Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst best known for getting fired by the New Yorker after masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues, expressed concern Monday that a forthcoming Supreme Court ruling could limit his right to bribe a mistress to terminate her pregnancy.
"What this means is that a constitutional right that [individuals with a uterus] have had in this country for 50 years, pushing three generations, is gone. It is gone overnight, and it is now up to the politicians," Toobin said after Politico published a leaked opinion draft suggesting the Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights decision. "This is a constitutional earthquake if it stands."
Toobin previously argued that state laws banning abortion after six weeks were unfair to married men seeking to pressure their much younger mistresses to end the pregnancy. The CNN legal analyst found himself in a similar situation years ago as the result of a prolonged extramarital affair with Casey Greenfield, the twenty-something daughter of Toobin's then-colleague Jeff Greenfield.
After knocking up his mistress in 2008, Toobin "questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test, and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn't sure was his," according to the New York Times. (It was.) He also offered Greenfield "money if she'd have an abortion," a source told the New York Daily News. Another source claimed that "when Casey wouldn't have an abortion, Jeff told her she was going to regret it, that she shouldn't expect any help from him."
Greenfield emailed Toobin after giving birth to his son, but he didn't reply. She was ultimately forced to sue for child support. Toobin eventually complied under threat of legal action. "[Toobin] said he was going to leave his wife for her," a knowledgeable source told the Daily News in 2010. "But, by then, Casey had begun to distrust him. She suspected he had several other mistresses."
FACT CHECK: The leaked Supreme Court opinion, if it stands, would have no bearing on existing state abortion laws. In 2019, for example, legislators in Toobin's home state of New York passed the Reproductive Health Act, which explicitly legalized abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and implicitly legalized the procedure beyond that timeframe. Toobin would still be free to bang his coworkers' daughters and pressure them to get abortions.