CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin predicted months ago that abortion rights would be erased for nearly half the country — in just 18 months’ time — and this week is when it was supposed to come to pass.
Toobin, responding to the retirement of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, made the prediction during an appearance on “The Lead” with Jake Tapper on June 27th of 2018. (RELATED: CNN’s Toobin Circles The Four Horsemen, Says 20 States Will Ban Abortion In 18 Months)
WATCH:
“Any Supreme Court nomination is important, but this one is the most important because it will change the partisan makeup of the court,” Toobin began, noting that Kennedy had sided with more conservative members of the court on some issues, but not abortion.
“He was the vote that was keeping Roe v. Wade the law of the land,” Toobin added. “That is done. Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. There is no doubt that the top priority of the people advising President Bush — President Trump — in making this nomination is to pick someone who will overturn Roe v. Wade.”
Toobin then predicted that, once Roe was overturned, individual states would start to pass total bans on abortion. “I guarantee you in the next year the Supreme Court will have cases which will challenge Roe v. Wade and I think it is doomed. Abortion will be illegal in a significant chunk of this country in 18 months,” he said.
Toobin delivered the same prediction on Twitter that day.
Anthony Kennedy is retiring. Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months. #SCOTUS
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) June 27, 2018
He followed a few days later with an op-ed for The New Yorker, in which the predictions only got more dire: the end of gun control, the end of abortion, and rampant racism that would see “gay people barred from restaurants, hotels, stores” and “African-Americans out of elite schools.”
See the new @USSupremeCourt clearly: Abortion illegal; doctors prosecuted; gay people barred from restaurants, hotels, stores; African-Americans out of elite schools; gun control banned in 50 states; the end of regulatory state. My @NewYorker column.https://t.co/ik0fa4XDIK
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) July 1, 2018
President Donald Trump’s eventual choice to fill Kennedy’s seat, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has given no indication that he would ever move to overturn Roe v. Wade — in fact, he has ruled against conservatives to uphold laws that protect abortion rights.