CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Interview with Amy Klobuchar

Interview

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BOLDUAN: New tonight, an unprecedented assault. President Biden slamming the Supreme Court after its 5-4 decision to reject the request to freeze a strict new abortion law in Texas that bars the procedures after six weeks effectively, before most women even know they're pregnant. Biden saying in part this, quote, the Supreme Court's ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on women's constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost 50 years. Going on to say, the impact of last night's decision will be immediate and requires an immediate response.

OUTFRONT now, Democratic senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar. She sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senator, thanks for coming in.

You agree with President Biden on this. What do you think, though, when he says immediate response? What do you think the immediate response is or should be?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Well, the president gets this. This is a medical crisis for women in Texas. 85 percent of them that seek abortion services will not be able to exercise their constitutional rights as Justice Sotomayor so well-pointed out.

Even Justice Roberts, who is far from a liberal, who's very conservative, sided with the three liberal judges, sided with them and basically said that this was unprecedented, that it was unusual, and that the state wouldn't even own the law. They basically created bounty hunters. They put it on individual citizens to report these cases if after basically six weeks a woman seeks an abortion. Not even as the law requires, not even an exemption if it affects a woman's health, if it affects a woman's life. It is an outrageous decision, which is why you saw these strong reactions in the dissent.

And so the focus now is one calling attention to this. Two, I'm sure that there are legal battles that are left to be fought, but I think the final thing is in my mind we should pass a law in Congress, and Speaker Pelosi has already committed to moving forward on this to basically what we call codify, to put into law Roe v. Wade.

Those protections have been on the books for nearly 50 years. That's why I consider them super precedent, strong precedent. But clearly, these three Trump appointed justices plus two conservatives that were already on the court had their own agenda, and that's why it is on Congress to put this into law.

BOLDUAN: You're cosponsor of this law that would codify this into law, make it an act of Congress. If you need ten Republicans in the Senate to do this, is it really going to happen?

KLOBUCHAR: First of all, you know there are pro-choice Republicans, specifically Senator Collins is pro-choice and Senator Murkowski has voted pro-choice. But what I think we need to do and I've always believed this is for a number of months now I have been asking for this and that is to abolish the filibuster.

Our country's basically on fire. There's floods that have wiped out major portions of the South that don't have a power grid in New Orleans right now. What we're seeing on the East Coast and the deaths due to the flooding, climate change is here. You've been covering it on your show. My heart goes out to those that have been hurt or lost family members with Hurricane Ida.

But the point is we need to get action going in the U.S. Senate, and we continue use this archaic rule anymore called the filibuster to block action when it comes to women's rights, when it comes to doing something to put in greenhouse gas standards into place. I just think that otherwise we're going to just be sitting here admiring these problems and sending out tweets and not getting anything done.

BOLDUAN: You mentioned super precedent, and there's a reason I want to bring that back. You had a memorable back-and-forth during questions of Justice Amy Coney Barrett about Roe v. Wade during her confirmation hearing last fall. I want to play for everybody just a part of it.

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JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT, U.S. SUPREME COURT: As Richard Fallen from Harvard said, Roe is not a super precedent because calls for its overruling have never ceased. But that doesn't mean the Roe should be overruled. It just means that it doesn't fall on a small handful of cases like Marbury versus Madison and Brown versus the Board that no one questions anymore.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I am then left with looking at the tracks of your record and where it leads the American people, and I think it leads us to a place that's going to have severe repercussions for them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What happened overnight, is that exactly what you're talking about?

KLOBUCHAR: The midnight decision you mean where Justice Kagan pointed out in 72 hours, they basically put into operation a patently unconstitutional law?

And Kate, I want your viewers to know even as recently as 2019, this court has stayed laws involved abortion.

[19:35:06]

In June, medical services, they basically stayed the implementation of state law that would have -- physicians have to have admitting privileges in a hospital within 30 miles. BOLDUAN: And they were about to consider another really big one out of

Mississippi, that's kind of why this is so surprising, which, I have to say --

KLOBUCHAR: Go ahead.

BOLDUAN: No. I was just going to say, this leads to another important question that there are now growing calls on the left with this all in mind that for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer to retire, to ensure that a Democratic president gets to pick his replacement. Breyer is 83 years old.

You previously said, and the way I think you put it, if he's going to retire, it should be sooner rather than later, but saying, it's up to him. After this ruling, after what happened overnight, do you want to say that differently now?

KLOBUCHAR: I'm one of the few people that have spoken out on this in the U.S. Senate, and that is because I believe that he gets that decisions by justices to retire in his own words based on someone's health -- he seems to be healthy. He's older, but healthy. The second is the court and how the court will look to the future.

You have justices on that court right now who are basically in the words of the dissent are basically allowing a patently unconstitutional law that's going to affect thousands of women in one of the biggest states of the country, and who knows the precedent. We can imagine other states will be rushing now to do the same thing. They're allowing this to stay in place and not stay it on an emergency basis.

So, I think, yes, as I said from the beginning, he should make his decision sooner than later. If he's going to retire, he should retire sooner rather than later. But, as you know, Kate, the way we fix this, given the fact that the court is not going to magically change its opinion when someone as conservative as Justice Roberts is in the dissent, to me, the answer is the Congress must act.

BOLDUAN: I'm also hearing you say, the message might be from you tonight, it should be sooner and sooner for further justice, but, again, I understand. That is me extrapolating. That is me extrapolating from what you said.

Thank you, Senator. I appreciate it.

KLOBUCHAR: It's with Congress. But thank you very much.

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