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The View in Review

Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin School Alyssa Farah Griffin on Abortion in Heated Debate

"Let the women make that decision! To hell with the states!" said Whoopi.
posted by Claire Spellberg Lustig
Wednesday 9/14/2022 at 12:16PM EDT
  • Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Sunny Hostin on The View (Photos: ABC)
    Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Sunny Hostin on The View (Photos: ABC)

    Conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin found herself on the receiving end of the panel's ire this morning when she argued women's right to an abortion should be left to the states to decide.

    Griffin should have known to tread lightly when Whoopi Goldberg opened the discussion, which spanned nearly 20 minutes and two segments, with a heated monologue about Sen. Lindsey Graham proposing a federal 15-week abortion ban. "All these men talking about what is right — you don't know jack about my body!" she said. "You didn't take enough time to sit down with anybody to find out what really can go wrong with a woman's body. She can want to have the baby and still have stuff go wrong with her body, and you guys have not put any thought about that into it!"

    After Joy Behar thanked Graham for "driving more women to vote Democrat in the fall" with his proposal, Griffin chided him for breaking rank with the Republican Party. "For a long time my party has argued that states should decide abortion rights," she said. "Lindsey Graham just went completely rogue by saying, 'This should be federally — we should have a federal restriction on abortion.'"

    "The vast majority of the country believes in some access to abortion, and some limitations," Griffin continued. "15 weeks is on par with some places in Europe, but let states make that decision."

    "How about: let the women make that decision!" interrupted Whoopi, earning a round of applause from the audience. "To hell with the states!"

    Sensing an opening, Sara Haines chimed in with some hard facts about abortion, which Whoopi asked her to repeat for dramatic effect. "[Graham] calls it a 'late-term abortion act' — by the way, 15 weeks, for anyone that doesn't know, is one week into your second trimester," she said. "There is no such thing as people having 'late-term abortions.' 1.3% of abortions are performed at greater than 21 weeks, and usually for heartbreaking medical reasons."

    Sunny Hostin then shifted focus back to Griffin's "states' rights" argument. "The Republican Party has always been the party of states' rights," she said. "It hasn't always worked out for the rest of the country because states' rights meant that Black kids and white kids went to different schools, and states' rights meant Black people couldn't marry white people."

    "So, the states' rights argument generally doesn't work for our country because, I guess, the onus is on people to be good and to do the right thing, and that doesn't necessarily happen with your party," continued Hostin.

    Griffin attempted to defend her point by arguing that state representatives are a "direct representation" of the people — "You elect them to represent your viewpoints" — but Whoopi wasn't having it.

    "We did [elect them], and they did, and they made a law, and then y'all went around and decided that because your religious fervor got your crazy," said Whoopi. "Listen, I believe in life. I am not anti-life. I've never been anti-life."

    "I am anti putting their fingers in other people's business of who they love and how they love! I am incensed that this is something people really thought they should do without doing the homework and finding out what it means!"

    Griffin may have been shut down, but she refused to give up on the topic. With Stacey Abrams on hand to discuss her Georgia gubernatorial campaign, the conservative co-host asked if she believes "there should be any legal limits on abortion, such as the third trimester or viability."

    "I believe that abortion is a medical decision, not a political decision," replied Abrams. "Arbitrary, politically-defined timelines are deeply problematic because they ignore the reality of medical or physiological issues."

    Guess you can add Alyssa Farah Griffin to the list of people who don't want to debate Stacey Abrams.

    Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.

    TOPICS: Whoopi Goldberg, ABC, The View, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin


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