On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry show, MSNBC host Harris-Perry made an over the top analogy about the liberal fight against laws restricting abortion as she invoked the art of judo and asked if the political effort was similar to a woman physically fighting off an attacker.
Speaking to Nancy Northrup from the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, Harris-Perry posed:
So, Nancy, self-defense teaches women, "Get on the ground, kick with your legs, don't try to go right," you know, "don't try to go arm to arm because that's not necessarily where the strength is." Is this what this new strategy is? "All right, if you guys want to sign this, run on this."
As she introduced the segment, the MSNBC host also referred to the pro-life movement as "enemies of reproductive rights."
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, January 18, Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC:
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: These aggressive policies attempt to lay bare the big picture for the final decisive battle, a Supreme Court showdown to roll back the gains of Roe v. Wade. And this week when the enemies of reproductive rights came knocking at the gates, the court refused to let them in.
The justices punted on considering Arizona's 20-week abortion ban, a case that could have forced a challenge to Roe v. Wade. But that was this time. Advocates for reproductive justice know it's not going to last. And that's why they're devising a new tactical approach of their own, going on offense in this policy fight and using that same weapon, policy to fight back. Think of it as like political judo. It's a martial arts practice that enable a smaller fighter to defeat a bigger stronger opponent using a key strategy, turning the opponent's size and strength from an asset into a liability.
NARAL Pro-choice America is taking all of those restrictive abortion measures and making this pledge to the governors who signed them into law. You stood for these laws, you signed these laws, now, if you're up for re-election this year, you're going to have to run on them. This week in The Nation magazine, NARAL president Elise Hogue told the writer Zoey Carpenter that the strategy is to shift the momentum and the reproductive justice fight to, quote, "force these anti-choice extremists who hold political office to actually run on and defend anti-choice records."
(...)
So, Nancy, self-defense teaches women, "Get on the ground, kick with your legs, don't try to go right," you know, "don't try to go arm to arm because that's not necessarily where the strength is." Is this what this new strategy is? "All right, if you guys want to sign this, run on this."
NANCY NORTHUP, CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: Well, right. I think we're going to see that last year was an absolute turnaround point in the fight over women's access to reproductive health care. We saw going on offense right and left.
We saw Wendy Davis do that filibuster in Texas, and she is now soaring in her run for governor of Texas. We saw Albuquerque voters turn down a 20-week ban. When they got a chance to go to polls instead of the politicians, they said, "No, we don't want these kind of extreme measures."
HARRIS-PERRY: Yes.
NORTHUP: We saw the introduction in the U.S. Congress, the Women's Health Protection Act with 33 cosponsors in the Senate, more than 90 in the House, which says we've got to stop these restrictions at the state level. Your zip code can't determine whether you have constitutional rights. So last year was a turnaround, and it's going to keep on going.