Alyssa Farah Griffin caused quite a stir with some comments she made amid a discussion about abortion on the Friday, June 27, episode of The View. The conversation began with Joy Behar bringing up the Supreme Court’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood in South Carolina, and turned to talk of Adriana Smith, a Georgia woman who was kept alive on ventilators while pregnant because of her state’s abortion laws.
Sara Haines brought the story up. “She went in having concerns about her pregnancy, they sent her home, she went back and it ended up she had blood clots,” Haines shared. “They kept her alive by ventilators, although her family wanted to let her go because she was completely brain-dead, but they did it to keep the baby, against the family’s wishes. And the baby was born at, like, oe pound. To me, that’s such an overstep.”
That’s when Griffin jumped in to give her take. “Respectfully, I see it differently,” she said. “I’m trying to get pregnant right now, and if God forbid something happened to me and I was carrying a child, I would want every medical intervention possible to keep me alive to have that baby survive. And [Adriana’s] baby is alive today.”
X blew up with comments about Griffin’s stance. “Alyssa what kind of life is the 21 week old baby going to have? Life just for the sake of life is a sick concept. Of course if you aren’t impacted by the sacrifices needed to be made to care for a baby that prematurely, you see life as life,” one person wrote. Someone else said, “That’s YOU AFG!! That’s what YOU want! Her family didn’t want that,” and another person added, “Of course, Alyssa doesn’t see anything wrong with the Adriana Smith forced birth case! So on-brand for her!”
Another user also pointed out, “Alyssa, be careful what you wish for. Your choice is not every woman’s choice.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Griffin said, “I come down on the side of there needs to be some access, and there needs to be some restriction. That’s how most of the Western world operates. Most of Europe is between 14 and 20 weeks. … I think it’s a medical and ethical decision that because of the ethics of it, the law has to come into it. Recently a 20-week-old baby survived outside of the womb because of medical intervention. That’s a miracle. That’s science. That’s technology making something that seemed impossible possible. So science is moving quicker than the public policy debate around it and at some point we have to ask ourselves: If a baby can live outside the womb at a certain point, should there be a restriction on the ability to terminate a pregnancy?”
The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC