Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Abortion-At-All-Times Amendment ... How Did The Arguments Go?

Transcript

Abortion-At-All-Times Amendment ... How Did The Arguments Go? · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:00
  Twenty one years and still growing, so tell a friend both of them.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Morning Show with Preston Scott thirty six minutes past the hour.
• 0:16
  Big Stories in the press Box, brought to you by Restored Carpet Care and
• 0:19
  Tyle. Nothing bigger than the argument presented yesterday before the Florida State Supreme Court.
• 0:28
  Joining Matt Staver of Liberty Council was the Florida Senior Deputy Solicitor for the
• 0:33
  Attorney General's Office, Nathan Forrester. But we are joined by our friend Matt
• 0:38
  Staver, who is the chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel. Matt, welcome
• 0:42
  back to the show. Were you surprised that Attorney General Ashley Moody wasn't there?
• 0:48
  Well, yes, I was surprised that she wasn't there. That's another
• 0:54
  whole different story that needs to be addressed in a broader sense, not only
• 0:59
  in this case, but another situations as well. Sometimes our Attorney General is
• 1:03
  not aggressive on different situations. I'm glad that the Attorney General took the position
• 1:08
  that they did. It's the right position, it's the only position that the
• 1:11
  Attorney General should take. But certainly, actually the movie should be there but
• 1:15
  I don't think at the end of the day, it's going to affect the
• 1:18
  outcome of the case. But it is a critically important case. It's very,
• 1:23
  very important. This is a cataclysmic change that would happen to Florida if
• 1:27
  this goes on the ballot and if it's passed, and if it goes on
• 1:32
  the ballot, there's going to be a lot of misinformation. For example,
• 1:34
  a friend of mine, it was with me, just recently got approached at
• 1:40
  a DMV by one of these signature gatherers and was asked to sign a petition
• 1:45
  to protect women's rights. It took in three persistent questions in pressing those questions
• 1:51
  to find out exactly what this amendment was about that he was asked to sign.
• 1:56
  That's that kind of misinformation. Just sign this thing. It protects women,
• 2:00
  all right, No it doesn't. It actually throws women into the back
• 2:04
  alleys of abortion because it deregulates abortion where there's no ability of the government to
• 2:10
  provide any kind of regulation, including health and safety standards. Matt I admitted
• 2:16
  to the audience, I watched your argument. I thought you did a wonderful
• 2:22
  job. I charitably, I feel bad for mister Forrester, I didn't think
• 2:28
  he was as prepared as he maybe should have been. But having said that,
• 2:31
  I did not see any of the arguments from the other side because I
• 2:35
  just literally cannot stomach listening to people trying to justify the ending of an unborn
• 2:40
  child's life. So, with that disclosed grand scheme of things, macro view
• 2:47
  given the questioning asked of both sides, what is your takeaway from what?
• 2:53
  What can you glean from yesterday? Well, let me just say this.
• 2:58
  When I argued the Florida Mayor Protection Amendment in two thousand and six, I
• 3:01
  came out of the Supreme Court saying, there's no question we won this case,
• 3:05
  and we did seven to zero, and we got it on the ballot.
• 3:07
  We passed it with sixty two percent of the vote in Florida in two
• 3:12
  thousand and eight. I argued it in two thousand and six, coming out
• 3:15
  of this courtroom, I'm not sure we're going to get seven to zero,
• 3:17
  but I think we win. The questions as it relates to the proponents by
• 3:24
  the justices I think is very telling, and in fact, Growth Hands Justice
• 3:29
  Growth Hands began saying, well, wait a minute, we want to ask
• 3:31
  questions We're gonna have a lot of questions, So she asked questions. Justice
• 3:36
  Sasso asked questions. Justice Francis asked questions. The three female justices, they
• 3:42
  were the main questioners during their arguments that others asked questions as well, But
• 3:46
  based upon those three alone, it's very clear that they have serious concerns about
• 3:53
  this amendment not complying with Florida law. And then so Justice Curiel and others,
• 4:00
  they asked questions throughout. I think that we ultimately, you know,
• 4:03
  you never can know, but I think we ultimately have a majority to not
• 4:09
  allow this to go on the ballot. And of course that's just my feeling,
• 4:12
  and I can change a lot of things can change between now and the
• 4:14
  time the justice issue their opinion. The Morning Show with Preston Scott on News
• 4:25
  Radio one hundred point SEVENUFLA. I am calling it the Florida Abortion at All
• 4:34
  Times amendment because the law doesn't apply, because it says no law can restrict
• 4:43
  it. And joining us to talk about the argument yesterday is Liberty Council chairman
• 4:47
  and founder Matt Stave Or Matt, I don't think I'm far when I say
• 4:51
  that, No, you're not you're exactly right, and that's part of the
• 4:56
  argument that it's fundamentally changes the essential function of all three branches of government because
• 5:00
  no law we'll be able to prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion
• 5:08
  up through viability and after viability, like your third trimester abortions. If you
• 5:13
  have a law for third trimester abortions, some healthcare provider can be to it.
• 5:17
  And as Justice Curio pointed out, based upon our filing that we did
• 5:21
  on Monday, that even includes a tattoo artist. So really, at the
• 5:26
  end of the day, there's nothing that stands after this other than parental notification
• 5:31
  with exceptions. Everything else is gone. One of the things I thought was
• 5:35
  very interesting, and it was asked of the Florida Attorney General's solicitor by the
• 5:42
  Chief Justice, and he said, you know, the ballot summary does not
• 5:46
  apprize voters that this might impact Article one, section two. Well, Article
• 5:51
  one, section two says that you have born people natural persons, I should
• 5:57
  say, have a right to life. And he said, well, he's
• 6:00
  not pre judging that because it's not before the court, but that could include
• 6:05
  the unborn baby. And if the unborn baby then is part of the Protection
• 6:12
  of Article in section two having the natural right to life just like you and
• 6:15
  I. Then the voters need to be aware of that that this actually would
• 6:19
  override that particular section. The Attorney General's solicitor said that they hadn't thought about
• 6:27
  that or taken position on them. But when I got up, I said,
• 6:30
  in fact, that is a concern, because when you impact an existing
• 6:36
  right in the Constitution, you need to let voters know that that's what they're
• 6:41
  doing. They're changing a right in the Constitution. Yeah, I think there's
• 6:45
  an inevitability that all courts are going to have to face Supreme courts and states
• 6:48
  as well as maybe even federal and that's the personhod issue. But let me,
• 6:54
  Matt, let me ask you this. You've done this. I'm watching
• 6:57
  arguments yesterday and I was struck by one thing. And this is going to
• 7:00
  sound very critical of our court, but I was struck by the fact that
• 7:05
  the good guys, I'll put it that way, we're given twenty minutes,
• 7:09
  and I'm sure the bad guys were given twenty minutes on this, but that
• 7:13
  your time is taken up by questions and interruptions. And I don't care how
• 7:17
  good the questions or interruptions are or intentioned. I don't feel that you or
• 7:23
  mister Forrester were actually given your time to make the case and then take the
• 7:30
  questions. Why in the world did they limit this to one hour? This
• 7:33
  is literally an issue of life and death. Why didn't the Supreme Court take
• 7:38
  whatever time was needed? Well, I have the same question as well.
• 7:43
  You know, sometimes these oral arguments, they're very much perfunctory, and they're
• 7:49
  very strict and regulated, and frankly, this particular case required more than twenty
• 7:55
  minutes per side. I think courts ought to go and follow what the United
• 7:59
  States Supreme Court did, and they did this during COVID. Now that they
• 8:03
  have changed their process, I've argued since COVID, I've argued before COVID,
• 8:07
  you have a much better opportunity. There's a lot of questions that take place.
• 8:11
  That's fine, but the court allows you. Now at the Supreme Court,
• 8:16
  they have two minutes of uninterrupted statement with no interruption, and then it
• 8:20
  goes from the most senior down to the most junior justice and they ask individual
• 8:24
  questions one by one, and then when it's over, if we are out
• 8:28
  of time, the Chief Justice will allow more time for anyone to continue to
• 8:33
  ask questions so those arguments can go on. In our case, the arguments
• 8:37
  were scheduled for one hour. They went on for an hour and thirty eight
• 8:41
  plus minutes or so, so whatever time was necessary, they allowed that to
• 8:46
  process so that you could have real give and take, not just a dog
• 8:52
  and pony show with just some perfunctory questions. A lot of that. Of
• 8:56
  course, there's thousands of pages of briefs and written arguments that the court has,
• 9:01
  and so that's before the court as well. But I do wish that
• 9:05
  we would have had more time, particularly to really get into the give and
• 9:09
  take and the arguments and the specifics, because sometimes I think as much as
• 9:16
  you want to understand that justices are completely apprized of everything, really if you're
• 9:20
  the attorney prepared on the case, you should know more than anybody on that
• 9:24
  mention about the case because you've focus for hours and hours and hours on that
• 9:28
  one case. They have multiple cases, and so it's really a good opportunity,
• 9:33
  especially if you have a good advocate that knows what you're talking about,
• 9:35
  to be able to give and take with the court to make sure everybody understands
• 9:39
  the issues and are on the same page so you can have the best legal
• 9:45
  decision, and sometimes our argument the way it's done doesn't allow for that.
• 9:50
  Yeah, I was disappointed, and I think the citizens deserve better on this
• 9:54
  issue for the complexity and the importance of life. But Matt, thank you
• 10:01
  so much for what you're doing. I know we'll talk again, and I
• 10:03
  appreciate you very much. Thank you. Good to be with you, Alrighty
• 10:07
  Matt Staver with us this morning from Liberty Council. Yeah,