Hillary Clinton on abortion ruling: ‘Women will die’

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she wasn’t surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, saying “women will die” as a result of the decision and warning that the court’s conservative majority will continue to try to “turn back the clock” on other constitutional rights.

“There are so many things about it that are deeply distressing, but women are going to die, Gayle,” Clinton told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King. “Women will die.”

The former presidential candidate called Friday’s decision the culmination of a 50-year campaign to pack the court with justices who would overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

When asked about recent comments from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who said Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh misled them on their positions on Roe during their confirmation hearings, Clinton pinned some of the blame on the two moderate senators.

“I think they were misled in part because they wanted to be misled,” Clinton said. “They either knew, or they were blind to what the history of the people before them. Anyone who is surprised by this is not paying attention. So, these people were selected for this purpose.”

Clinton also voiced support for eliminating the filibuster but argued that if lawmakers didn’t have the political support to lift it completely, they should do so for abortion legislation and other constitutional questions, like voting rights.

The former first lady also raised concerns about Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, which stated the court should reconsider some of its other precedents based on the same substantive due process argument at the heart of Friday’s decision, like those protecting contraception access and same-sex marriage. 

No other justice joined the concurring opinion, and Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority that Friday’s decision shouldn’t be taken to reflect doubt on those other precedents. But many Democrats, including Clinton, have cast doubts.

“Everybody understands that this is not necessarily the only effort that we’re going to see this court undertake to turn back the clock on civil rights and gay rights and women’s rights beyond abortion,” Clinton said on Tuesday. “This is going to, I hope, wake up a lot of Americans.”