MSNBC panel demands Dems step up for women: Use Roe 'to make Republicans pay for this'​

MSNBC host Chris Hayes unleashed on Republicans for refusing to allow women any kind of bodily autonomy, but at the same time, he called out Democrats for refusing to fight for women.

Hayes explained that they're right, electing more Democrats is a part of the problem because there aren't enough votes to break the filibuster and codify Roe v. Wade. But that's not sufficient, he argued.

"Just telling people to vote as the sole guidance, when your party already controls both chambers of Congress in the White House, it just can't be enough," Hayes explained. "It's not enough, especially because, let's be honest here. I don't want to get too dark, but it is where it is. There's no reason to believe the Supreme Court would let a legislative version of Roe stand. "

But, Democrats should try, particularly if they think that they're going to lose power in November, Hayes explained. They owe it to their voters, he noted and they should force Republicans to answer for why they're going to mandate a child carry a rape baby.

"The one small silver lining of the aftermath — this unbelievable catastrophe, and it is a catastrophe, is that the country is behind them," Hayes said of Democrats. "There are more of them and then there are the opposition. A majority of Americans, nearly 60 percent, oppose overturning Roe. Go up to Americans, and ask them, do they think a 14-year-old should be forced to carry her rapist child to term, which is the law of the land, and will be more and more states. And they will tell you, 'No,' by a large majority. Democrats need to harness that. They need to make sure the party that has brought that state of affairs to be, and this is not an abstraction, to be clear here. There are 14 states around the country, right, now we're counting. They exist. It's not without experiment. Democrats need to make a party that brought the state of affairs about to own it to not let it down. You have the majority, you have public opinion on your side, you have the wind in your back, and you better use it to make them pay for this. For supporting this hideous decision every chance you get."

He welcomed former Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), who was elected in a more conservative Democratic district.

"Here's the deal: we need to be talking to women, because fundamentally, women get this, right?" Hill explained. "We get whether you have a friend that you've had to take to help get an abortion, or if you've known somebody, or have had a pregnancy loss of a wanted baby. And you know the tragedy this decision could mean, it does mean for people — that they could die."

The maternal mortality rate in the United States is among the highest in wealthy nations, so there's a fear that forced birth could mean a woman has a greater chance of dying in labor. At the same time, there's always a fear of women attempting to give themselves abortions or seeking an unlicensed person to do it and leading to health emergencies if not death. So, Hill explained that people need to explain to Democratic members of Congress that doing nothing isn't an option.

because they can't -- it's something with a baby that they wanted in the first place. people really need to understand this has huge implications for your ability to choose, when you have kids, it's the majority of people who get abortions, mothers themselves. We need to be just having this conversation and saying, 'do you really get what's going on here?' And then, our leaders — I am mortified, frankly — that our leaders have not stepped up in a bigger way, to say this is a fire. This is the first step, as you mentioned, the first step backward in rights, that we've had since my grandmother's generation."

She noted that it isn't as if Democrats didn't know it was coming, they knew ahead of time and there were no plans. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) read a poem in a press conference.

"But we are here now. We are here, and we need to have concrete plans," said Hill. "In fact, we do. We know what they are. That's what we're working on, immediate plans, immediate actions for people to take today, and what we need to do for short-term political answers. Executive actions, and then, what we need to do in the long term, because the answer is not 'Wait on November and vote.'"

See the full discussion below:

Republican must pay for what they're doing to womenwww.youtube.com