MSNBC guest says Justice Alito would like 'to sell babies' if he could
Author Anthea Butler joked that Justice Alito wishes he could sell babies in light of his draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade
A guest on MSNBC’s "The ReidOut" joked that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wishes he would be able to sell babies following the leak of his Supreme Court draft opinion.
MSNBC host Joy Reid opened her show on Monday denouncing Alito’s draft opinion which outlined a majority opinion that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion case. In regards to his reasoning, Reid accused Alito of having a fixation on slavery-era laws.
In this March 7, 2019, file photo, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito testifies before House Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.With one sentence on June 20, 2019, Alito signaled his willingness to throw out the Supreme Court's 84-year-old record of support for the broad powers of federal agencies that reaches back to the New Deal. (AP)
"I know that the anti-education Republicans would like to portray slavery as this benign institution that wasn’t so bad, but people would rather die, would rather have their children die, and would abort on their own to stop creating more product, more available domestic supply of children. What do you make of this fixation, Samuel Alito has with that era, but in his mind, that 19th century area was the good old days?" Reid asked.
"For Samuel Alito, I am pretty sure that he would like to be able to sell babies again, if he possibly could," author Anthea Butler joked on the panel.
Butler later outlined the history of abortion in slavery as enslaved Black women would kill their own children rather than have them sold. She implied that eliminating abortion from Alito’s perspective is about "preserving White personhood."
Pro-abortion demonstrators rally for abortion rights in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on May 7, 2022. (Photo by JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP /AFP via Getty Images)
"[B]lack women were never afforded these kinds of protections because they were always in peril and their children were always in peril. Their children could be sold from them at any particular time. It’s no surprise they would want to have their children not grow up in slavery, and take their own lives instead of letting their children be sold by a slave master," Butler explained.
She added "I think this whole thing that Alito is alluding to in this document is about two things. Number one, wanting to make sure that the White personhood of babies is preserved. That is number one. That they will be protected. Number two, that there will be enough children so that if you want to cross racially adopt, you can adopt. That doesn’t matter if somebody has a baby and you are not able to get an abortion."
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Reid also mocked concerns over protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes.
"I suppose if the justices don’t like the First Amendment, they could just drive to another state where the legislature has determined where the constitutional right to privacy applies. I mean, that’s what they’re telling women to if they want to control their own bodies, right? But I digress," Reid said.
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