On Thursday night, Seth Meyers dedicated his latest “A Closer Look” segment to the controversial anti-choice bill in Alabama which would ban all abortions in the state—even in cases or rape or incest. Governor Kay Ivey inked the bill on Wednesday, offering it as a particularly extreme constitutional challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
“Think about that: they passed a bill they know is unconstitutional, and they don’t care,” Meyers said of the Alabama anti-choice bill. “Can you imagine how Republicans would react if New York and California passed laws just banning all gun ownership? The NRA would send out an all-caps email saying ‘TYRANNY IS HERE’; Trump would tweet something like, ‘Gun grabbin’ libs, not nice!!!!!!’; and Sean Hannity would scream so loud that the screen on your TV would crack.”
“It will not shock you to learn that some of the men voting for these bills have no idea how pregnancy or reproduction work,” added Meyers, bringing up Sen. Clyde Chambliss (R-AL), who announced, “I’m not trained medically, so I don’t know all the proper medical terminology and timelines, but from what I’ve read, what I’ve been told, there’s some period of time before you can know that a woman is pregnant.”
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Unbelievable. “Wait: You’re not medically trained? Because you fucking nailed it, dude,” said Meyers. “Did it really not ever occur to you to look into the ‘terminology and timelines’ before voting on this bill?”
“But of course, this isn’t about protecting life,” Meyers continued. “If that’s what it was about then Republicans would invest money in maternity care, parental leave, universal pre-K, or any number of policies that would actually help families raise children. What it’s really about is depriving women of their basic human rights. And Chambliss basically gave the game away when he was asked why the bill wouldn’t apply to eggs fertilized through IVF.”
In those cases, Chambliss said, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”
“Dude, you just admitted it: it’s not in a woman, so we don’t care,” argued Meyers. “You said out loud the thing Republicans pretend they aren’t doing.”
