Live reactions to Roe v. Wade ruling from KIRO Newsradio

With the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade ringing in the ears of the country Friday morning, KIRO Newsradio analyzes and contextualizes an outcome that will inevitably have cascading political and social ramifications for years to come.

Editor’s note: This article will be updated regularly.

Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion

Colleen O’Brien and Dave Ross, hosts of Seattle’s Morning News, moments after the decision was handed down, summarized the Supreme Court decision: Justice Samuel Alito, in offering the majority opinion, claims “the viability line makes no sense … [supporters of abortion do not] identify any point in a pregnancy at which the state is permitted to prohibit the destruction of a fetus.”

O’Brien is also a mother who has experienced complications with a pregnancy.

Because we cannot decide where life begins, women cannot choose to either get rid of that life or keep that life? O’Brien asked.

Have they asked women where life begins?

I’m not the type to tell people what to do with their lives and their bodies.

I’ll tell you this much. I had an eight-week embryo growing inside of one of my fallopian tubes, that had to be removed. First, we tried abortion services to remove it without taking my fallopian tube, and then surgery to remove that, and the embryo. That was life. For me. That was my child, eight weeks old. However, it never changed how I felt about allowing somebody else to make that decision for themselves, O’Brien continued. 

That now becomes a headline story, Ross replied.

Because every woman who has a problem like you had would have died, and it goes too far. That’s a headline now because that’s the direct result of what’s happened today in the Supreme Court. I started this by saying I had no skin in the game.

But as a husband, I’m enraged. Yeah. If the government was responsible for the loss of my wife … would [I] get mad at the government? You damn well better believe, Ross continued.

I remember writhing in pain in the hospital as the embryo was about to explode my fallopian tube, O’Brien said.

I had to call my insurance company and make sure that they would cover the medication that’s normally associated with abortion, to get rid of the fetal tissue in my fallopian tube, because I was afraid I’d be stuck with the bill, or that I would get in trouble for accessing abortion for my ectopic pregnancy

That’s what’s happening to women. It’s the gray area. It’s not, ‘I’m going to raise this life, or I’m going to, quote-unquote, kill this life,’ right? It’s not about murder. It’s not about killing. It’s about what can you do medically, to preserve the life of the mother, which we know exists, right? I think we can all agree that when a mother is living and breathing and conceiving, she’s alive. What we can’t decide on is the life of the embryo or the fetus or the baby. But women are going to lose no matter what, O’Brien concluded.

Today, living in another state, my ectopic pregnancy in 2017 would have killed me.
Don’t believe me? This JUST happened this week https://t.co/nf0ZF8nMlt https://t.co/9gIuyhf9Eg

— Colleen O’Brien (@ColleenKIROFM) June 24, 2022

This idea of “protecting life” continues to forget the other life involved here.
I feel invisible when politicians talk like this. https://t.co/KYdVQK1nCh

— Colleen O’Brien (@ColleenKIROFM) June 24, 2022

“I think about we have an almost nine-year-old daughter who will apparently grow up in a country with less rights than the country that I grew up in,” Travis Mayfield, guest host of the Gee and Ursula Show, said on Seattle’s Morning News.

Fertility companies and patients have been moving embryos and making contingency plans, according to The Wall Street Journal. In anticipation of Roe v. Wade’s overturning, abortion laws in some states could extend to protect eggs fertilized in laboratories.

“Our story is we had twins who were born through IVF, a daughter and son, and two years into that, our son, Tommy, died unexpectedly and horrifically, and we had still some viable embryos left from our round of IVF,’ Mayfield said. “And we went back to the clinic, and we found one, and we transferred it and to our surrogate, and we have our rainbow baby because of that. But if that had happened today, in a state where personhood laws exist, I mean, that couldn’t have happened. We couldn’t be dads to begin with.”

More than 2% of 3.7 million babies born in the U.S. in 2019 were conceived through in vitro fertilization, the latest federal data shows. Many embryos created through IVF aren’t viable, fertility specialists said, and those that aren’t ultimately transferred into a uterus may be discarded.

Gee Scott, host of the Gee and Ursula Show on KIRO Newsradio, made sure to share his thoughts on Twitter regarding the monumental Supreme Court decision.

Played games in 2016, and MESSED AROUND AND FOUND OUT!!! #RoeVsWade

— Gee Scott Sr. (@GeeScottSr) June 24, 2022

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