Athe head of national elections in the US, John Oliver looked at the situation of abortion rights, which is “a big problem” in several races, including the race for the governor of Kentucky, the races of the Virginia state senate, and the initiative to strengthen the right to abortion in the constitution of the state of Ohio.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v Wade last June, “things are bleak”, said the host of Last Week Tonight on Sunday evening. Fourteen states have enacted near-total abortion restrictions, and two have proposed a six-week ban.
The hostile environment has led to some creative ideas; one in California has proposed a floating abortion clinic that would operate in international waters. “It’s a lawless place, there are no rules, anything goes. It’s not only a ridiculous plot, but it’s also the real premise of the movie Money Plane,” Oliver said. cartels and arms dealers who will never be arrested because the plane of money is always flying in the international air.”
Oliver encouraged watching the film – “if you pull out the fast food, it should start to sink in when you meet the villain of the film, Darius Emanuel Grouch III, AKA ‘The Rumble’, played by Kelsey Grammer,” who says in one clip: “Or What do you want to bet on, the money plane is on the cover. Do you want to bet on a man dating a crocodile? Money plane.”
“We deserved a Frasier reboot,” quipped Oliver.
Jokes aside, mobile clinics or out-of-state options don’t work for most women. “For many, crossing state lines is impossible, even before you consider that, in states where abortion is still legal, it’s not like they’ve suddenly had providers take care of out-of-state patients,” Oliver explained. . “So now there is a big backlog, which means that women who travel to another state can have a lot of difficulty getting positions, and it can be difficult for those who live in other states where it is still legal.”
Between the ban, strict restrictions and confusing criminalization, like in Texas, where citizens report those who help and prevent abortions, “the abortion law in America is currently a mess, many are confused and some are thinking of drinking bleach,” said Oliver.
However, lawmakers – mostly men – have argued that abortion bans make health care safer; another Texas legislator declared the state “safe for minors”.
“Abortion bans are not safe for women, and can unnecessarily put them in hell,” Oliver said, before sharing a video of a Texas woman who was forced to give birth to her child, putting her at great risk. although it would suffocate to death within an hour. “It’s a really bad thing to add to the list of things pregnant women are not safe to do … ride a rollercoaster, eat sushi, dye your roots and just be in the state of Texas,” Oliver joked.
“Doctors find themselves stuck between trying to do what they know is best for their patients while also not breaking the law, or having their license revoked,” he explained.
And health exemptions are so scarce that there are cases of women waiting for their conditions to worsen to qualify for legal health care; in another clip, a Texas woman described how she waited days to get sick enough for doctors to legally induce her doomed pregnancy. “When we say that these laws deprive people of the right to control their bodies, this is what we are talking about,” said Oliver. “He had to wait from Tuesday to Friday to be close to death to be saved. Pre-selecting to save his life was illegal in his state.
“It’s no surprise,” she continued, that women in states with abortion bans are three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after.
“The rhetoric about the Dobbs decision was that it ‘returns abortion decisions to the states,'” Oliver noted. “Which is a very nice way of saying that it took the decisions away from the people and their doctors, and put them in the hands of state legislators. And those politicians are now passing medical legislation without medical understanding.”
What do we do now? Oliver advises, first, he screams. “But the most important thing to do right now is – and I’m sorry to even say this – vote. Abortion rights, for all their attacks, are still very popular.” In all six cases where abortion rights have been on the ballot since Dobbs, voters have decided to keep them. “This is a real issue where voting can have an immediate and lasting impact,” he said.
“Abortion is a health decision between the patient and his doctor, stop. And it’s surprising to see some push to make their districts safer for ‘little kids’, while also making it more dangerous for the people they’re growing up to be,” Oliver concluded.
“I hope that one day we can finally get to a place where people who want to terminate a pregnancy, save their lives or make any other medical or reproductive decision about their bodies won’t have to seek the same legal loopholes that the money plane provides for those who want to bet on a dude talking to an alligator in front of Frasier.”
