>> This right that I think many women, many people have depended on for my whole life is now not enshrined in the Constitution anymore.

It is really up for grabs.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we're examining the impact of the seismic Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe versus Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after nearly 50 years.

Here's a key line in the June 24th ruling on Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization... How will this decision reshape American life, not just for abortion, but also the right to contraception and same-sex marriage, not to mention the wedge driven into an already deeply divided nation?

I'm joined by Yale Law School legal expert and New York Times Magazine columnist and cohost of the "Slate Political Gabfest," Emily Bazelon.

Then a look at what the ruling means for people in states that will severely restrict or ban abortion now that Roe is no longer the law of the land.

Don't worry, I've also got Your "Puppet Regime."

>> ♪ It's a great time to be bad people ♪ ♪ It's a great time to act insane ♪ ♪ Cuckoo ♪ >> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> In 1975, First Lady Betty Ford sat down for an interview at the White House with CBS's "60 Minutes."

>> I feel very strongly that it was the best thing in the world when the Supreme Court voted to legalize abortion and in my words, bring it out of the backwoods and put it in the hospitals where it belonged.

I thought it was a great, great decision.

>> To say that the First Lady had gone off script would be an understatement.

President Gerald Ford, her husband, opposed abortion and had stated on various occasions that he thought the 1973 Roe versus Wade ruling had actually gone too far.

And in the days following the interview, the White House was flooded with tens of thousands of angry letters.

The president reportedly joked to his wife, that her comments had cost him, and I quote "10, no, 20 million votes."

And yet when public polling started to come back, White House staffers were shocked to see that about 70% of those surveyed actually sympathized with the First Lady's candor, even if not necessarily her views.

What a difference half a century makes.

You can't imagine the wife of a Republican president today expressing full-throated support for abortion rights and it's harder still to imagine the outraged response stopping at only some strongly worded letters to the White House.

We live in a very different and far more divided country than Betty Ford's America.

>> Legal abortion on demand!

[ Crowd chanting ] >> And that sad truth has been on full display for the past week following the Supreme Court's seismic ruling in Dobbs versus Jackson, overturning Roe versus Wade and removing the constitutional right to an abortion.

But while the United States is turning back the clock on abortion rights, much of the rest of the world has been heading in the opposite direction.

Since the year 2000, 37 countries have expanded abortion rights and access.

In the largely Catholic Latin America, a wave of reproductive rights has been spreading in recent years with Uruguay, Argentina and Colombia legalizing many abortion procedures and Mexico moving towards decriminalization.

Brazil is the main exception.

In Europe, a very Catholic Poland has banned abortion in nearly all cases, but across the rest of the European continent, abortion remains legal and accessible.

The most striking has been Ireland, which previously had some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe.

2018, Ireland's parliament legalized the termination of pregnancy before 12 weeks as well as in cases where women's health is at risk.

Many post-colonial African nations like Kenya, Chad, Mali, and Niger have begun to reassess or roll back long-standing abortion bans that were established long ago by European colonizers.

Kenya, for example, adopted a new constitution back in 2010 that allowed for abortion in emergency health cases, then later extended the exceptions to include cases of rape.

China's history with abortion rights has been fraught to put it mildly.

Its government first liberalized abortion access back in the 1950s.

But with the 1979 implementation of the one-child policy, which was meant to curb population growth, something they're not worried about right now, abortion along with sterilization became compulsory for millions of Chinese.

It wasn't until 2016 that Beijing eased the policy to allow for two-child families to counter a rapidly aging population, later increasing the limit to three children in 2021.

But back to the United States, the Supreme Court's recent ruling will have reverberations around the world.

While in the 1970s, America paved the way for progressive abortion rights globally, we've yet to see how this recent rollback will play out in other nations.

The impact of this ruling is just one of many things I'm talking about with today's guest, Yale Law School's Emily Bazelon.

Emily Bazelon, thanks for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Thanks so much for having me.

>> So start big picture.

What would you say this ruling means for you and means for the country?

>> What it means for the country is much restricted access to abortion, probably in many states, maybe something like half the states.

What it means for me personally is that this right that I think many women, many people have depended on for my whole life is now not enshrined in the Constitution anymore.

It is really up for grabs and there are going to be all kinds of repercussions from that and we really are kind of sailing into uncharted water.

>> Why do you think that happened?

I mean, we're talking about 50 years of "settled law" and indeed some of the conservative members of the court that decided to vote to overturn have said before in public and private testimony that they considered Roe versus Wade to be settled law.

>> Well, they said it was settled law at the time they were speaking.

That was a factual statement.

They didn't say or promise that they intended to keep it as settled law.

And the person they were really talking to at the time was Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who was a swing vote.

She found those statements reassuring, but I think a lot of close observers at the time wondered what they really meant because they didn't make a promise into the future.

>> You say that as if you were one of those close observers, Emily.

>> Right.

Well, I just never understood why it was so reassuring for people in the present tense to say something obvious, which was that Roe versus Wade was the law of the land without saying that they intended to keep it that way.

And that was always missing from the statements that Justice Barrett and Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch made during their hearings.

>> Now, what were the early alarm bells for you that this was possible/likely coming down the pike?

>> The Federalist Society and other conservative organizations have been working for decades to overturn Roe, to enshrine conservative judges throughout the federal courts really to reshape American law, and they've been very successful.

And I think many people, including me, have watched for years as abortion, in particular, really moved conservative voters, got people to the polls, made elections seem simple, like a simple moral choice.

Whereas I think among liberals who support the right to abortion access, there was a sense that it was safe and some amount of complacency.

It really didn't drive voters to the same degree.

And so when you see that uneven kind of political ramification, you wonder even though the polls show that most Americans supported Roe, support a right to abortion, you wonder whether that people who care the most are going to triumph in the end.

>> Yeah.

Well, I mean, there's a bit of that, right?

I mean, for me, this feels a little bit like on the left, issues like critical race theory, transgender rights, where the far left has hijacked the agenda for the average Democrat.

And I wonder if the Republicans are about to get themselves in the same trouble where an issue that really isn't popular among rank and file -- A large majority of Americans do not want Roe versus Wade overturned, but now Republicans are going to have to be pulled into positions that are going to be very challenging for them.

>> Yeah.

That's possible.

What we saw after Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion leaked a little while ago was a pretty smart play by major abortion opponents.

They were saying things like, "A 15-week ban?

Sure, we support that.

A 6-week ban, we'll support that too."

They were not insisting that every single state take a purity test and completely ban abortion.

And if you're thinking politically, I think for the right, that is a smart play right now that you would allow some states to have some access to abortion.

You're still going to really eliminate or change access for many, many women, but you're not necessarily going to be driven to such a political extreme that you alienate the swing voters in your own state.

>> Because the position that unites all of Americans -- and there aren't many -- is that abortions should be legal in some circumstances and illegal in others.

And it's really just about where you draw that line.

>> Yes, that's right.

Everything depends on where you draw the line.

The most important line just in terms of numbers of people terminating pregnancies is the end of the first trimester.

We have something like 90% of abortions occurring before 12 weeks.

>> Yep.

>> And so that is a really big deal.

It will be really different if we live in a country where half the states completely ban abortion than a country where most of those states allow first-trimester abortions, and then people have to travel out of state for second-trimester abortions.

>> Which of those outcomes is more likely?

I mean, if you were to put your crystal ball out there and say in 2024 election day America, is abortion banned in a large number of states or is it actually closer to the significant restrictions, but we're not looking at a ban?

>> I think abortion is banned in many states, but which states and where and how many matters a lot.

So for example, take the state of Florida.

If Florida allows first-trimester abortions, which seems possible, people who are pregnant in lots of the South will have a much easier time traveling to Florida than if Florida disappears from the map.

And then the other part of this that's very important is access to abortion pills through telemedicine.

Right now, there are 19 states, red states, that ban or severely restrict telemedicine access.

And there's going to be a big question about how to enforce those laws, how many abortion pills by mail they're really able to prevent and what happens in that whole area, which is going to turn into a big legal battle.

>> Now, I've seen a statement from Merrick Garland saying you actually cannot ban abortion pills because they are FDA-approved.

Is this something that is going to inevitably end up in the Supreme Court as well?

>> Yes.

And I think what Attorney General Garland is trying to say is that because the FDA regulates the pills, that pre-empts state law, and that's a pretty basic principle.

Federal regulation gets to trump essentially state regulation.

But yes, I think that question is going to wind up in front of the Supreme Court.

And even sometimes when rules seem like they generally apply, they can look different in the context of abortion, especially with this conservative court.

>> Now, the leaking of the initial Alito opinion, which was itself unprecedented and clearly led to a lot of political pressure, led to a fair amount of violence also against those that were providing pro-life counseling for those considering abortions, already 30 cases that we've seen across the nation.

For the actual opinion that was released, how different was it from the Alito release?

>> I didn't see that much difference.

I mean, I haven't gone and done a line-by-line comparison, but the passages I remembered are all there.

And that's pretty striking because that draft was from February.

And it seemed possible that whoever leaked it was trying to shake the majority in some way.

And so if that's the case and we really don't know, it was unsuccessful.

>> We saw in an opinion that was released alongside by Justice Thomas that he said that we should be reconsidering, the court should be reconsidering same-sex marriage, contraception.

How many cases do you think are suddenly going to be up for grabs as a consequence of this?

>> So, Alito's opinion says that at least for now that abortion is different than all these other precedents.

Justice Thomas, you're right, says no, no.

It's time to get rid of this conception of liberty, which has allowed for this expansion of constitutional rights, including contraception and same-sex marriage.

And so we just have to wait and see what happens next.

We don't know how many of the other justices would vote with Justice Thomas in such a future ruling because we haven't seen that case yet.

>> Now, we've also seen almost the same day, a release of a decision where actually states don't get to make decisions about concealed-carry gun laws.

And a lot of analysts are suggesting, well, this is inconsistent because in one it's about states' rights and the other, it's not.

Surely that's not the way the justices see it.

What's the argument here that leads to that ruling?

>> Right.

So there is this amazing crossing that is happening in American life where the individual right to bear arms now looms very large and has struck down some state gun-control laws and may very well strike down more.

And meanwhile, the right to access abortion, which was rooted in the 14th Amendment, is gone.

So there is no question that is a huge sea change.

The justices think that the Second Amendment text means that the right to bear arms is individual.

What they said in the case about New York's gun safety law is that unless a state regulation is firmly rooted in the nation's history and tradition, it's going to be struck down.

And then the justices in the abortion case said, well, abortion is not rooted in the nation's history and tradition.

And that's really the only question that matters here because it's not in the text of the Constitution.

So that's how the justices kind of square these two decisions.

>> Do you think these justices are being honest?

Are they actually being rooted in broader principles of jurisprudence or are they just playing politics?

>> Well, I mean, I think whether you think they are being consistent begins with whether you think the interpretation of the Second Amendment that they claim is rooted in the nation's history and tradition is actually correct.

So when the first big Second Amendment decision came down a decade ago, there was a big fight over the historical meaning of the Second Amendment and whether the individual right to bear arms really was there versus a militia-based right.

And a lot of constitutional historians think that the dissent by Justice Stevens had the better of that historical argument, but it was Justice Scalia who had five votes.

So I find that argument against the individual right to bear arms pretty persuasive and that means that, to me, this new decision about New York's law looks pretty shaky.

When you look at Roe and Casey, the abortion decisions that we're talking about today, it really depends on what you think of the idea that abortion is fundamental to women's liberty and equality.

And that is a question that has less to do, I think, with the actual text of the Constitution and more to do with how we interpret these kind of capacious phrases about equal protection and liberty and whether we think that their meanings evolve over time.

>> Now, of course, it's disturbing that views of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court are presently at historic lows, but you would expect that simply given how divided the country presently is politically and the parties.

Beyond that, do you see the Supreme Court today as more ideological?

Do you see it as less capable?

Do you see the people that populate it as less willing to actually do the legitimate business of the country's top judicial institution?

>> I think this conservative majority is pretty maximalist.

They have shown this with the New York gun case and the Mississippi abortion case by being willing to issue really sweeping rulings that change the lives of many Americans.

So then the question becomes is that conservative majority enough in tune with the American people that they can be said to in some way be carrying out the will of the people, as well as making rulings that are consistent with the Constitution.

Because in the end, even though the justices are not elected, they're not democratically accountable in the same way, they are still supposed to be in line with the country's values.

There's some notion, some connection there, otherwise they really risk de-legitimizing themselves and they risk the kinds of discussions we've been having about changing the whole shape of the court.

So that's what I'm looking at, this question of if the court lurches far from public opinion, what if anything reins it back in?

>> Now, outside of the court itself, we do have two other branches of government.

What do you think, if any, the reactions will be from the President in terms of executive orders, and here again, I'm talking about Roe versus Wade specifically and its overturning, and from Congress and the potential to enshrine some rights into law?

>> Well, I think when you start with the Biden administration, the fact that Attorney General Garland was talking about federal regulation of abortion pills, pre-empting state law, that is important.

There are more things the federal government could do to make it easier for abortion providers to provide those pills.

So I think people will be watching to see if there are further executive orders in that direction.

Congress, of course, could pass a national law providing for a right to abortion.

Congress could also ban abortion nationally.

At the moment, I think the Democrats are probably going to be paralyzed over the filibuster the way that they have been over other big ideas.

And then the issue will be what happens in the next Congress and the one after that and whether if Republicans gain control, we see an effort to nationally restrict or ban abortion, which would be a huge deal politically.

>> And you think that's plausible?

Again, you wouldn't expect that in a lot of states.

You talked about Florida and why going towards a ban would not make sense.

If I were reading you on that, I would be very skeptical that a Republican-majority House and Senate would move towards a nationwide ban.

>> I think you're right that the politics probably don't play out in favor of that outcome.

However, we see all kinds of outcomes in the American Congress that don't necessarily track the will of the majority, that don't necessarily track the polls.

It will depend how much hold Republicans have on Congress, whether they've really been able to enshrine a kind of Republican based minority rule in a way that makes them feel less at risk in elections.

>> Emily Bazelon, thanks so much for joining us today.

>> Thanks for having me.

♪♪ >> In wake of the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, 26 states now have laws that heavily restrict or ban abortion altogether.

That's according to the reproductive rights organization the Guttmacher Institute.

Some of these laws have been on the books for a while, but not enforced since Roe versus Wade was decided back in 1973.

In 13 of those states, there are newer so-called trigger laws, and those are laws that ban or severely limit access to abortion upon near immediate effect after Roe is struck down.

People in these states, including Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi will now need to travel across state lines for their nearest legal abortion and states like Missouri are even looking at ways to make the journey for an abortion harder.

Some lawmakers in the Show Me State want to allow private individuals the ability to sue anyone found helping a person traveling out of state for an abortion.

Add to that the potential for a long drive if you do cross the border.

According to the Myers Abortion Facility Database, the average American will now need to travel about 125 miles to get to their nearest abortion clinic.

Before Roe was overturned, that distance -- 25 miles.

Pro-choice health experts worry that banning or restricting abortion access will lead to higher maternal death rates in the United States, harmful long-term mental-health consequences and greater financial hardships for families.

♪♪ And now time for something a little different and I hope a little lighter.

I've got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Crown Prince Mohammed, how do you view the war in Ukraine?

>> Well, it's been pretty crazy.

But on the other hand, it's just a great time to be really bad people now.

Let me explain.

♪ Now that Russia's war is center stage ♪ ♪ No one really cares about the one I've waged ♪ ♪ Just think, since February 24th ♪ ♪ Who's heard much about Yemen anymore?

♪ ♪ It's the perfect foil ♪ ♪ Just as the world needs cheaper oil ♪ ♪ Not to be crude, but I'm in a good mood ♪ ♪ Look at prices for food ♪ ♪ Be nice to me or you're screwed ♪ ♪ It's a great time to be bad people ♪ ♪ It's a great time to act insane ♪ ♪ Cuckoo ♪ ♪ It's a great time to do some evil ♪ ♪ While everybody's focused on Ukraine ♪ >> ♪ When's the last time you heard news ♪ ♪ About what's happening in Xinjiang?

♪ >> ♪ Or about me plotting coups and lighting matches in the Amazon ♪ >> ♪ It's a great time to be bad people ♪ ♪ It's a great time to act insane ♪ ♪ Cuckoo ♪ ♪ It's a great time to do some evil ♪ ♪ While everybody's focused on Ukraine ♪ >> ♪ Now, while you're all looking at Kyiv ♪ ♪ I'm trying to get Muslims to leave ♪ >> ♪ As for me, it's sorta meta, but I'm happy I can get the chance to lay low for a while ♪ >> Ha.

Guys, you know I always loved your style.

>> ♪ Well, it's all thanks to you ♪ ♪ Vladimir Putin ♪ ♪ Please keep on doing just what you're doing ♪ ♪ Since you started your crazy war ♪ ♪ No one really calls us out anymore ♪ ♪ We appreciate the line you threw us, making it so easy for us all to keep on being awful murderers and sleazyyyyyy ♪ >> [ Speaks indistinctly ] >> ♪ It's a great time to be bad people ♪ ♪ It's a great time to act insane ♪ ♪ Cuckoo ♪ ♪ It's a great time to do some evil ♪ ♪ While everybody's focused on Ukraine ♪ >> "Puppet Regime!"

>> Wait.

What about me?

You forgot me.

I'm evil and now I'm so skinny and ripped.

No one ever pays attention to me!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see or you love the Supreme Court, you hate the Supreme Court, don't know what you think about the Supreme Court, we have a thing for you.

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...