities, that we are also seeing extreme attacks on women's health care access

01:33 and rollbacks of the rights for women and girls in this country.

01:37 Now let's dive into the Idaho case that the Supreme Court looked at just yesterday. At issue

01:47 is Idaho's near total abortion ban and a federal law that essentially, in very layman's terms,

01:54 requires that hospitals treat patients in emergency scenarios. And in a case of a

02:00 pregnant person in a situation of emergency, that could mean an emergency abortion.

02:05 What is your impression after hearing those oral arguments yesterday? What is your top line

02:12 takeaway that we should all know about what happened in court? I was in the courtroom yesterday

02:17 and I can tell it was harrowing listening to the stories of women in 2024 being life flighted,

02:25 flown out of hospitals where they can't get care, hearing justices debate about how many organs a

02:32 woman has to lose or how difficult, how threatening an emergency situation has to be to allow a

02:42 physician to do their job and to care for women. Those are the kinds of things that we heard

02:47 yesterday. And so my takeaway is this is incredibly concerning and incredibly serious

02:52 in terms of what it means for the rights of women and in terms of what it means for our

02:58 equal representation. As you just referenced, federal law has for decades protected women's

03:05 access to go to an emergency room and get emergency care. It protects men's access as well.

03:09 All people can go to an emergency room and get the care they need if they're in that emergent

03:13 situation. And the fact that we may be in a situation where the court would contemplate

03:19 and potentially decide that that federal protection does not extend to women who are pregnant who may

03:25 need a termination is deeply concerning and it's undemocratic.

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