♪ good morning. it's saturday, september 19th. i'm ali velshi. sad news out of washington today. the country has lost a national treasure with the death of supreme court justice ruth. she pass she passed away last night with an ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer. she was surrounded by those that she loved in the capital. a private service will be held at arlington national cemetery at a later date. her fearless dissenting opinions

made her larger than life. she was an iconic figure, becoming the second woman to serve on the nation's highest court. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams takes a look back at her long life and lasting legacy. >> ruth bader ginsburg was consistently one of the u.s. supreme courts moderate to liberal members. first as a lawyer, then a judge and a justice, she believed the constitution guaranteed women greater rights. >> over the course of now over two centuries, it has grown and developed so that more and more people are included in that concept we the people. >> rejected after law school for a supreme court clerkship because she was a woman, she began her legal career as a law professor and pioneering advocate for women's legal rights. successfully arguing a string of cases before the supreme court that made it easier to sue for sex disdricrimination. it was president carter who appointed her as judge.

then in 1993, president clinton put her on the supreme court making her the second woman justice. >> it contributes to the end of the days when women at least half the talent pool in our society, appear in high places only as one at a time performers. >> at her confirmation hearing, she clearly stated her support for the right to abortion. >> this is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. >> and as a justice, she voted to uphold abortion rights. she wrote the court's opinion putting an end to the men only policy at vmi, the virginia military institute, saying it was based on outmoated stereotypes. she struck down the death penalty for juveniles and ruling that, quote, death is not a suitable punishment for a mentally retarded criminal. she voted to roll back bush administration policies and the war on terror. a blistering opinion in a case

about equal pay for women renewed her standing as a feminist icon. ♪ >> we welcome today justice ruth bader ginsburg. >> she was nicknamed notorious obg, a play on a rapper's name and featured in a documentary movie. >> i'm 84 years old and everyone wants to take a picture with me. >> she married a fellow student in college, martin ginsburg. they had two children. years later she recalled receiving some advice on her wedding day. >> it pays, mother said, it pays sometimes to be a little deaf. [ laughter ] i have followed that advice with only a occasional lapses. not only at home, but in the places i have worked. and even in relating to my colleagues at the supreme court. [ laughter ] ♪ >> a passionate opera fan, she

appeared in several washington productions in full costume but in silent roles. regular checkups and early intervention helped her recover from three surgeries for cole lan, pancreatic and lung cancer and doctors inserted a stent after discovering blockage in a heart artery. but recurrence of cancer led to new rounds of treatment and hospital stays. now the court's most powerful liberal justice is gone. pete williams, nbc news at the supreme court. >> a fitting tribute to a life well lived. and this just in from our capitol hill team. senate democrats are expected to hold a conference call at 1:00 p.m. today to strategize how they will handle the supreme court seat vacancy created by ruth bader ginsburg's death. a democratic leadership aide has told nbc. this comes after a statement last night from mocconnell sayig president trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the united states senate.

they didn't state whether that vote will be held before or after election day. joining me now is andrea mitchell, an anchor here at msnbc and msnbc chief foreign affairs correspondent. andrea knew justice beginsburg personal ginsburg personally and professionally. i know you've been talking to people and writing your thoughts. now 12 hours after this, i just want to know sort of what you're thinking. >> well, such sadness at the loss. and because she was so fiercely determined to keep on keeping on through all of these cancers to try to get over to the next stage, she wanted to see the next president elected. that is very clear. and said that in her dying wish dictated to her granddaughter, that she should not be replaced until the next president takes office. so for her to die now seven weeks before the election and also the opportunity, of course, mitch mcconnell could choose do this in the lame duck, that would be a strategy, to try to

take some of the more moderate republicans off the hook so they could perhaps, you know, be on the fence until after the election and try scoot through. because this is going to energize both sides of the aisle, you know, both bases are going to be, i think, fiercely energized. the evangelical base already with the president and one could argue as chuck todd has been saying, that he may have won his narrowly fought electoral college election because of them. because of the supreme court nominees, the list that he put out in advance to reassure the right wing that he was with them even though he had not lived his life certainly in that religious context. but then again, the suburban women in 2018 who fueled the takeover of the house and those democratic gains in 2018, they could be energized again because this is the fight for women who are feminists and who believe in the fights that ruth bader ginsburg won from the day she

got out of law school. all of those early cases that she fought, fought in front of the supreme court winning 5 out of 6, redefining the way gender was viewed by the all male at this point court. so i'm really struck by that. that legal legacy. but on the personal side, just this remarkable woman, her extraordinary marriage, the absolute love affair, 57 years with martin ginsburg who was a legal star in his own right. but subbl but subblah mated his successes to get her on the court and brought her to the attention of the clintons back in 1993 and she just as hillary clinton recounted to rachel last night, she aced that job interview. she wasn't at the top of the list until she came in on a sunday afternoon dressed casually because she was advised to do so. and then bill clinton, as hillary recounted it, got out of his sunday watching football clothes and put on a suit and tie and she was a bit embarrassed, taken aback, but

then she just clicked. he was a former constitutional law professor back in law school and they talked for hours about the law and she nailed it. and that's how she got to the supreme court. >> it's remarkable story of a woman who, like you, succeeded and compelled at excelled at a was obvious it was not going to go down that way. thank you for sharing your memories of her. andrea mitchell an anchor here on msnbc. joining me now is the reverend al sharpton, the host of "politics nation," the president of the national action network and the book rise up, confronting a country at the crossroads. and julie cohen, the director of the academy award dominated documentary rbg. let me start with you, because a lot of famous people know in the moment that they're famous and that people have nicknames for them and t-shirts of them and

things like that. but, ruth bader ginsburg managed her fame and her notoriety along with her mission. she had a mission to advance women, to advance marginalized people and marginalized groups. and she somehow managed to put those two together to her final day. >> absolutely. you know, there were two different sides, of course, the professional side as a supreme court justice and earlier as a lawyer. things are being done in a courtroom, often outside of the glamour of camera and media and fame. but, in her 80s as a supreme court justice, after many decades of trying to advance equal justice under law, justice ginsburg did catch on with younger fans, as the notorious rbg, and started coming out quite a bit to give public talks to young people, to opera fans,

to law students trying to focus people's attention on those key constitutional issues she had been fighting for her whole life. all of a sudden, she had a platform to do it and the fact that people were comparing her to notorious b.i.g., surprisingly she quite enjoyed. >> rev, a woman who was fighting for civil rights, beyond the initial fight that she had in terms of women's rights, she took the fight for civil rights to the supreme court -- to the courts that she was on and ultimately to the supreme court. a remarkable feat for the civil rights movement to have somebody in the highest seat, in the highest court of the land advancing the mission of social justice. >> absolutely. i think you must remember that way before we coined the phrase intersectionalism, ruth bader ginsburg practiced that. she fought for gender rights and civil rights and voter rights

and immigration rights from a legal point of view long before it became what we are doing now and attempting to do. and i also was always impressed by the stature she had and the respect she had. i remember i went and sat in the courtroom for the oral arguments around affirmative action and then later voting rights and i went with martin luther king iii and john lewis was in the room and all of the people that would be allowed to sit there and listen to the oral arguments. sheryl and i would make on voter rights from legal defense fund. and the other justices, they all seemed to have such regard and respect for her. she had a way of standing for something without offend be others which made her effective. and i think that it will be a long time before we see a justice that rises to the level of a mix you're of respect and

popularity. to be compared with those historic jurists and notorious b.i.g. in one lifetime takes a real [ inaudible ] person. >> that is a feat. julie, what made you make the documentary? >> you know, justice ginsburg at the time that we approached her to make the documentary in early 2015, she had just sort of broken through with some young audience members as the notorious rbg. people knew about her stinging supreme court dissents, but we knew that a lot of her young fans didn't know the history, didn't understand that as a woman's rights lawyer and aclu lawyer in the 1970s she had fought a string of cases before the supreme court, six cases in fact in which she had really advanced the ball hugely for

equal rights under law for the genders, the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution's equal protection clause. she said this isn't -- this is about race and it's also about gender. >> thank you to both of you for joining us this morning. reverend al sharpton is the host of "politics nation," he's the president of the nation national action network and the author of the upcoming book which i want to talk to you on this show, rise up, confronting a country at the crossroads. julie is the director of the academy award nominated documentary rbg which i suspect is going to see a resurgence in popularity today. still ahead, lily ledbetter, the. in one of ruth bader ginsburg's most famous dissents which turned into federal law. but first, here's a tribute to rbg outside the supreme court last night. a crowd of mourners singing john lennon's "imagine ". ♪

we'll delivering for you. ♪ eve♪ going faster than a closerollercoaster ♪ ♪ love like yours will surely come my way ♪ ♪ a-hey, a-hey-hey [music playing] ♪ love like yours will surely come my way ♪

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i thought my colleagues had erred, not just erred, but egregiously erred. so the tag line of my dissent in the lily ledbetter case was the ball is now in congress's court to correct the error and to which my colleagues have fallen. when she came on board in the '70s, she didn't want to be viewed as a troublemaker. she didn't want to rock the boat. h so she just did her job. my dissent was the solo simplicity. i said, the discrimination that she encountered is repeated every month because it's reflected in every paycheck she receives. so as long as she sues within 180 days of a paycheck, her suit

is timely. >> when lily ledbetter realized that she wasn't being paid nearly the same as her male counterparts at goodyear tire over the course of her career, she filed a sex discrimination lawsuit. her case was initially successful, but it was later reversed on appeal due to a technicality. and the appeal was upheld by the supreme court in a 5-4 ruling. that's what ruth bader ginsburg was just talking about. the majority said ledbetter had no recourse because she did not file the suit within 180 days of her first paycheck. that's the kind of society we live in. justice ginsburg dissented on that case and in a rare move, she read her dissent aloud in the nation's highest court saying in part, quote, the court does not comprehend are so indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination. justice ginsburg also directed congress to act writing that,

quote, the ball is in your dort change the law and prevent for lily ledbetters. 18 months after that dissent, president barack obama signed the lily ledbetter fair pay act. the first piece of legislation signed during his presidency allowing those who faced pay discrimination to seek restitution under federal antidiscrimination laws. joining me now is lily ledbetter. lily, your thoughts this morning. >> good morning. this is such a sad day to be celebrating justice ginsburg's life, but i'm just in awe of this lady because she changed my life and she changed the country. with that dissent, she gave me the dignity to go on and go forward and to stand up for equal pay for equal work. and when that ball went to congress's court, i was invited to speak in the house twice and

in the senate twice. i went with it. and i walked the halls of congress to get -- solicit support for the ledbetter bill, because that bill would do exactly what justice ginsburg had challenged congress to do. >> you met her finally in 2010, three years after your case was argued at the supreme court. tell me about that. >> that was a big day in my life, because that was the top of my bucket list from the time she read that dissent, that was the top of my list in my life to get to meet her in person. and it was such an awesome day. i had been on the hill marching and talking about other people and laws and things to help make women's and i'd argue lives better. and i got the awesome opportunity to go to her new office. she was moving to the corner

office, and meet her and share with her some details about my life and hers. we shared how much of our lives had been in correspondence. i lost my husband in 2008 to cancer. and then she had just lost her husband in 2010. and we each had tears we will up well up in our eyes. and she gave me a hug. she shared with me and showed e beme the ledbetter will hanging on her wall and that president obama had delivered that to her office because it was so important and meant so much. it was all due to her dissent. that dissent has rode on and on in so many lives across this nation. i've heard a lot of her stories, and it's just awesome what she started with that dissent and changed the law. yes, i lost my case, i shouldn't have. in fact, i have you had been

paid equally and fairly. but she changed all of that. >> she articulated something that i think millions of women have felt for hundreds of years but they still do. the idea that the injustice of not being paid the same for the work that you do as men are paid repeats itself not just monthly, every two weeks in some people's cases. every two weeks people get paid less for the same work. justice ginsburg's passing should be marching orders for a whole bunch of people in this country who do not believe that it is fair for the fact that women should be paid less for the work that men play. >> you're exactly right. along my journeys since i've been lobbying for equal pay, for equal work and lives to get better, i have heard so many stories from you men. you guys get it. you talk about your mothers. you talk about your wives. you talk about your daughters. and it goes back to like my day,

it was extremely hard to get a really good paying job for women. and it's still hard today, but not as hard as it was then. but she knew. she knew exactly what it was like and she knew that it's over and over and over. and she was right. she knew i didn't want to make waves, i needed my job. i did not need to lose it. >> yeah. >> but i had no way to find out how much less i was being paid until someone gave me that notice. and that was toward the end of my career. but i couldn't let it go, because i think i have just a little bit of that tenacity justice ginsburg had to go forward and try to make a difference. because i basically told my family i would probably never get any money because most cases like these are drug on for years and people don't collect. but i had to do it because it

was right. and when that verdict came out, it was no longer about me, it was about all of the american families. because it's like what president obama said when he signed the bill. this is a family affair. >> yeah. you're absolutely right. you're both heroes to a lot of women, but this mission has to continue and it's on all of us, you're right, including men, to make sure that women are paid equally for work of equal value. lily ledbetter, thank you for what you did. i know it was hard to rock the boat but you do it. lily was the. in ledbetter versus goodyear tire and rubber company, the lily ledbetter fair pay act of 2009. thank you. back with me, jeff rossen, president and ceo of the national constitution center which just awarded ruth bader ginsburg its medal on thursday night. he's the honor of conversations with rbg, ruth bader ginsburg on

life, love, liberty and the law. let's talk about lily ledbetter, jeff. it was -- the whole thing was remarkable. the case was remarkable, the idea that ruth bader ginsburg read her dissent out loud. the idea that she sent the message that my court got it wrong so congress, you need to get it right. and it was because of lily ledbetter and ruth bader ginsburg that that law was the first law that barack obama ever signed. >> absolutely. and it was so moving just now to hear lily ledbetter's words and to hear her talk about how justice ginsburg's dissent changed her life and brought her justice. justice ginsburg always believed that social change would ultimately come not from the courts, but from congress and the people. and it was so significant that in that case she read her dissent from the bench calling on congress to overturn it and the fact that congress responded to her call and that president

obama signed it is exactly the way justice ginsburg thought that the law should proceed. the other thing that's so significant is she cared about lily ledbetter. she paid attention to the details of how hard it was for her to get her pay. and she did that to all of the plaintiffs in her cases, both the ones she represented as an advocate and the ones she wrote about as a justice. the law for her was never an abstraction. it was never a series of academic principles. it was real people with real struggles trying to achieve real purposes and do their job and get through the day. and the lily ledbetter case is just a perfect encapsulation of that. >> jeff, one of the things i've enjoyed in my conversations with you about the supreme court and the constitution is that we don't just read the cases and the decisions. we often talk about the dissents. ruth bader ginsburg took dissent to a different level. >> yes, she did. she certainly did. and it's remarkable to think

about how she became known as the notorious rbg, the greatest dissenter of her time in the same way there have been previous justices like john marshal harlan, i, was a great dissenter. and it all began in 2013 where she denounced the court for having misconstrued the voting rights act. and her dissent was so powerful that a young nyu student made it a viral icon on the internet and turned her into an international celebrity. but for her, what makes the dissent so powerful, and i hope viewers will read the dissents today. the majority and the dissents. >> yeah. >> just to get a sense of the power of her voice. she's combining the crusading passion of her advocacy days with the careful constitutionalism of her -- of her judicial days and that shelby county dissent, there were some amazing lines in there

just because you're not getting wet doesn't mean you throw away an umbrella in a rainstorm. it was the perfect description of why you still need the voting rights act. and her dissenting opinion in the partial birth of abortion case, the car heahart case, whet assumed that women needed to be given advice before they exercised their reproductive choice. or her dissenting opinion in the affirmative action cases where she was extremely powerful. she thought whether she became senior associate justice for the majority that she had a responsibility to convince the liberal justices to speak in one voice. and i asked her once, you know, you used to be known as a judicial minimalist, a judge's judge. what changed? and she said, oh, jeff, i don't think i changed. the court change and i think i had a responsibility to help the dissenters speak together. so let -- read the dissents. read the majority opinions too. and make up your own minds. she would have always wanted that because she believed so

much in the power of reason. and she was writing her dissents to persuade we, the people. >> and, hence, they were written in a way that actually would make them something that our viewers can read. because sometimes supreme court decisions are a little legalistic and a little hard for people to read. but, in fact, hers are not. jeff rossen, stay with me, please. ruth bader ginsburg was nominated to the supreme court by president bill clinton. hillary clinton spoke to rachel maddow last night about the devastating loss. >> -- is such a massive hole in, you know, my, you know, young adulthood, my becoming a lawyer both practicing and teaching law, looking up to her, following her career. but much more than that, it is a devastating loss for justice and equality. and equality.

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♪ if an opening comes in the last year of president trump's term and the primary process is started, we'll wait till the next election. >> joining me now, chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official. he's an msnbc contributor and the host of the remarkable podcast, the oath with chuck

rosenberg. brittany cunningham joins me as well. she's an msnbc contributor, founder of love and power works. and a former fellow at the harvard institute of politics, jeff rossen is also back with us. thanks to all of you. brittany, i've been following your tweets as well. you are sad, like a lot of other people are, but you believe that this is a call to action. that the passing of ruth bader ginsburg is really a clarion to everybody else. >> what people have been saying is let her memory be a revolution. and i couldn't agree more. and we have to remember that first and foremost there is a family and a group of friends grieving, a mother and a gra grandmother, she was a person before she was a symbol. we send our love to those who knew her and loved her. but as we tlook hlook to her ex i'm thinking of that photograph

with her in her super diva sweatshirt with weights in her arms even in her elder years trying to make sure that she held on for long enough to not see this already fragile democracy slip even further to the wayside. she would want us to fight just like she did. now is not the time for cynicism, now is the time to choose to take up our gifts and our talents and actually fight. now is the time to make sure that we are engaging in every way possible to november and beyond november to protect the rights that we hold dear. democrats are going to have to decide the transformation is more important than tradition and stop playing a game that the republicans threw out the rules to a long time ago. it's time not to be concerned with decorum or civility, but to get rule. >> she was 87 years old. in her 88th year of life, she worked out more than i have worked out in my entire life. chuck rosinberg, let's talk

about this because one can move forward and embody her values and her work ethics and her workout ethic and the idea that she has dealt with cancer three times and fought it off successfully until now. but there's a political consideration that brittany was just referring to under way right now with mitch mcconnell. and i just want to be read you a letter that was circulated among gop senators late last night urging them all to be cautious. mitch mcconnell has written to them, for those of you who are unsure thousa unsure how to answer or for those opposed giving a nominee a vote, i urge you all to keep your powder dry. this is not time to prematurely lock yourselves into a position you may later regret. he's foiling for a nomination. we don't know whether he's going to put that to a vote before or after the election, but this is

going to be a nomination for a replacement very soon. >> i agree with you. first, let me say, i'm so glad you're spending some time today talking about the remarkable life and legacy of this jurist. i think mark has been particularly eloquent in describing what she has been to us. but second, to your point, we talk about precedent, that one congress should do what another congress did or a politician should adhere to what he or she said prevalentiously. precedent is a legal word that means one case will decide what comes down the road subsequently. expedience and power describes what politicians do, and that's a sad legacy. you know, we should expect politicians to be good to their word and to be consistent, but no, i longer expect that, ali. and so the manipulations that you're seeing now are not surprising, not surprising at all. they're disappointing, but you

should expect that from members of congress. >> jeff rossen, i often have simple questions for you and then ask you what the law or the constitution actually says. so i want to play for you mitch mcconnell in september -- sorry, in february of 2016. but first, chuck schumer in september of 2020 after the death of ruth bader ginsburg. i'm sorry, i won't play it to you. let me read it. chuck schumer after the death of ruth bader ginsburg said the american people should have a voice in the selection of their next supreme court justice. therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. ironically, look at the right side of your screen. mitch mcconnell used the exact same words in february of 2016. the american people should have a voice in the selection of their next supreme court justice. therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. is there law on this, jeff? >> no, there is no law on this. as we just heard very

eloquently, politics is about expediency and power, not about principle. but, let us think about the institution of the supreme court as justice ginsburg would want us to do and as her friend justice -- the late justice scalia would want us to do. just describing what the joycchs the country faces in the coming weeks. if they do confirm a replacement to justice ginsburg and they go on to lose the senate and the white house, then the democrats are likely to -- i'm not saying whether either of these moves is good or bad, but this is what's likely to happen. and if that happens, the institutional legitimacy of the court will become threatened and destroyed just like the other branches because next time the republicans get in, they will choose -- they will change the size of the court. and in the interim, no decision of the court can be accepted by people of the other perspective. so really there are times in

american history when politicians of bong sidth sides to decide whether there's something more important than their immediate political interest. and that's the institution of the rule of law which is the most important thing that has kept america the shining beacon of justice and hope for the rest of the world. this is up to senators of both parties right now. but unless both sides restrain themselves, then we are likely to see assault on the court's bipartisan legitimacy that would have distressed justice ginsburg, justice scalia, and ultimately abide to the detriment of americans of all perspectives. >> brittany, earlier we had danielle on and she was make point that while republicans and democrats have grievances with government and the courts, republicans have had a more organized method to animate their base around judicial nominees at the federal level and at the supreme court level. it's something the democrats

have just not owned in the way that republicans have owned in the last few decades. can that change? in t in the next 45 days? >> i don't know it can change, but i know it has to change. with all respect to the brilliance and the scholarship of your last guest, as a person whose womb who will be up in front of the supreme court soon, as we have seen it go across multiple legislatures in the last few years as there have been continuous attacks on roe versus wade and as we have lost someone who is a sincere and committed champion of gender rights, i don't have time and so many of us do not have time to be worried about rules that republicans are not actually going to follow and decorum that they are not going to commit to. we have to actually be ready and willing to do the things that we thought were impossible, that we thought were unseemly, that we

thought would buck tradition that, frankly, hasn't served all of us equally in america. the rule of law has not actually served everyone well, and most certainly the gop has continued to exploit that. so we have to be serious to take back the senate, to take back the white house. yes, to consider expanding the supreme court, to consider eradicating the filibuster. and while we're at it, to consider eradicating the electoral college when you consider its roots in white supremacy. so i think it's critically important that we get real here. donald trump is successfully lying to the american people. he's successfully siphoning off just enough voters of color like black men and suppressing the rest of those. we are going to have to play hardball and we have to figure it out in the next 45 days and beyond. >> thank you to all three of you for joining me for your analysis. chuck rosinberg, former u.s. attorney and seen your fbi official, host of the podcast

the oath. brittany cunningham, nbc contributor. and jeff rosen the president and ceo of the national constitution center and the author of conversations with rbg ruth on life, love, liberty, and law. after the break, a champion for women's reproduction rights, justice ginsburg's nonstop quest for gender and equality was one of her most defining characteristics. and just a quick programming note note, joy reid is back in the anchor share pulling extra duty. don't miss it 10:00 a.m. eastern right here on msnbc. we'll be right back. a.m. easten right here on msnbc. we'll be right back. when the world gets complicated,

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♪ this is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. it's a decision that she must make for herself. and when government controls

that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices. >> ruth bader ginsburg talking about abortion rights during her confirmation hearing in 1993. join meg now, dorothy at the university of pennsylvania law school. she's the founding director or penn's program on race, science and society. nancy north, president and ceo of the center for reproductive rights. dorothy, in 2009 in a "new york times" interview, ruth bader ginsburg made the point that reproductive rights are not applied fairly across the board, even to women. not to say that they're fairly applied at all. but her quote was there will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. the states have changed their

abortion laws before roe that are not going to affect policy. we have a policy that affects poor women and i don't know why this hasn't been said more often. your take on that. >> that's absolutely right. even with the protection of the right with the protection of the right to abortion, we've seen that poor women, women of color, indigenous women, black women have all faced extra burdens and in fact, their devaluation has been part of productive health policy in the united states. so she was recognizing a really important point which i think is part of her special contribution to the court. it's not just her vote, it's also her reasoning that she understood the connection between freedom and equality and equality broadly, gender equality, race equality, equality for people with disabilities, equality for people wo aho are immigrants an

just last week a whistle blower revealed that a doctor working at an ice detention center in georgia was performing hysterectomies on a number of incarcerated immigrant women. so we're talking broadly about reproductive justice, whether it's keeping someone from having a baby or compelling someone to have a baby and those are in a context of lots of social inequalities that affect whether or not women and others have access to health care generally. so it's really important that we recognize that we are in a battle for abortion rights for access to health care more broadly and to the freedom and equality and value that we place on people in our society to be able to participate equally and

to have control over our own bodies without these ways in which people are discriminated against based on racism, white supremacy, sexism, patriarch ki, discrimination against people with disabilities. all of this is part of the fight we're in. >> so this is interesting, nancy, because all those things that dorothy is talking about which ruth bader ginsburg understood come down to the fact that roe v wade is not about equality t. it's about privacy. it's a privacy decision and ruth bader ginsburg had stated on the record that she wished that abortion decisions in this nation were actually based on equality for women rather than privacy because it would make it more -- it would make it easier for people to understand and support for roe v wade would be yet higher than it actually is. >> yeah, justice ginsburg was

really clear about the fact that discrimination around pregnancy whether it's about being able to work and be accommodated for work when you're pregnant, whether it's about being able to make decisions about ending a pregnancy, that all of those are related to sex discrimination and all of those are related to the views that society has as she said in some of her opinions. very outdated views of the role of women in the family. so she was really clear that equality was the fundamental basis of decisions about reproductive health care and about pregnancy and that we have to see them in that context. and that's really important because in fact, we have to make sure that women as professor roberts were saying are able to have children, are able to be accommodated when they have children and are able to make the decisions as justice ginsburg said in her nomination process as an assault about their health, their bodies an their futures and that legacy of

understanding equality and being able to control reproductive health is really essentially legacy from justice ginsburg. >> and i've got less than a minute left, but are you worried that as we've seen the etching away at basic abortion rights, the state level in this country, that this next supreme court nominee may seal the deal for people who think that roe v wade is not settled law? >> well, i have never been as concerned as i am at this moment about access to abortion and for the reasons that justice ginsburg has talked about, for the reasons that we heard from professor roberts. it impacts low income women, women from communities of color the hardest and we have to make sure, we have been hit by 450 anti abortion rights laws in state legislatures over the past decade and we just won case in the supreme court in june, a case we never should have had to

litigate because it was the same one we won four years ago. i would sug people go to what if roe fell on the website to show how close we are to a very, very dangerous future. >> well, one of the nominees that president trump put on his list or one of the potential nominees tweeted that out that it's time for roe v wade to go. thank you both of you. that does it for me today. tomorrow i will be in kenosha, wisconsin for part 2 of velshi across america 2020. we're going to keep the discussion going. i'm going to ask voters there what ruth bader ginsburg's death means to them and what it means for their state and their vote. coming up next, coverage continues on a.m. joy.

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you not only make a great justice, you're good enough to be confirmed as secretary of state because state department people never answer the questions fully directly either. >> may i leave you, mr. chairman, just two thoughts that

you can think about in between now and our next round, but one of them was prompted by senator when she reminded us that the spirit of liberty must lie in the hearts of the women and men of this country. it would be really easy, wouldn't it, to appoint pleutonic guardians who would rule wisely for all of us but then we wouldn't have a democracy, would we? we cherish living in a democracy and we also know that this constitution did not create a tricameral system. judges must be mindful of their places in this system and must always remember that we live in a democracy can be destroyed if judges take it upon themselves to rule as