Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade later this year. The possibility of that reversal seems more likely than ever, following the leaked draft opinion published by POLITICO last week.

For many, the looming termination of a constitutional right that's been instantiated in law, policy, and practice for nearly 50 years is no laughing matter. As my friend, Lizz Winstead, regularly reminds me, if you're laughing, it means you still have hope. We asked political satirist, co-creator of The Daily Show, and co-founder of the Abortion Access Front, Lizz Winstead to drop by the show for a little hope and humor. Welcome back to The Takeaway, Lizz.

Lizz Winstead: Thanks so much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, we know what many American states are going to do if Roe v. Wade falls this summer. Does Abortion Access Front have a strategy?

Lizz Winstead: We do. We are right now like everyone else, feeling just a lot of catharsis and taking to the streets. One of the things that Abortion Access Front is very excited about is the fact that whenever these big things happen, especially when it comes to abortion, a lot of folks don't know all the ways that they can actually help. It's not talked about a lot in the media, the folks doing the work are so busy doing the work that they don't really have time to amplify their own work.

What we decided to do in July, after we figure out exactly what people need, exactly a little bit where the dust has settled is we're doing something called Operation Save Abortion, which is quite simple. It is going to be an incredible afternoon of activism where we're bringing all the top activists from around the country doing grassroots work into New York to do a series of live stream videos that people are going to be able to access and have, hopefully during house parties.

We'll have a panel on what it means to be a clinic escort, what it means to help out in an abortion fund, what it means to be an abortion doula, how you can help legislatively turn things around, working with people who are experts in ways that you never knew, and then we're going to give toolkits and little workshop things for you to do with your house party.

At the end of the day, after this training day or immersion in all the ways that you can help with abortion activism, we will and we have to vet people, sadly, because there's a lot of bad actors out there. We're going to vet everyone that participated and then hook them up with the area that interested them the most with the people in their community, so we can help grow the community bases.

That these folks who are doing such good work on the ground, when we are donating to these places, and everyone's been really good about donating to abortion funds, I don't think a lot of people know that, A, they're all volunteer most of the time, and B, sometimes it's only six or eight people doing this work, so that if we can get people hooked up with them and get them trained, they're going to get that much-needed break, they're going to be able to help financially grow, be able to just have more people spreading the word. We just feel like it's really important.

I'm a third-tier celebrity, I like to call myself, and so I love to be able to create a platform to highlight other people's work, and especially when so much of this work is being done by Black and brown women. Let's give them a showcase and follow their lead. We always know things get better when we're following the lead of Black women.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Indeed, amplification is critical and feels like in this moment, for those who are preparing for what would likely be a long journey to addressing the potential overturning, reversal, of Roe v. Wade, we had Michele Goodwin come on to talk with us after the leaked draft opinion from SCOTUS was published in POLITICO. I know that Professor Goodwin is someone who's going to be part of your big event. I want to play for you just a little something she said to us.

Michele Goodwin: What I find interesting in this draft opinion is how the court then ignores exactly this very important principle that you're speaking to, which is that our United States Constitution does not recognize embryos and fetuses as persons, it doesn't.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This was our big Takeaway, our reaction, but how have you reacted since that draft opinion?

Lizz Winstead: Yes, Dr. Goodwin is also a board member of Abortion Access Front. I'm just so proud of any time she opens her mouth, I just feel the world is better.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh my goodness.

Lizz Winstead: I think that's the point. For them to say abortion's not in the Constitution, and base an entire civil right to be taken away from us when embryos and fetuses certainly are not people. It's been very rough because, quite frankly, Melissa, we're on the road a lot and we're talking to people a lot and on the ground a lot, and the thing that I'm hearing and the thing that I'm actually feeling is I've never felt like I have less value. It feels like there is a concerted effort, a 24-hour assault that is to devalue the humanity of those of us who could give birth.

Having self-determination just doesn't play into the strategy of this extremism that we're seeing because this extremism lives, and breathes, and thrives on making sure subjugation happens at every front, and a racial front and a gender front. We're really witnessing in a way that feels dystopian, but it isn't, it's real. Us really turning into culture, something that is less than human. I find that terrifying, and I'm hoping that people really understand what is at stake when you say the government now gets to make rules about your own destiny and what happens to your body. It's terrifying.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay. You talk about this 24-hour assault. Is it going too far to stand and protest at the homes of the justices? Does that constitute an assault on their privacy?

Lizz Winstead: I've been reading a lot of takes from almost entirely people who will not suffer the way others will. I think peaceful protest in front of the places and the people where oppression is happening is it should be, because they're trying to compare people who went to Michael's and cleared out a couple of the shelves with some posters, and had a candlelight vigil with insurrectionists. We've been told this always.

We've been told and we've taken to the streets in the '60s, and the '70s, and against the war and against racial injustice. We've been told this over and over again that this doesn't help. I would argue what has sitting back done? Nothing. I would also argue, ironically, that the Supreme Court ruled against having a buffer zone for protests in front of clinics to protect the clinics. They saw this as a constitutional right for people.

It's very interesting to me how people think that they can lump all protests together and a protest is non-violent. I think there's no other way to express-- you can vote, you can do a lot of things, but the justices are immune, it seems to be, from any kind of ramifications. They have lifetime appointments, they aren't elected. Along with other things, if people want to voice themselves peacefully in front of the very people who said, "We refuse to acknowledge this constitutional right, and we're going to take it away after 50 years," if people want to voice peacefully in front of the homes of the people that did that, I would say, "Please do it and please do it peacefully," because I don't see the outrage of how many times the physicians that I know have protesters outside of their homes by anti-abortion extremists.

I don't see the outrage or media coverage on those same doctors whose neighborhoods are flooded with leaflets with their names and addresses, calling them baby murderers. I don't see the flood of anger about the people who are outside the clinics day in and day out terrorizing patients, and even I don't see and this has been happening recently, and it's something that happened in the '70s and has returned, clinic invasions, where people are literally walking into clinics and terrorizing patients and staff in the clinics until law enforcement has to haul them out.

These things are happening on the regular and it's invading actually more than just standing on a sidewalk. It's going into their places of business, it's going into their mailboxes, and if you're going to be angry about a lot of things, which is what the other side is arguing, I would like to see more stories about that as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you're describing the anger, the protests, the bifurcation that has occurred in so many ways, I wonder-- and I'm trying to connect that back to your earlier point around amplification of messaging. I certainly sometimes, do you ever feel like you're preaching to the choir that it's hard to have a conversation across lines of disagreement or to even convey information? Maybe not even to those who disagree but maybe just folks who, for example, don't tune into feminist buzzkills. To talk to folks about just pure informational things like what a fake clinic is or what plan B is.

Lizz Winstead: I think that when it comes to the larger scope in this polarized world that we live in, it's gotten more polarized. I have never been one to think that someone who sends me letters and finds my home address or my email and says that I'm a baby murderer, and they're going to come and get me. I'm never going to change somebody's mind who believes that abortion is murder. I think that what the goal is here, and there are so many different ways to talk about an issue, right? I think that you have to-- for some people who are learning for the first time, they're surprised about exactly even that abortion-- like we use the term surgical abortion for when you go into a clinic, and that's not even true.

There's no cutting, abortion is a procedure. I think that the other side, the anti-abortion side has controlled the narrative so much that even people who are passively pro-choice oftentimes don't understand really what's at stake. I think a lot of times people who are my age who are-- I'm postmenopausal, who can't get pregnant anymore, think it's no longer their issue.

I think that we don't tie in the intersections of oppression when it comes to abortion, and why everybody needs to care about it. I think people hear information differently. I think people respond to information differently, and I think there's different starting points all the time.

If someone's just learning about abortion, even learning, like you said, that plan B is birth control, it's actually not an abortion. An IUD actually prevents a fertilized egg from being implanted. If somebody believes that pregnancy or life, they say life begins at a fertilized egg, conception, as they say, which isn't a medical term. I don't know that folks understand that there's a journey that a fertilized egg takes, right? It goes for 72 hours into the uterine walls, and when it implants itself, there's actually a pregnancy hormone that will release and that's when pregnancy begins.

A lot of these people who are saying, "We must ban the IUD, or we must ban plan B," that's like saying, "We're going to ban abortion before pregnancy," which is, when people hear that, they're like, "What?" It's like, "I know." There's a lot of stuff people don't know.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Last question for you, Lizz. How does humor help in all of this?

Lizz Winstead: Humour always helps because when the mighty decide to puff their feathers in ways that are terrible, bringing humor that shines a light on the hypocrisy of our oppressors is very galvanizing. Also, you can get good information out with humor, and I think that also I-- I have said this to you before, Melissa, but I firmly believe if you're still laughing, you still have hope. Anytime that you can tap into someone, and help them laugh and make them see that we are a group of people that sees the hypocrisy in all of this, let's make fun of the hypocrisy together, it really builds community.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, co-founder of Abortion Access Front. Thanks so much for joining us on The Takeaway.

Lizz Winstead: Thanks so much.

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