How Fox News Reacted to Roe v. Wade Being Overturned

June 24, 2022 will go down in American history as the day the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion that the 1973 landmark ruling of Roe v. Wade had established and protected for the past nearly 50 years.

For abortion rights activists, it’s a terrible day, which is likely to be followed by a much darker time as the Supreme Court’s ruling threatens to lead to abortion being banned in almost half of the country.

Conservative news network Fox News broke the news at 10:11 a.m E.T. with the channel’s chyron changing to “Supreme Court Reverses Roe v. Wade” as it cut to live reaction from outside the Supreme Court.

The split-screen focused the video and audio on the left hand side of the screen on anti-abortion activists celebrating the landmark ruling, while the top right showed the Supreme Court building and the bottom right displayed abortion rights activists.

The Fox News anchor noted, “What you are seeing there are people who are overjoyed about the decision in this particular shot here—and then you also have people who are obviously going to be dismayed about this.”

Fox News chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream then proceeded to break down the ruling from Washington D.C.

Bream said: “As you know, we now get these by computer. In the old days we would get the hard copies and we would run them down the steps… It says that Roe and Casey are overruled… the court says today that Roe and Casey are gone.”

After that, legal analyst and regular Fox contributor Andy McCarthy, was interviewed to offer his reaction.

“It’s a great day for life. A great day for the restoration of constitutional jurisprudence. It is just a great day,” said McCarthy on air during a panel discussion on Friday, commenting on the freshly announced news of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“The opinion is exactly what we had reason to expect it would be in early May. The court despite the terrible onslaught of protest and intimidation in the last seven weeks stood strong… I just think a lot of us have been working on this for decades, I just think it’s a wonderful day,” he concluded.

Fox News legal analyst Andy McCarthy on the overturning of Roe v. Wade: “It’s a great day for life. A great day for the restoration of constitutional jurisprudence. It is just a great day… It’s a wonderful day.” pic.twitter.com/Vgi4szsIvJ

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) June 24, 2022

The ruling of the Supreme Court now leaves the legal status of abortion up to individual states, a move which is expected to significantly restrict access to abortion in the long term.

The 6-to-3 vote was a victory for the Republican supermajority created by former President Donald Trump by appointing three justices during his administration.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Samuel Alito in his opinion, while Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a separate concurring opinion.

The three Democratic Justices in the court dissented—Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier said: “Politically it’s an earthquake… I think the biggest message it sends is that elections have consequences and the Supreme Court and putting those justices on the supreme court really changes the fabric of our country.”

Co-host of The Five and America’s Newsroom Dana Perino said: “I want to ask Bret Baier quickly to reflect on one thing. Think about Mitch McConnell’s decision to not have a hearing for Merrick Garland, the Supreme Court nominee of Barack Obama that he wanted to put forward. That is — if you look back and you want to see a series of events that leads to today, that was a really interesting decision back then and it is having a big impact today.

Baier replied: “I think you are right, Dana. That had a massive impact. The ability for President Trump to fill the seat that enabled this vote to happen. And that is what I was talking about earlier about political consequences… This is going to be fascinating to watch. There will be another push to get rid of the filibuster to try to get Democrats while they have control to have some piece of legislation that counters this ruling.”

Newsweek has asked Fox News for comment.