Finney on Late Term Abortion: ‘Health or Life of the Mother, Yes’

BASH: “And, Shermichael, I should sort of set the table here with there is going to be measure on the ballot in Florida which would extend what is now a ban on abortion up until — or after six weeks of pregnancy, would extend that to 22 or 24 weeks.”
SINGLETON: “I mean, look, I think the former president clearly needs to moderate somewhat on this. We have a lot of data over two years that suggests this is just not a very strong issue for Republicans. But I got to tell you something, Dana. I mean, as a black man, you look at the number of people who get abortions, ethnically speaking, the demographic breakdown, and I am concerned about the fact that you see a lot of people of color getting abortions as a conservative. Then my question becomes for Republicans, then what do we need to do to support policies to prohibit this? We need to support families. We need to increase child tax credit. We need to do whatever is necessary, I would argue, to not have that as an ultimate choice or the first choice, I should say, for struggling people out there. And so that’s something that I think about. And if my Democratic friends want to support allowing people to get abortions whenever they want, then more power to them. But the Republican Party and conservatives need to be the party that supports families, that are pro-families, that are support and pro-sex education in schools, again, so that this isn’t the immediate choice for people, that they have alternatives. That’s what I think the conservative message should be.”
BASH: “I want you to jump in, but I want to welcome you to ‘State of the Union,’ Meghan Hays.”
HAYS: “Thank you.”
BASH: “Go ahead.”
HAYS: “I don’t think this is necessarily about abortion and the weeks that they wanted, six weeks, 24 weeks. This is about reproductive freedom. This is about taking away health care rights for women to be able to make their own choices. So it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. This is about you deciding to take away — or Republicans wanting to take away health care choices that women can take or that women can make on their own. So I just think that we — we can get, like, wrapped around the axle on the weeks and the different things. But this is about health care choices and freedoms that women get to make about their own body.”
FINNEY: “I would just add to that, though, for black women, this is — actually, numbers are going down.”
SINGLETON: “They’re still up.”
FINNEY: “But also — they’re going down. But part of the reason that in the black — in the black community, for women, we have higher maternal mortality rates, we have higher rates of pregnancy complications, which mean, exactly to Meghan’s point, a woman has to be able to make that decision, no matter how many weeks it is. If you’re for health, life of the mother — “
JENNINGS: “Even late term?”
FINNEY: “Health or life of the mother — yes, in some instances, that may be what is required, because that’s — in some instances, that may preserve this woman’s ability to have children in the future. And every single human being has a different health care situation, biology, that their doctor should be making those decisions with them, not politicians jumping in the bedroom telling them what to do.”