CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has said this more than once today. In his view, Kennedy’s retirement makes this a done deal. He predicts that by the end of 2019, abortion will be illegal in nearly half of U.S. states.

“Roe v. Wade is doomed. It is gone because Donald Trump won the election and because he’s going to have the chance to appoint two Supreme Court Justices,” Toobin said. Toobin also predicted how it would happen, “You are going to see 20 states pass laws banning abortion outright, just banning abortion, because they know that there are now going to be five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Abortion will be illegal in a significant part of the United States in 18 months. There is just no doubt about that.”

Ken Cuccinelli disagreed, saying some states might take that path but questioning the idea this would be illegal in nearly half the country in 18 months. “You will see this now as an open political debate,” he said. He continued, “All overturning Roe v. Wade does is, as Jeffrey points out, it returns it to the states. So then it suddenly becomes a state issue in 50 states.”

This is a point that rarely gets much airtime in this debate. Overturning Roe doesn’t make abortion illegal except in places where voters want it to be illegal. What Roe did was turn a political issue into a right and thereby make it very difficult for places that don’t want this to get rid of it. But even if Roe is overturned, California, New York, all of New England and a bunch of other places where a significant percentage of Americans live are still going to support legal abortion. Abortion doesn’t end with Roe, not by a long shot. The battle just moves to the states.

And that will allow our laws, at least in some places to look more like the ones in Europe where abortion is largely legal for the first 6-12 weeks and then restricted after that. Here’s a Prager U video about that:

Here’s the clip of Toobin’s gloom and doom. Don’t miss host Brooke Baldwin’s “Wow” of amazement in response: