Last week, Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) appeared on Meet the Press on MSNBC to lie to the nation. (See Gov. Reeves Lies to the Nation from last week.) But, of course this is part of a campaign to gaslight the American people on the issue of abortion. The entire position of the Republican Party is based on a lie, so it’s almost impossible for any Republican to appear in the media without supporting that lie.
First of All, Tate Reeves Lies
Today (Sunday 5 December 2021), Gov. Reeves went on State of the Union on CNN to repeat his lies about abortion, where Jake Tapper interviewed him:
Tapper:
Based on what you’ve heard in oral arguments, do you think that the Supreme Court will uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, and do you think the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade?
Reeves:
Clearly, they could recognize even under the existing standard that 15 weeks is not at all radical. In fact, they could recognize that the 15-week ban in the Mississippi case is more in line with abortion laws around the world than the current laws in the U.S. In fact in Europe, for instance, There are 42 countries that have elective abortions, and in 39 of them, they would still have more restrictive laws than the State of Mississippi, if, in fact, our 15-week ban is upheld. The Court also could go further.… They could consider potentially overturning Casey, which was the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey case, dating back to 1992. Or, they could overturn Roe v. Wade in 1973…
Tapper:
So, the State of Mississippi also has a law on the books that would ban all abortions, with exceptions only for rape and the life of the mother, that would snap into effect…just days after Roe is overturned, if Roe is overturned. If that happens, would you start enforcing that in your state? …
Reeves:
It is dependent upon how the Court rules and exactly what those opinions allow us to do. If, in fact, Roe is overturned—and by the way, I believe very strongly, as do many Americans—that the Justices on the Supreme Court today could look at the Roe v. Wade case and come to the conclusion that the Court just simply got it wrong in 1973.
If you read the Constitution, in my opinion, there is no guaranteed right to an abortion in our U.S. Constitution. And, furthermore, not only is there not a guaranteed right, there’s also nothing in the Constitution that prohibits individual states from enacting their own laws.
And, after all, that’s really what the founding fathers intended. For any issue that’s not explicitly in the Constitution, it should be left to the states and the state legislatures and the democratic process. …
Tapper:
So, is that a Yes, that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, you will enforce the almost total abortion ban in Mississippi that exists…in the situation where Roe v. Wade is overturned?
Reeves:
That is a Yes, because if you believe as I believe, very strongly, that that innocent unborn child in the mother’s womb is in fact a child. The most important word when we talk about “unborn children” is not “unborn”, but it is “children”. So, yes, I will do everything I can to protect the lives of those children.
Tapper:
[When abortion is made illegal] what happens in reality is women-of-means are still able to get abortions. But poor women, young women, vulnerable women end up [with abortions that can cause them severe harm]. Do you acknowledge that this step will result in some women almost certainly [coming to harm]?
Reeves:
[I hope not.] But, what I would tell you, Jake, is that since Roe was enacted in 1973 there have been 62 million American babies that have been killed through this process. And, I think that those babies in their mother’s wombs don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves. And that’s why they have to have people like me and others around this nation that for years have tried to stand up for unborn children.
[See below for a fuller transcription of this exchange. The transcription here is my own and omits unnecessary material.]
I had to restrain myself from calling Reeves “liar” in this exchange, but you can easily make that substitution for yourselves, because it appears that “Tate Reeves” just means liar.
As I pointed out last week, fetuses are not babies. They are not even sentient until late in pregnancy. Reeves’s wild claim that they are babies is out of touch with reality, and the vast majority of people understand that.
Yet, he uses this false claim to say that 62 million babies have been killed in this country since 1973. This is a lie, and it’s a lie with a point. Republicans claim that fetuses are humans because it allows them to go to fundamentalist Christian sects and raise money.
In other words, the point of this lie is to scam Christians into giving these politicians money and power.
I’m good with someone taking the honest position based on their religion that abortion is wrong and that they should do everything in their power to oppose it. That’s their right. They deserve the religious and spiritual freedom to believe that. If they’ve honestly gone to the Lord in prayer and asked for guidance on abortion, and the answer they truly got was that they should lie down in front of abortion clinics and demand abortions stop, then that’s their religious and their spiritual experience. I don’t object to that. (It seems a bit nutty, but everyone’s a fruitcake, according to some lights.)
What I object to is people like Reeves and his backers and hangers-on going to the religious community for money and power. They are bilking my brethren out of their hard-earned money. They are flock fleecing. And that’s doubly objectionable because (1) they know that a fetus is not a baby through most of pregnancy and (2) they are deceiving people who, for the most part, are trying to do the right thing. (It’s also despicable for other reasons, including the fact that often they are taking money from the very poorest people in the country.)
Let’s just be clear. We give humans rights because we believe humans are sentient beings. We believe they have consciousness and are capable of understanding the consciousness of others. This capacity does not develop in the human fetus until late in pregnancy. Until the fetus gains this sentience it is not a child. It has no claim to human rights. But the mother does. This person has a claim to control their body. They have a claim to get medical treatment that will help them be and stay healthy.
And Reeve Deceives
I also want to address a couple deceptions in this interview.
First, whether any other country in the world has gotten it right on this moral issue is of no legitimate consequence to our discussion. For years, many countries have gotten it wrong. What I want to see is progress on human rights in Europe, not regression on human rights in the U.S.
Second, the Constitution does so give this right. It says, and I quote:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
[Amendments IX and X of the Constitution (here)]
There’s also this section of the Fourteenth Amendment:
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
[Amendment XIV]
A person who is pregnant has the same right to control their body as someone who is not. That’s the meaning of “equal protection of the laws”. That right is guaranteed by the Constitution, because it is the right of a person subject to jurisdiction of the United States. No state may make or enforce any law that abridges that right.
Fetuses are not persons under the Constitution. They are not sentient beings, so they cannot be persons. Since they are not persons, they are not entitled to protection by the law.
And the states are not the ones to make this decision. This is a constitutional decision. The right to have an abortion is a federal right, and it is the federal government of the country that has the right and the responsibility to protect that federal right.
Furthermore, the states are required to guarantee this right.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…
[Article IV, Section 4]
Part of guaranteeing a republican form of government to the states is the protection of the rights of citizens.
Gov. Reeves is simply wrong when he says, "there is no guaranteed right to an abortion in our U.S. Constitution” and “that’s really what the founding fathers intended. For any issue that’s not explicitly in the Constitution, it should be left to the states and the state legislatures and the democratic process.” Obviously not. That’s not what they wrote in the document.
CNN and MSNBC Should Not Have Liars on Their Shows
Why, oh, why do our national commentary organizations, like CNN and MSNBC, allow people to come on their programs and blatantly lie to the nation? Why do they allow an obvious liar, like Reeves, on their programs in the first place? Having given them air time, why aren’t they even willing to call out the obvious lies?
It’s not as if either Reeves or Tapper (or Todd or Bash) don’t know that fetuses are not children, born or unborn. They simply aren’t. Allowing Reeves to go on national TV and lie right into the camera is the responsibility of CNN and MSNBC. (And Fox News, as if they had even the slightest interest in truth.)
These organizations that claim the mantle of “the press” have a First Amendment responsibility to provide honest information to the public. And, once again, just letting the opponents appear is not sufficient. Why should Democratic politicians have to clean up the stench (I believe that’s the correct word) after Republicans go on our cable ways and lie, lie, lie?
Sen. Ron Johnson Also Lies to the Nation
Gov. Reeves isn’t the only Republican to lie to the nation on State of the Union. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WS) also appeared, albeit virtually. Tapper played a clip of Johnson lying about Dr. Anthony Fauci:
Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it. He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population when it couldn’t. And he’s doing—he’s using the exact same playbook with Covid.
[From Fox News Radio, “The Brian Kilmeade Show, 1 December 2021]
Let’s just point out one egregious lie in this. AIDS did effect the entire population. It infected the blood supply, and literally anyone who got a transfusion was subject to getting HIV, which could indeed give them AIDS. Anyone getting a transfusion means any member of the public.
The deeper lie here, obviously, is that he was saying that AIDS could only affect the homosexual population, and therefore it was of no concern to the general population. This is both morally reprehensible and bad public policy. The fact gay men were far more susceptible to AIDS than straight men meant they were at a much higher risk, but the unfortunate result of that is that gay men acted as an early warning indicator for the population as a whole.
We are just lucky that, so far, HIV has not mutated to a form where it lasts any significant time outside the body. And, for that reason, we owe a debt of gratitude as a society to those who contracted AIDS early on, allowing us time to study it and improve our medicine before it became widespread in the general community. Not to mention how much of a leg up the study of AIDS gave us on understanding viruses, generally, and therefore the leg up it gave us in dealing with covid.
Here we see how much the Republican elite is willing to lie to the public, and the depths of depravity they will go to to do so.
Sponsors of Lies
Let me give you an added bonus in today’s reportage. When company like CNN hosts a Republican liar, their advertisers are also sponsoring that liar. Here are the companies who sponsored today’s Republican liars in my area (chronologically):
Servpro
KN
Vrbo
Prilosec
Abbott
Safelite AutoGlass
Personal Capital
Duluth Trading Co.
Vicks
GSK Sensodyne
Primatene
Audi
T-Mobile
Amazon
PhRMA
GSK Nucala
Secret (antiperspirant)
NBC Olympics
Farmers Insurance
Velveeta
Google
Autismspeaks
Novartis Kisqali
Boll & Branch
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Marvel Studios
YouTube
American Edge Project
Operation Smile
Theraworx
And some of them are good organizations. But maybe they should distance themselves from programs that platform egregious liars.
Expanded Transcript
Here is a fuller transcription of Jake Tapper’s exchange with Gov. Reeves for context. This transcription is mine, and it omits unnecessary words and cleans up verbal fumbles.
Tapper:
Based on what you’ve heard in oral arguments, do you think that the Supreme Court will uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, and do you think the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade?
Reeves:
This has been a watershed moment in American history over the last week as this case that many of us in the pro-life movement have hoped would come before the Court for many years. And, we actually had oral arguments on Wednesday. Clearly, the questioning by a number of the Justices led many people across America and particularly journalists to opine that they were looking very favorably on upholding the case, the Dobbs Case, the Mississippi case. And that’s certainly a favorable outcome for us.
There’s a number of different things that the Justices can do here. Clearly, they could recognize even under the existing standard that 15 weeks is not at all radical. In fact, they could recognize that the 15-week ban in the Mississippi case is more in line with abortion laws around the world than the current laws in the U.S. In fact in Europe, for instance, There are 42 countries that have elective abortions, and in 39 of them, they would still have more restrictive laws than the State of Mississippi, if, in fact, our 15-week ban is upheld.
The Court also could go further, as you well know. They could consider potentially overturning Casey, which was the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey case, dating back to 1992. Or, they could overturn Roe v. Wade in 1973, and the commentary around the oral arguments on Wednesday certainly give people like me, who hope that they do both of those things, some reason for optimism. But again, I’ve watched enough court cases to know that just because a particular judge or a particular justice has asked certain questions, doesn’t mean that’s necessarily how they are going to rule.
Tapper:
So, the State of Mississippi also has a law on the books that would ban all abortions, with exceptions only for rape and the life of the mother, that would snap into effect…just days after Roe is overturned, if Roe is overturned. If that happens, would you start enforcing that in your state? …
Reeves:
It is dependent upon how the Court rules and exactly what those opinions allow us to do. If, in fact, Roe is overturned—and by the way, I believe very strongly, as do many Americans—that the Justices on the Supreme Court today could look at the Roe v. Wade case and come to the conclusion that the Court just simply got it wrong in 1973. If you read the Constitution, in my opinion, there is no guaranteed right to an abortion in our U.S. Constitution. And, furthermore, not only is there not a guaranteed right, there’s also nothing in the Constitution that prohibits individual states from enacting their own laws. And, after all, that’s really what the founding fathers intended. For any issue that’s not explicitly in the Constitution, it should be left to the states and the state legislatures and the democratic process. And so, I just want to make sure everyone is clear that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, that doesn’t mean that no one in America is going to have access—although, that might make people like me happy. But what it does mean is that all fifty states, the laboratories of democracy, are going to have the ability to enact their own laws with respect to abortion. And, I think that’s the way it should be in America.
Tapper:
So, is that a Yes, that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, you will enforce the almost total abortion ban in Mississippi that exists…in the situation where Roe v. Wade is overturned?
Reeves:
That is a Yes, because if you believe as I believe, very strongly, that that innocent unborn child in the mother’s womb is in fact a child. The most important word when we talk about “unborn children” is not “unborn”, but it is “children”. So, yes, I will do everything I can to protect the lives of those children.
Tapper:
[When abortion is made illegal] what happens in reality is women-of-means are still able to get abortions. But poor women, young women, vulnerable women end up [with abortions that can cause them severe harm]. Do you acknowledge that this step will result in some women almost certainly [coming to harm]?
Reeves:
[I hope not.] But, what I would tell you, Jake, is that since Roe was enacted in 1973 there have been 62 million American babies that have been killed through this process. And, I think that those babies in their mother’s wombs don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves. And that’s why they have to have people like me and others around this nation that for years have tried to stand up for unborn children.
There is more to this interview, but the section above is pertinent to the abortion issue.
Additional Articles
Charles Jay also wrote about this today in Mississippi's SCOTUS Bait & Switch: Gov. Tate Reeves admits state intends to ban all abortions.
Thom Hartmann also wrote about this today in Next Up On GOP’s Agenda: Stripping Women Of Political & Economic Power.