AMY GOODMAN: We just lost Ian on this issue. But, Dahlia, you’re covering this very same beat about what Susan Collins can do.

DAHLIA LITHWICK: Two important things that Ian just said that are really worth reiterating. These folks don’t have to vote no on Kavanaugh; all they have to do is vote no on Kavanaugh until we find out what happened. That’s an awfully low-risk proposition, given, as Ian said, pretty credible allegations that something very violent happened to this woman. That’s the first thing.

The second thing—and this is so important—is that this really does give cover to people like Collins and Murkowski, who have been playing this game of saying, “OK, I get it, he was put on the court to overturn Roe, but I don’t think he’s going to do it,” and the sort of fatuous claims that they believe him when he says Roe is good precedent. This gives them cover. They don’t have to guess what he’s going to do in the future. All they need to do is scrutinize what is alleged to have happened in the past. That’s a much easier proposition for them.

AMY GOODMAN: And what Ian Millhiser tweeted: “So, to summarize, a confessed serial sexual predator nominated a man who is credibly accused of attempted rape to be the key vote to strip women of reproductive freedom.” Which brings us back to the issue that both you and Ian wrote about, and that is this issue of Roe v. Wade and what Brett Kavanaugh is saying right until now. I mean, we talked about his story of Facebook and censorship and fact checking and what is called fake news and what isn’t, but the substance of the point that you wrote about on Roe v. Wade and what we understand Brett Kavanaugh has said, right until now, in 2018?

DAHLIA LITHWICK: It’s so important, Amy. It’s the most important piece of this. This is a person who there was no doubt—Donald Trump was unequivocal. When he ran for office, he said, “I will put someone on the court who will overturn Roe.” Donald Trump also talked about punishing women who had abortions. He was clear. Then he put someone on the court who has quite an extensive history of writing in praise, for instance, of Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe. It’s not unclear what—

AMY GOODMAN: And that was Neil Gorsuch.

DAHLIA LITHWICK: Well, no—and now Kavanaugh. I mean, he’s picked—explicitly picked someone who has spoken, who has written in the Garza case about “abortion on demand.” All the code words were there. And all the pro-life—

AMY GOODMAN: The Garza case—

DAHLIA LITHWICK: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —the immigrant woman who wanted to have an abortion, who was being held in Texas, and ultimately did succeed in getting one, but Kavanaugh actually wrote that she shouldn’t.

DAHLIA LITHWICK: Right. He would have put up new, imaginary roadblocks, having—she had kind of done everything she had to do under the law, and he constructed new tests that would have made it virtually impossible for her to procure an abortion. All of this happens. And the pro-life groups, by the way, pushing him out and celebrating him: “This is the beginning of the end. Roe ends.” And then he gets on the stand and says, “I’m not going to do anything to Roe.” And we’ve had to accept that.

If you think about the visuals of those confirmation hearings, of women dressed up as The Handmaid’s Tale, you know, women being dragged—200 women being dragged screaming from the Senate—and you can say, “Oh, this is not decorous, and this is not polite.” But this is life and death for women. And to say, “Oh, I have an open mind,” with the history that he has, that’s the central issue that we’re losing a little bit now in conversations about whether he told the truth or even this conversation.

There is no doubt what will happen to women’s reproductive healthcare. You can call it what you want to call it. You can call it reversing Roe. You can call it hollowing out Roe. We know where he stands. And the notion that this is going to be a hard question for Collins and Murkowski, who claim to be for reproductive rights, this just got a lot easier for them. Now they just have to say, “We should hear this woman out.”

AMY GOODMAN: And we will see what happens, whether Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is able to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to talk about what she alleges is Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted rape of her. Dahlia Lithwick, I want to thank you for being with us, senior editor at Slate.com, and Ian Millhiser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go south to Texas to the story of a man who was in his apartment, a police officer enters his apartment thinking it’s her own, and shoots him dead. We’ll talk about what happened next. Stay with us.