Hillary Clinton and Kelly Clarkson joined in denouncing the Arizona Supreme Court’s recent abortion ruling when Clinton appeared on Monday’s edition of The Kelly Clarkson Show.
The court ruled last week that Arizona could enforce a law from 1864 — before Arizona was a state or women had the right to vote — that bans abortion except in cases where the pregnant person’s life is threatened.
“Did you ever think in your lifetime that we would see that happen?” Clarkson asked Clinton. “It’s just insane to me, the thinking that went on in 1864 … it’s a very different world, we know a lot more now, that we’re going backwards.”
“It is horrifying in every way,” Clinton said. “I feared it would happen, but I hoped it wouldn’t happen, and now here we are in the middle of this very difficult period for women in about half the states in our country who cannot get the care that they need, and the old law in Arizona is without exceptions, and the danger to women’s lives as well as our right to make our own decisions about our bodies and ourselves is so profound.”
Hillary Clinton & Kelly Clarkson React To Arizona Supreme Court Abortion Rulingwww.youtube.com
“And there’s another element to it which I find so troubling,” the former presidential candidate continued. “There is a kind of cruelty to it. No exceptions for rape, incest — I mean, really?”
“And you don’t realize how hard it is,” Clarkson said. “The fact that you would take that away from someone [in a situation] that can literally kill them? The fact that they’re raped … by their family member? It’s just like insane to me.”
The two then discussed voter apathy, agreeing that it led to this outcome — Donald Trump won the presidency over Clinton in 2016, then appointed three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices, resulting in the overturning of Roe v. Wade and allowing states to impose and enforce such draconian laws as Arizona’s.
“What I’m hearing from everyone,” Clarkson said, “is that they’re just exhausted and they feel so powerless, and even if I do vote, what does it matter?”
Clinton recommended that people “vote in whatever way is going to make life better for the maximum number of people. … Whatever you care about, voting is your superpower, and it may not seem like it, but it really is. And that’s what we’re trying to say in this musical that I’m helping to produce, called Suffs, about how women got the right to vote.”
Suffs is on Broadway now.