Host Whoopi Goldberg didn’t hold back when she discussed the abortion debate on Tuesday’s episode of “The View.”
In a minute-long speech about abortion rights, “The Stand” actress slammed the Supreme Court’s draft ruling that could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade’s landmark decision to guarantee abortion rights to women.
Whoopi Goldberg Says ‘This Is My Body’ In Fiery Abortion Speech
.@WhoopiGoldberg: “Getting an abortion is not easy. Making that decision is not easy. It’s not something people do lightly.”
“If you don’t have the wherewithal to understand that … then you’re not looking out for me as a human being … and that is not okay.” pic.twitter.com/u1DPPSp0Zm
— The View (@TheView) May 3, 2022
Whoopi, now 66, confessed that she had an illegal abortion as a teenager and recalled how dangerous it was at the time before abortion became legal.
“You got people telling me I gotta wear a mask, or don’t wear a mask, or do this,” Goldberg said. “Everybody wants to tell me what to do! This is my body!”
“My doctor, and myself, and my child —that’s who makes the decision,” she continued.
“Women, when they decide something is not right for them, they’re going to take it into their own hands,” she continued. “We got tired of tripping over [other] women in public bathrooms who were giving themselves abortions because there was nowhere safe, nowhere clean, nowhere to go.”
Whoopi Goldberg Says Abortion Is ‘Not A Religious Issue’
Whoopi explained that the 1973 court decision to guarantee abortion “came about because people wanted people to have somewhere safe and somewhere clean. It has nothing to do about your religion. This is not a religious issue, this is a human issue.”
She insisted that getting an abortion is “not easy,” saying, “It’s a hard, awful decision that people make.”
“If you don’t have the wherewithal to understand that, to start the conversation with, ‘I know how hard this must be for you.’ If you’re starting it by telling me I’m going to burn in h—, then you’re not looking out for me as a human being, whether I subscribe to your religion or not, and that is not OK,” she went on.
Co-host Joy Behar, 79, also ventured that the potential decision could be the beginning of “fascism.”
Joy Behar Wonders If They’ll Go After Gay Marriage Next
If the Supreme Court takes back the right to abortion, many wonder what other decisions could be overturned next.
“My worry is that this is just the beginning,” Behar said. “Next they’ll go after gay marriage and maybe … Brown v. Board of Education. They already eroded our voting rights a little bit. So I see fascism down the line here.”
In 1991, Goldberg wrote an essay for Angela Bonavoglia’s book “The Choices We Made,” as per the New York Post. In the essay, she described having an abortion at age 14, before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.
“I talked to nobody. I panicked. I sat in hot baths,” Goldberg wrote at the time. “I drank these strange concoctions girls told me about — something like Johnny Walker Red with a little bit of Clorox, alcohol, baking soda (which probably saved my stomach) and some sort of cream. You mixed it all up. I got violently ill.”
“At that moment I was more afraid of having to explain to anybody what was wrong than of going to the park with a hanger, which is what I did,” she added.
In 2021, The Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based pro-choice research organization, reported that 22 states already have anti-abortion laws pending, should Roe v. Wade be overturned. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
