On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” California Lt. Gov. (D) Eleni Kounalakis (D) said that people should “be prepared to live in defiance of these six people who think that they have the right to tell you what you can do with their body.” And the court is “undermining their legitimacy.” Because it isn’t “legitimate for them to take that right away from us. They cannot tell millions of American women what to do with their bodies.”
Kounalakis stated, “[M]y message to the women and to anyone seeking their reproductive freedom across this country is come to California, you will have that freedom here. But, secondly, be prepared to live in defiance of these six people who think that they have the right to tell you what you can do with their body.”
Host Katy Tur then cut in to ask, “Are you telling people to break the law?”
Kounalakis responded, “No. I am telling people that they can access, under California law, their rights that were protected by the Constitution. That is going to be held in defiance in some states. And I would say, yes, prepare to defy.”
Later, Tur asked, “I understand where you’re coming from, where you believe you’re coming from. But in telling people to defy the Supreme Court, are you not worried about what message that sends for anything else the Supreme Court might rule on that you might agree with and others might not agree with?”
Kounalakis answered, “Katy, it’s not my words. Their own actions are undermining their legitimacy. This is a constitutional right that women have exercised for 50 years. I don’t believe that it is legitimate for them to take that right away from us. They cannot tell millions of American women what to do with their bodies. This is not going to stop abortion, it is only going to make it more dangerous and harder to access. But women know, they know they have a God-given right to autonomy over their body and they’re going to seek it out and Clarence Thomas is not going to tell them that they can’t.”
Tur then cut in to push back, “I just see that argument being used in a different way and in a way that you might not agree with at all.”
Kounalakis countered, “Katy, let me just say, independent institutions of American democracy are critically important, but it is not my words that [weaken] their authority, it is their action by doing this that is weakening the authority at the Supreme Court.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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