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MSNBC’s The ReidOut 6/24/2024 07:34:34 PM EST
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: This is a healthcare crisis. And we all know who is to blame. Donald Trump. [transition] Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions. Instead, he, quote, “proudly” takes credit for overturning Roe. [transition] In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.
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JOY REID: Today marks two years since Donald Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court justices ripped away abortion rights from millions of American women, overturning Roe v. Wade with their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Since then, the cruelty of the post-Dobbs world has impacted people all across this country. New data from Planned Parenthood shows that since Dobbs, 21 states have enacted some form of abortion ban and more than 28 million women, trans, and nonbinary people of reproductive age live in them. That is nearly 43 percent of all women of reproductive age nationwide. And we’ve heard directly from women affected by those bans.
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KATE COX: My state chose to drive me out of my home, my community, away from my children, my doctors, rather than to let me access care. [Transition] AMANDA ZURAWSKI: I couldn’t leave the state, and if I had, I probably would have died. So I had to just wait until I did become near death. It took three days, and the trauma of that waiting and being in terror and fear for those three days, I mean, it’s cruel. It is inhumane. [Transition] ANYA COOK: Her heart was still beating, but they told me that at that point, because I had lost all my fluid, there’s nothing that I can do. So I looked at him, I said, “Okay, so what are you going to do? Are you going to–what are we supposed to do, are we terminating?” He said, “We can’t do anything.” I said, “Excuse me? You can’t do anything? What does that mean exactly?” He says, “We can’t do anything.”
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REID: Joining me now is Shannon Brewer, former director of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi, the plaintiffs in the Dobbs case. She is now the executive director of the Las Cruces Women’s Health Organization in New Mexico. And Mini T–Mini–Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. Thank you both for being here. I do want to go to you, Shannon Brewer, and just ask you to reflect on two years without Roe. What has been the impact on women and the women that you work with now?
SHANNON BREWER: Hmm. In two years…the biggest impact I’ve seen is women having to travel so far to these different states. It has not deterred a lot of women, I must tell you that. It has–it’s hurt women as far as having to find places where they can get adequate care. And that’s what I’ve been–we’ve been dealing with basically for two years and we’re still dealing with it every single day.
REID: I mean, you operated the Pink House in Mississippi for a really long time. When you talk to folks back in Mississippi, because they’re also a state where maternal mortality is high, particularly among black women, where healthcare is hard to find–there’s no expansion of Obamacare, there’s not a lot of resources there’s offered to women. What are women in Mississippi dealing with?
BREWER: I don’t know exactly what all they’re dealing with, but the women that we talk to, they’re unfortunately some are dealing with the fact that they have to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, that they cannot afford, you know, care for–to care for as far as the insurance, Medicaid, child care, so you have a lot of women, you have a lot of underage girls that are having to have unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children, unfortunately. And that’s–I don’t understand how that makes sense still–two years later, I still don’t understand how that is a better option for these people.
REID: Yeah. Mini Timmaraju, talk about the national impact that you’ve seen
