 This week, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state's six-week abortion ban while also setting the state up for a ballot referendum on the issue in November. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the limit on abortions could cause Florida to go blue this November. Let's watch. Well, in the short run, bad news obviously for women's health, for women's reproductive rights, for women's choice. In the long run, Molly, and you brought it up during the break, both items by the Supreme Court were bad news for Donald Trump yesterday, because first thing the court did was stick Trump with Ron DeSantis' six-week abortion ban will be extraordinarily unpopular. And then the second thing is making the election in 24 a referendum on a six-week abortion ban. That's just bad for Donald Trump and Republican candidates up and down the ballot. Does that mean that Biden's going to win Florida? You know, it's still a long shot, but I'll tell you what, if I'm a Florida Republican, I hate this being on the ballot. Meanwhile, President Biden has wasted no time in fundraising off the six-week abortion ban. Here's a recent campaign ad. Because for 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. In 2016, Donald Trump ran to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, in 2024, he's running to pass a national ban on a woman's right to choose. I'm running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again, so women have a federal guarantee to the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn't trust women. I do. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. So what do you think, Amber, is this going to be an issue for the 2024 election? I think it could be, but people are perhaps overestimating how well it's going to perform for Democrats based on what happened in the 2022 midterms. They had the benefit, then, of the midterms taking place right after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, right after the Dobbs decision, and had a lot of young people really motivated to go out and vote. But now we're talking about a presidential where young people are turning away from Joe Biden already. So the Ann suburban women, by the way, are trending towards Trump more than they were in 2020. So I think the idea that this is going to be a galvanizing issue again is a little bit foolhardy. Especially when you consider the fact that Trump is actually pretty moderate on abortion, especially compared to most of the Republican Party. He said that he doesn't support a national ban on abortion. He wants the states to decide. He says, you know, I'm pro-life, but this should be a state matter. And that's kind of what's been the winning message in the past for conservatives and the Republican Party. So I just don't buy that this is the Democrats golden goose. Why do other Republicans keep talking about a national ban? Like Lindsey Graham brought it up. Like why are they doing that? It's not a winning issue. Yeah. Honestly, it's just ideology getting in the way of strategy. And I think a lot of people are so passionate about the pro-life issue that they find it hard to exercise a little bit more pragmatism when it comes to policymaking. Because, I mean, if you think about it this way, if you truly believe that abortion is murder starting at the time of conception, you're not going to be satisfied with any of these laws. You're always going to want to get closer to that full ban on abortion. And maybe you want some exceptions. So it's just a matter of basically making the perfect the enemy of the good. Right. Because that is a small slice of the electorate, right? Polls generally show that most Americans, and I guess I include myself in this contingent who think it should be acceptable in some circumstances, not acceptable in others, and like, where do you draw the line? And I've always said, well, I was okay with Roe v. Wade being undone because I think there's enough difference of opinion on this issue that at least I think the state's deciding is probably the best case scenario. So I'm glad to see it actually be able to be on the ballot. I did not agree with the DeSantis people's decision to try to contest this and say the people in the state shouldn't be able to vote on what the abortion ban would be. No, I think direct democracy, like leaving it to the people, is the best. Is it ideal? I don't know. It's the best possible policy I can come up with, letting people decide. And if a state wants to go with like, but a 15-week ban versus a six-band is I think a big difference, especially in terms of the polling. I mean, even the 15-week ban, I saw the most recent polling. I think it's lost some support, but it is still about 50% of the country. The latest poll I saw, I think it was like 48%. But then the, I don't know, was a significant portion of the other 50%. So you could make a case for that. Six weeks is, I think, I mean, it's way, way stricter than I'm comfortable with. And I think a lot of people as well. Yeah, I think a 15 or 16 week usually gets the plurality of voters, but not the majority. But it's one of the more popular pro-life initiatives. And my sort of posture on this has always been that if you're able to sort of create a ratchet effect, I mean, the left does this on policies all the time, right? It's why we invoke slippery slope fallacy a lot for things that they do in terms of government regulation. I think if you actually started with a 15 or 16 week or something of that nature, that culturally the country would become more pro-life and generally more averse to the idea of having abortion available whenever for whatever reason. And maybe over time, you could get to something like a six week ban across the nation and get people more comfortable with that idea. But right now that's not where we are. And obviously with the way that our government system works, the way that the voting system works, you have to be realistic about what policy goals you can actually achieve. And that's always been a difficult thing for the pro-life movement. That's kind of what Nikki Haley said when she was running, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, she said that she is not even going to really talk about a national ban because that's not where the country is and she would never be able to get both the House and the Senate to agree on something like that. And people did push back on her saying, well, if it came to your desk, though, if it did happen, what would you do? And she would just say, well, it's never going to happen. So I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals. We can't get the House and the Senate to agree on anything, except maybe funding foreign wars. That's right. Yeah, well now, I mean, speaking of, we want to get into it. Speaker Johnson is now apparently trying to come up with more creative ways to fund Ukraine, including giving them a loan, which I'm not reflexively as opposed to as just giving them more money. But realistically, is Ukraine going to pay back the loan? No. It's just funny because it's one of the only policies where there's something approaching unanimity among actual Republican voters, not the people in the representatives, but conservatives and, frankly, many independents and moderates and many people on the left, like, are very skeptical of funding this specific thing and, in general, of sending our tax dollars overseas. And it's like it just never registers for our leadership that that's why their own voters get so mad at them, because they rebel against the idea that they're tax dollars. Like, we are in debt. We have problems. People are taxed obscenely. And why is this a higher priority than addressing any of those problems? Right. And especially with taxes being so high, when do you ever see actually a return on your tax investment? I mean, now they're talking about raising the retirement age on Social Security, which is really challenging for a lot of working class Americans. But let's go back to the abortion issue for a second, because I know I brought up Ukraine. That's my fault. But let's talk about the IVF issue, because this is now sort of on the ballot as well. Democrats have been bringing up IVF. And the abortion pill, which is, was just argued in front of the Supreme Court. Can't pronounce it, but I know they discussed it. Mithapristone. Mithapristone, yeah. Yeah, so that case is fundamentally about the FDA basically changing regulations unilaterally on whether the abortion pill should be able to be prescribed without an in-person doctor visit and then mailed to you. You pick it up from your mailbox. You take it in your home. You have your abortion, whatever. And then. I have no problem with that. Should be able to have access to whatever. Why should some government bureaucrat get in the way of you purchasing a medical product and using it? I think birth control should be available over the counter. It's insane that you have to jump through eight or nine hoops to get it when you don't have to. Why? This all presupposes that both of those medications are safe without doctor intervention, and they're not. So the FDA, in its own data, in regards to the abortion pill, literally on the packaging for a Mipha pre-stone, says that one in 25 women will end up in the emergency room after taking it. And there's also a bunch of other issues with not having a doctor screen you in your pregnancy before you take it. First of all, you could have an ectopic pregnancy. And if you have an ectopic pregnancy, that's when the embryo implants in your fallopian tube as opposed to in your uterus. When you take an abortion pill, you have very similar symptoms to symptoms that you would have when you have an ectopic pregnancy. So it's very possible that women might delay getting care for their ectopic pregnancy, which requires surgical removal, which could result in their fallopian tube bursting, and then dying. And then the other case is if you're too far along in your pregnancy past the point of when it's safe to take an abortion pill, you greatly increase complications like hemorrhaging or some of the other severe side effects that have been observed under the abortion pill. So I think absolutely you should, at the very least, have to see a doctor in person, confirm how far along you are, have an ultrasound to make sure their pregnancy is not ectopic, and you should probably take it under their supervision because there is quite a, I would say, a high percentage of women who do suffer either severe bleeding, hemorrhaging, require surgical intervention, or other medical procedures after taking an abortion pill. I guess if in a minority of circumstances, this results, and it's clearly advertised and people are warned by it on the literal packaging, in the vast majority of cases, that does not result. So why should the government prevent you who exist in those vast majority of cases from using this product that you wanna use under these circumstances? Like, isn't that ultimately, shouldn't that be your choice to decide what level of care and support and medical professionals you need to rely on? Well, I would push back against the idea that killing your baby is medical care or healthcare. Well, that's, that goes down to an abortion disagreement. I, like many Americans, don't think a fetus is a living, breathing human being. It might, maybe we can have an argument at what point this procedure should be cut off, and obviously many Americans feel one way about it, and I think it's a genuinely difficult issue that I struggle with. So putting aside the disagreement on the premise of the framing of the issue, if you have an ectopic pregnancy, you don't know that. You can't figure that out on your own. You have to get an ultrasound. So I think that issue alone should be enough to require that women go see a doctor before they're prescribed this medication. And then birth control, my issue with over-the-counter birth control is that all different birth control pills, like different brands and different dosages, have different side effects and aren't right for all women. And so it makes sense that you should see a doctor to determine what your symptoms are, what your potential side effects could be. There was a woman recently who became very prominent on the reality show on Netflix, Love Is Blind, who said that she was not interested in taking birth control. She sort of argued with her potential husband about it because she has a blood issue, a blood disorder. And basically, if she were to take birth control, it could potentially increase the severity of her symptoms and have some of their nasty side effects that would make her quite unwell. And so I absolutely think a woman should go to a doctor, get screened, make sure they're getting put on the right dosage, make sure they're aware of the side effects, which frankly right now in society, birth control is just treated as totally safe and normal. When it increases the risk of depression, suicide, anxiety, weight gain, and a whole host of other side effects that women now are finally discovering after 30 years of being on birth control, are actually quite serious. I think if they wanna consult doctors about that, that's great. But going to the doctor is a difficult process for a lot of people. They don't have time. It's hard to find a good doctor. It's hard to get in, cost a lot of money. It's confusing with the insurance situation right now. I don't even like having to go to the doctor sometime to get routine antibiotics or something like that. I would go toward offering, and we just disagree, I would go toward in the direction of offering way more things just over the counter to decrease the number of interactions people have to have with another third party. I mean in the age of telemedicine, of looking up reputable sources for information on medical topics to have like more requirements that you have to go in person, sometimes exposing yourself, I mean frankly like in the age of COVID to catching diseases in waiting rooms. I wanna decrease, I wanna make life easier for everybody and decrease the number of times they are legally mandated to do X, Y, or Z things including in the medical category. I just don't buy the argument that because going to the doctor is kind of hard that we should just throw pharmaceuticals at people with no screening. We're not forcing them on anyone. It's just your choice. That's what it comes down to. Okay. Difference of opinion on that subject. We will continue debating this right here. Stay with us.