Last November, Cecily Strong dropped by “Weekend Update” to deliver one of the most inspired desk pieces in Saturday Night Live history as a clown who felt she had no choice but to speak out about the abortion she had when she was 23 after Texas passed its six-week abortion ban.
A year later, on the eve of the midterm elections and Roe v. Wade in the rearview mirror, Strong returned to one-up herself.
This time, the veteran SNL cast member was in character as “Tammy the Trucker, who promises she’s here to talk about gas prices and definitely not abortion.”
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“All I’m here to talk about is gas even though the Supreme Court sent Roe v. Wade to that big pit stop in the sky,” she told Colin Jost. “50 years of precedent, beep, beep!”
As the bit continued, Strong gradually dropped her character to open up about how the attack on abortion rights has been wearing on her.
“I am just trying to get through this moment, OK?” she explained. “Gas prices are up and families are hurting, but that’s not going to magically disappear no matter who you vote for. We’re in a global recession fueled by corporate greed and war, honk honk, breaker, breaker. But what will keep disappearing is safe access to abortion. It’s not really magic because they told us that’s what they’re going to do, and they have been doing it.”
“I don’t want to talk about abortion on live TV or Peacock, whatever that counts as,” Strong joked. “But these are scary times, OK? Because they don’t want to just take away access to health care. They want to criminalize it too. It’s so bad, us truck drivers are warning each other to delete our period tracking apps. I just want to know what week to wear my bad underwear, but I can’t in case some dickhead in Texas thinks my period is evidence of a crime!”
By the end of the segment, Strong was telling Jost, “The truth is, I have felt pretty helpless over the past year, and it’s hard to know what to say to make other truckers feel better.”
“So here’s one thing I can say,” she continued. “There’s one mother-trucking thing we can do to fight for mother-trucking freedom to make our own healthcare decisions, and that’s vote. And I hope to hell everyone votes. Because remember, we all love someone who’s had an abortion—I mean, drives a truck, beep beep!”
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