Roe v. Wade news

“Full House” actress Jodie Sweetin was pushed to the ground on Saturday by police trying to stop abortion rights protesters from marching on the US-101 freeway in Los Angeles, her publicist Jessica Cohen told CNN.

The protesters had tried to march up the Broadway Avenue off-ramp onto the freeway, according to a tweet from the Los Angeles Police Department.

LAPD officers had blocked the off-ramp and video of the incident shows police pushing protesters trying to march past them and striking at least one person with their batons.

Photojournalist Michael Ade told CNN he saw Sweetin talking to police and trying to steer the protesters away from the off-ramp.

She was wearing a black shirt with the words “stay outraged” on the front, her publicist said. She also had a megaphone.

Ade said he stopped shooting video to take a few photographs and started recording again just as she was pushed from behind and fell to the ground.

Sweetin got back up and continued protesting -- leading a chant of “no justice, no peace.”

“She shook off the shove as if it didn’t happen and got back to demonstrating,” Ade said.

Ade said the protesters started to march off of the off-ramp at that point.

The LAPD said in a statement that it was reviewing the incident. 

Sweetin praised the protesters in a statement released by her publicist.

Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio spoke with CNN's Pamela Brown Sunday to discuss the Supreme Court ruling that limits abortion access as well as Ohio's heartbeat bill, which survived an injunction Friday. The bill bans abortions after six weeks and has no exceptions for rape or incest.

Brown asked Davidson the same question twice: Whether he'd be comfortable with a 12-year-old girl carrying out a pregnancy to term if she was raped?

The first time, Davidson said: "So let’s say someone who was raped, you don’t know you were raped for two months? I think it’s incorporated in to deal with that, now that is a compromise. People believe that life begins at conception, that's what the science says."

Brown noted that the science is not conclusive on that aspect, and there is no consensus that life begins at conception.

The second time, Davidson said: “I fully support Ohio’s law and I commend, frankly, our governor and our legislature for passing it where previous administrations had failed ... I think it’s a great law and it is a compromise. And like, I say, rape is raised as an objection but the heartbeat bill already deals with that ... It’s hard to conceive of somebody who doesn’t know they were raped for two months."

Kanika Harris, maternal and child health director of the nonprofit Black Women’s Health Imperative, spoke with CNN's Pamela Brown Sunday about her personal story with abortion and the trauma she experienced dealing with racism in medicine.

“I never thought in my 40s that’d I would be in a situation where I would have to contemplate an abortion,” she said, adding that she was married, had children and financially supported her family.

But despite her and her husband's best efforts, she got pregnant again.

“We had to make the very difficult decision to pursue that pregnancy or terminate that pregnancy,” she said.

The Supreme Court's ruling this week limiting access to abortions could increase Black maternal deaths by 33%, according to a study from Duke University. Harris also said Black women make up 90% of the maternal deaths in Washington, DC.

One reason contributing to these factors? Racism, Harris said. She told CNN she's gone to two different hospitals in DC where she received disrespectful care -- for example, staff would not listen to her complaints, she said.

Asked about Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson's earlier comments saying he's comfortable with the government forcing a woman to carry out a pregnancy, Harris said it angered her.

Read more about how lack of abortion access affects women of color here.

A pregnancy center in Lynchburg, Virginia, was vandalized this weekend, police said.

Lynchburg police responded to a property damage call at the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center on Saturday morning, where officers found graffiti spray painted on the building and multiple broken windows, the department said in a news release.

The words, "If abortion ain't safe you ain't safe," were found spray painted in red near the entrance of the center, photos from the police department show.

The acts were discovered a day after the Supreme Court's decision eliminated the federal constitutional right to an abortion.

On Friday, the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center shared support for the Supreme Court decision on Facebook, writing: "Rejoicing with an overwhelmed heart of gratitude for the life affirming decisions that were made today."

Opened in 1999, the center is "dedicated to helping men and women faced with an unplanned pregnancy," according to their website, and does not provide abortions or refer for abortions.

Read more about this incident here.

President Joe Biden told reporters Sunday that the group of leaders assembled in Germany for this week’s G7 summit has not discussed the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

Pressed by one reporter if the decision had come up in conversation, Biden deadpanned, “With regards to Ukraine?”

The topic, Biden told another reporter, was “not related to Ukraine or any of the issues we discussed.”

In a follow-up question, Biden told another reporter, “No,” his counterparts had not raised the subject during Sunday’s meetings.

The Supreme Court's decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade has raised fears that it could have "far-reaching ramifications" on people looking to get pregnant and the clinics providing services to help them.

Experts have previously told CNN that a high court ruling could open up the legal terrain for states to interfere with the fertility process known as in vitro fertilization, in which a sperm fertilizes an egg outside the body.

Fertility doctors and academics who study the legal landscape around fertility told CNN there is grave uncertainty -- both about how abortion laws already on the books will be interpreted and about how lawmakers and local prosecutors may seek to push the envelope, freed from the precedents that have effectively shielded the fertility process from government meddling.

That lack of clarity, it is feared, will affect the treatments doctors are willing to offer IVF patients and the decisions people will have to make about how to pursue growing their families.

"Fertility clinics will face a flood of wrongful-death claims when the clinics discard embryos without authorization," Wolf added.

Read more here.

This week, the US Supreme Court delivered its most controversial decision in at least a decade. The ruling to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion may have major electoral consequences in this year's midterm elections. 

I covered the political impact in part in a prior column. But the court's actions in this case may do something more than just affect the elections this year. 

The Supreme Court's own reputation is at stake, and the decision to get rid of Roe v. Wade and to upset the status quo comes at a very sensitive time for the justices in a different court: the one of public opinion. 

And that's where we'll start our look at the news of the week through numbers. 

The Supreme Court is historically unpopular

The Supreme Court is not elected by the voters. A lot of people agree, though, that it's important that the court maintains its legitimacy in the eyes of the public. After all, the court relies on others to enforce its own rulings. 

The high court's legitimacy in the public's mind was already at very low levels, and that was before the overturning of Roe — something most Americans didn't want. 

Forty-one percent of voters approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing, according to a May Quinnipiac University poll. The majority (52%) disapproved. That was the highest disapproval rating recorded by Quinnipiac since it started asking about the court's approval back in 2004. 

The court's standing is a reversal from where things were two years ago when 52% of voters approved and 37% disapproved in Quinnipiac polling. 

Quinnipiac isn't the only pollster to show a major degradation in the court's standing. The percentage of Americans (25%) who have great or quite a lot of confidence in the court is at the lowest level ever recorded by Gallup since 1973. 

The slide can primarily be attributed to Democrats. Today, 78% of Democrats disapprove of the job the court is doing, according to Quinnipiac. In 2020, just 43% did. Republican disapproval of the court has declined from 38% two years ago to 28% now. 

The reason the public and Democrats have turned against the Supreme Court is pretty clear: It's been seen as increasingly political and issuing decisions that aren't popular. 

The aforementioned Quinnipiac poll showed that a mere 34% of voters believed the court is mainly motivated by the law. Most (62%) felt that the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by politics. Four years ago, the split was far more even, with 50% believing the court was mainly motivated by politics and 42% saying it was mainly motivated by the law. 

Again, this trend is driven by Democrats. Eighty-six percent of them told Quinnipiac the court is mainly motivated by politics. That's up from 60% in 2018. Republicans who said the same had barely changed, from 46% in 2018 to 42% now. 

It would be one thing if the court was seen as activist and making popular rulings. It's not. Both the Gallup and Quinnipiac polls were taken after word leaked in May that the court was on the precipice of overturning Roe. 

Americans agreed with the 1973 Roe ruling. A May NBC News poll found that 63% of them didn't want Roe overturned. Indeed, every poll I know of has shown a clear majority of Americans in favor of Roe. 

Read more.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, dodged specific questions about the future of her state’s newly enacted “trigger law” in two Sunday network interviews, deflecting a lack of detailed plans by reiterating how the US Supreme Court’s overhaul of Roe v. Wade places the onus of drafting and enforcing abortion laws on each state. 

South Dakota’s “trigger law” only permits abortion when needed to protect the life of the mother, according to Noem. 

On CBS’ Face The Nation, Margaret Brennan continuously pressed Noem for details about how South Dakota will support pregnant women if abortion is no longer available in the state. Brennan also questioned Noem about filing lawsuits against companies housed in South Dakota that have pledged financial resources to employees seeking abortions from providers out-of-state. 

Noem repeatedly said her administration is still figuring out the specifics but said she does not plan to file suits against companies like Walmart and Amazon which have publicly supported abortion access. 

However, Noem would not directly answer whether her administration is prepared to take on the US Justice Department over federally-approved “abortion pills” that healthcare providers can prescribe via telemedicine. 

Noem told Brennan South Dakota will provide resources to mothers, especially those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. 

Noem did not provide specific resources, however, or an explanation of how the state will fund said resources. 

Noem also doubled down on false claims about the FDA-approved abortion medication, as well as doubling down on her belief that being a victim of rape or incest does not justify an abortion. 

“I never believed that having a tragedy is a reason to have another tragedy occur,” Noem told Brennan. 

On ABC’s This Week, Martha Raddatz asked Noem what will happen to South Dakota women who travel out of state to receive an abortion. 

Noem said there will be an on-going debate about this in the state legislature. 

Noem also said women experiencing a crisis situation should not be punished.

Noem attempted transitioning into talking about the energy crisis when Raddatz pressed her on the available support for expecting mothers in her state.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez decried a “crisis of legitimacy” on the Supreme Court, saying there should be “consequences” for nominees found to have lied under oath and that it is an impeachable offense.

“What I believe that the President and the Democratic party needs to come to terms with its that this is not just a crisis of Roe, this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding that Sens. Joe Manchin and Susan Collins have “come out with a very explosive allegation that these, several Supreme Court Justices misled them during their confirmation hearings and in the lead-up to the confirmation.”

Her remarks come after the two senators suggested in the wake of the Supreme Court’s move to strike down Roe v. Wade that recently appointed conservative Justices misled them on their abortion stance in testimony and in private meetings.

“There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and hostile takeover of our Democratic institutions,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding, “to allow that to stand is to allow that to happen, and what makes it particularly dangerous is that is sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court.”

Asked if she believed it was impeachable, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense.” She added that she also believed not recusing oneself from a case in which “family members involved with conflicts of interest,” is impeachable, referring to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife’s conservative activism.

Ocasio-Cortez added that such violations “should be seriously considered, including by senators like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins.

Asked about the reactionary stance of the Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez pointed to a “generational change” within the party and that “there has been a weak Democratic strategy in the past and we cannot continue to use the same play books.” 

“There is an establishment within the Democratic party that has a nostalgia for a better time of politics from decades ago,” she said, adding, “but the fact of the matter is that we have a new and very different Republican party that more people are recognizing.”