It was a family reunion for The View on Wednesday as former panelist Elisabeth Hasselbeck returned as a guest co-host to sit beside her old sparring partners Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg during the ABC daytime talk show’s 25th season on the air. Hasselbeck, who acted as the show’s conservative panelist from 2003 to 2013, returned to the table for a conversation that started off warmly enough.
“Welcome back to the table,” Goldberg told Hasselbeck, agreeing that although she and Hasselbeck disagree about plenty of subjects, she’s had “some of the best conversations” with her over the years about those topics. “It was great, for me, to have you as my first conservative,” Goldberg added. Hasselbeck agreed, saying it was important to have women with different viewpoints having these conversations on the air. “I think it’s sharpening to have these conversations and understand why do you think something that’s so wrong,” she joked.
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One of those divisive topics was up for discussion Wednesday as Hasselbeck predictably didn’t agree with Goldberg or Behar when it came to abortion rights. The Nashville resident revealed she was adamantly anti-abortion as she encouraged people who become pregnant without the desire to be to consider adoption.
“God made us smart enough to know when it wasn’t going to work for us,” Goldberg responded. “That’s the beauty of giving us freedom of choice.” Hasselbeck also agreed with the controversial ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade, saying that “just because something is a right doesn’t make it right.”
Hasselbeck got push-back from Behar especially, who pointed out that adoption isn’t as easy of a choice for many people as her co-host was making it out to be. Behar said that with more than 117,000 children already looking to be adopted in the U.S. as we speak, it’s not as simple as Hasselbeck hoped it would be. She continued that banning abortion is a form of judgment, despite how Hasselbeck saw the recent court reversal. “But when you’re prohibiting something you are, in fact, judging them,” she explained.
