Nancy Pelosi criticizes Supreme Court conservatives over Mississippi abortion law

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Thursday who said they were considering imposing new limits on the right to abortion.  

“Sometimes I think they need a session on the birds and the bees for some of the kinds of statements that they make,” said Pelosi.

During her weekly news conference, Pelosi discussed the oral arguments given on a Mississippi abortion case at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. During the session, a majority of Supreme Court conservatives supported banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Pelosi said it was “a very dark day.”

“The court is threatening to trample over the Constitution, destroy Roe v. Wade, and take away a woman’s freedom to make the most fundamental decision that she can make for herself and her family, with her family members and her doctor and her faith,” Pelosi said.

“As I say to my colleagues, when you have five children in six years and one week, we can discuss this issue. That was great for me, not necessarily great for other people, and it shouldn’t be up to any of us to decide what a woman and her family, her husband, her partner decides is right for them and their family and their future child-bearing possibilities. So it’s scary, it’s really scary.”

According to Pelosi, the issue of abortion should not be a political one. She pointed to Ireland, which is a Catholic country that “passed legislation respecting, respecting women.”

“The DOJ and providers and those harmed by restrictions made unlawful under the act could go to court to enforce those rights,” she said. “It would make the law, the Women’s Health Protection Act, protect access to termination of a pregnancy across the country.”

By banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the Mississippi law comes in direct conflict with the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that allows abortions up to 24 weeks.