Journalists’ Roundtable 12-03-21: Supreme Court & Abortion, Hobbs Apologizes, Rittenhouse & ASU

Time now for the Journalists’ Roundtable and here to discuss the week’s top stories, we welcome Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services and Laurie Roberts from the Arizona Republic.

Supreme Court & Abortion

Howie Fischer: “We have a pre 1973 law that actually goes back to territorial days, that makes it a crime, a felony to perform an abortion, whether it’s medication or physical and the penalty is the minimum of two years in prison and maximum penalty of five years. That will depending on who you talk to but I think there’s an argument to be made, whether you can take a pre 73 law and just say, ‘Oh, it’s a divorce again.'”

Laurie Roberts: “Well, it’s clear that the minimum they’re going to accept is a 15 week ban from from what you’ve heard, but it seems even more likely from the conservative justices in the questions that they asked and from the comments that the liberal judges made, that they are headed toward overturning five decades of legal precedent. I think what’s interesting to me is that this would happen probably in June. And presumably, if the Arizona legislature is out of session by then, which may be wishful thinking, It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Governor Ducey calls them back to do as much as they could do, whether it’s a 15 week ban, or whether they’ll reinforce that free territorial disband.”

Hobbs Apoligizes

Howie Fischer: “We’re on, you know, as you say, version three of perhaps a 15 part apology tour here. You know, the first statement was issued not by her but by her campaign aide and it didn’t please anybody. Then she sort of put out a statement about her role in the 2.7 5 million verdict against the Senate for discrimination.

Laurie Roberts: “I thought all along that she’s got a problem with this. As soon as I heard very influential African American leaders come out and say, no, no, no, we cannot accept this. So if you don’t have that community with you in the Democratic primary, you’ve got a problem. And actually, everybody up and down the ticket has a problem with the Democrats because they’re all going to be asked about Katie Hobbs.”