Once again, CNN’s Chris Cuomo has no idea what he is talking about.
Give the man points for consistency.
The idiot little brother of New York’s governor alleged this week pro-life laws are designed specifically to pander to “the far-Right, white-fright vote,” which makes no sense considering abortion rates in minority communities, particularly the black community, are far greater than anything seen in the white community.
If being pro-life were all about suppressing minorities, wouldn’t the movement support a practice that disproportionately affects minority communities?
The CNN host, whose family boasts of its Roman Catholic faith whenever it’s politically convenient, also alleged pro-lifers simply want to “get up in their religion and their righteousness over any sense of what science suggests.”
Cuomo’s comments came this week as he attempted to explain the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to consider the constitutionality of Mississippi’s law banning most abortions after 15 weeks.
“The first major test of a woman’s right, her liberty,” said the host, “controlling what happens to her body, since [former President Donald Trump] got his third and final justice on the Supreme Court, has been set.”
Cuomo added, “Justice Amy Coney Barrett, her place on the bench as an outspoken advocate against reproductive rights. The next battle in the evolution of Roe v. Wade is upon us.”
Unsurprisingly, everything that follows is a hot mess of political scaremongering, wild non-sequiturs, and abject ignorance. Just the way Cuomo likes it.
“We’re about to see if [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s] Supreme Court mission pays off. It’s now a 6-3 decidedly conservative court,” Cuomo said.
Saying it’s a 6-3 “decidedly conservative” court is a stretch. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Barrett are staunch conservatives, while Justices Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh fall more into the “moderate” category. Chief Justice John Roberts is definitely not “decidedly conservative.”
As for the remaining three justices on the court, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer can be characterized accurately as liberals.
Insofar as ideological supremacy on the court is concerned, it’s worth noting the conservative justices more often than not join with the liberals, while the liberals rarely, if ever, join with the conservatives. In fact, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fans sum up her entire career with just two words: “I dissent.”
“Legally, the issue is fetal viability,” Cuomo said, “when does what is inside a woman become a person with rights under the law? You would think we would’ve empaneled experts on a special commission by now to see what the science says. Right? But we don’t seem to have the intellectual curiosity about this issue.”
Whose “we”?
It takes a special kind of arrogance to complain “we” don’t have the “intellectual curiosity” to talk about the science of when an unborn person is a person. Pro-lifers have been investigating and arguing this exact point for decades.
In fact, the 37th annual March for Life ran on a specifically pro-science theme. Its organizers promoted two papers as part of the 2019 march’s broader message. The first paper, titled “A Scientific View of When Life Begins,” comes from the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The second, titled “When Human Life Begins,” comes from the American College of Pediatricians.
The first paper affirms a “neutral examination of the evidence merely establishes the onset of a new human life at a scientifically well-defined “moment of conception,” a conclusion that “unequivocally indicates human embryos from the one-cell stage forward are indeed living individuals of the human species; i.e., human beings.”
The second paper affirms “from the time of cell fusion, the embryo consists of elements (from both maternal and paternal origin) which function interdependently in a coordinated manner to carry on the function of the development of the human organism. From this definition, the single-celled embryo is not just a cell, but an organism, a living being, a human being.”
The pro-life movement is very much invested in answering the question Cuomo obviously has spent no time investigating. Just because he is lazy doesn’t mean “we” are lazy.
Further, does the CNN host really believe pro-abortion groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League or Planned Parenthood would support a commission to determine when an unborn child has rights? Good luck with that.
Cuomo continued, asserting pro-lifers care about abortion only because of its supposed political advantages.
“It’s not really about science,” the host alleged. “It has become a culture war. It’s a political lever to use as a distraction from policy and solving problems. To allow people to get up in their religion and their righteousness over any sense of what science suggests.”
“Most Americans want the court to uphold Roe v. Wade,” the CNN host added. “But again, it’s not about science or consensus. It’s about dividing lines, legislating to the far-right, white-fright vote.”
Speaking of racism and abortion, Cuomo’s producers would do him a service by letting him know Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortions, is distancing itself from its founder, Margaret Sanger, over the uncomfortable fact she was a hard-line eugenicist and an unabashed racist. Her newsletter for a time even bore the banner, “Birth control: to create a race of thoroughbreds.”
The CNN host then dived headfirst into a lazy, absurd tangent, comparing pro-life laws to voting rights laws.“
It’s just like voting rights in one way. You see? It seems like the far Right only cares about protecting humans before they are born,” he said. “But the legal issues are much closer than the politics on this. … And now, we have a much more conservative group of judges. One of whom, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is an outspoken opponent of any reproductive right in this regard. And if anyone is going to say, ‘No, she’s never said anything that bad,’ she belongs to a group that’s all about it.”
“So, we’re about to see the fruits of McConnell connivance,” Cuomo concluded.
It’s not clear what, exactly, the host is on about, but it’s basically: Pro-lifers don’t care about science, no one cares about science, pro-life legislators are pandering to racist, “white-fright” fears, Barrett is anti-“reproductive rights” as evidenced by her religious affiliations, McConnell has rigged the court, and something about Trump.
If you programmed a robot to produce randomized “resistance” talking points, the final product would be indistinguishable from Cuomo’s monologue this week.
