(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Powerful must-see statement by Lawrence O'Donnell on the stakes for abortion rights in this election [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-09-18 Last night MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell covered the tragic and preventable death of Amber Nicole Thurman due to Trump’s abortion ban in Georgia, which I covered yesterday. But in his typical fashion, Lawrence took things up several notches and painted a much broader picture of how we got to this point in our country with SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and highlights the stakes for this year’s election in terms of reproductive freedom. He also got very emotional and very personal — sharing a story from his family that I’ve never heard him discuss before. It is a powerful must-watch segment. The most emotional point in the segment comes when Lawrence tells about how his mother had the same D&C medical procedure that Thurman needed when he was six years old — the same age as Thurman’s son when she died unnecessarily. Lawrence’s mother had given birth to five healthy children and decided to go for a sixth child to try to give her only daughter a sister, but she suffered a miscarriage. Lawrence points out that long before Roe became law, even Catholic hospitals recognized that the D&C procedure was necessary medical care to protect a woman’s health and that it had nothing to do with abortion: “None of the Catholic nuns teaching me at my elementary school then thought my mother should not have that procedure. Our beloved Monsignor Bradley knew that when mothers had miscarriages, doctors should give them whatever treatment they needed. Anti-abortion Catholic doctors performed the procedure routinely. There wasn't a single Irish Catholic politician in Boston, including the mayor and district attorney, who ever tried to interfere with that medical procedure. Their sisters were having that procedure, their daughters were having that procedure routinely in anti-abortion Boston because it has nothing to do with abortion. Nothing. If a politician interfered with that procedure and killed my mother when I was six years old, who is going to tell that boy? Who is going to tell that six-year-old how his mother died and who is really responsible?” It is at this point that Lawrence nearly comes to tears and has to muster all of his strength to keep going. It’s painful to watch. He continues: “The D&C procedure was routine in many areas of the country, long before abortion was legal. Outlawing that procedure is sheer madness, criminal madness. murderous madness. Outlawing the D&C procedure is as insane as outlawing in vitro fertilization, which anti-abortion Republicans want to do.” When addressing what to tell that six-year-old boy — in this case Thurman’s son — about who is responsible for his mother’s death, Lawrence lays blame at not just Donald Trump but also at former president George W. Bush. I’m so glad that Lawrence did this, and in so doing points out the cynical and cruel political calculations that Republicans have made regarding abortion over the past several decades — and how that’s coming home to roost for them right now. “They got what they wanted,” Lawrence notes. Lawrence reminds us all that Bush appointed both Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court. At that time Republicans like Bush would claim that they had no “litmus test” in terms of issues they would want a SCOTUS candidate to support or not support, even though behind the scenes everyone knew that these two candidates were against abortion and that Bush himself publicly stated the same. “The two 78-year-old, former Republican presidents who appointed the majority of Republican Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade got what they wanted. Sometimes when you get what you want, more things than you anticipate come with it.” Lawrence also excoriates Trump over his actions to overturn Roe. He plays a recording from when Donald Trump was on the Howard Stern show. In the recording, Trump expresses how he was disappointed when his girlfriend at the time, Marla Maples, whom he was seeing while he was married to Ivana Trump, shared with him the news that she was pregnant. His response to her was, “What are we doing to do about this?” — implying of course that they had the option to have the baby or not have the baby. Trump makes it clear he was not happy when Maples told him that she planned to have the baby. Lawrence points out that today in 20 states, men no longer have the option to ask the question, “What are we going to do about this?” Lawrence makes it absolutely clear, in no uncertain terms, that Donald Trump and George W. Bush both have blood on their hands. Amber Nicole Thurman would be alive tonight if Donald Trump did not win the electoral college in 2016. Donald Trump increased the Republican majority in the United States Supreme Court and started the clock ticking on Amber Nicole Thurman's life. They got what they wanted. George W. Bush and Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade and now Amber Nicole Thurman is dead. But he points out that it’s not just Bush and Trump who have blood on their hands. George W. Bush and Donald Trump weren't in the operating room to watch Amber Nicole Thurman die. None of the Supreme Court Justices whose decision forced her to die were there to watch their legal scholarship in action. None of the Georgia Republican politicians who wrote the law that killed Amber Nicole Thurman had to watch her die in the operating room, under the sentence of death that they gave her. The doctors and nurses who were trying to save her life, working under a law that would send them to prison, were the only people there to watch her die. Imagine what those doctors and nurses felt and what they feel tonight. Lawrence blasts the Supreme Court Justices that overturned Roe for being “morally weak, heartless fools who got what they wanted” and Bush and Trump for “playing politics with abortion” when they were both running for president. When it mattered, George W. Bush did not care at all what could happen in the lives of real people. Because of the way he played politics with abortion. it surely never crossed his mind who could die because of his political choices on abortion. We know for an absolute certainty that Donald Trump is a publicly raging narcissistic sociopath, utterly incapable of convincingly demonstrating the ability to feel sorry for anyone except himself. There actually is no public evidence that if you put Donald Trump in the operating room, watching Amber Nicole Thurman die, that in that moment he would feel badly for anyone except himself for being forced to watch it. I encourage you to watch the entire video — it is one of Lawrence’s best diatribes in recent years imho — and please share it with anyone who is still somehow undecided about this election or who inexplicably says that they support abortion rights but are not planning to vote for Kamala Harris. As Lawrence makes clear at the end of the video, only Kamala Harris will reinstate the protections of Roe v. Wade. And only Kamala Harris will, when given the opportunity, change the composition of the Supreme Court so that it will once again protect our fundamental freedoms. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271183/-Powerful-must-see-statement-by-Lawrence-O-Donnell-on-the-stakes-for-abortion-rights-in-this-election?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/