Ahead of statewide elections in the US, John Oliver looked at the state of abortion rights, which is a “huge issue” in a number of races, including the Kentucky governor’s race, Virginia state senate races, and a measure to enshrine the right to abortion in Ohio’s state constitution.
Since the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v Wade last June, “things are bleak”, the Last Week Tonight host said on Sunday evening. Fourteen states have enacted near-total abortion bans, and two have proposed six-week bans.
The hostile landscape has led to some creative ideas; one Californian proposed a floating abortion clinic that would operate in international waters. “Lawless territory, no rules, anything goes. It’s not only a foolproof plan, but it’s also the literal premise for the movie Money Plane,” said Oliver. “You didn’t hallucinate that during peak Covid – there really was a film about a casino in the sky full of thieves, cartels and arms dealers who can never be arrested because the money plane is always moving in international airspace.”
Oliver advocated for watching the movie – “if you pop an edible immediately, it should start to kick in right around when you meet the film’s villain, Darius Emanuel Grouch III, AKA ‘The Rumble’, played by Kelsey Grammer,” who says in one clip: “Whatever you want to wager on, the money plane has you covered. You wanna bet on a dude fucking an alligator? Money plane.”
“It’s the Frasier reboot that we deserved,” Oliver quipped.
Jokes aside, mobile clinics or out-of-state options just aren’t practical for many women. “For many, traveling across state lines isn’t feasible, even before you consider that, in states where abortion remains legal, it’s not like they’ve had a sudden surge in providers to handle out-of-state patients,” Oliver explained. “So there are now significant backlogs, meaning that women who travel to another state may have more difficulty getting appointments, and it may even become hard for those living in some states where it remains legal.”
Between bans, onerous restrictions and confusing criminalization, such as in Texas, which deputized citizens to report those aiding and abetting abortion, “abortion law in America is currently a complete clusterfuck, with many confused and others considering drinking bleach,” said Oliver.
And yet, lawmakers – mostly men – have argued that abortion bans make healthcare safer; one Texas legislator declared the state “safe for little babies”.
“Abortion bans are, objectively, not safe for women, and can needlessly put them through absolute hell,” Oliver countered, before sharing a video of a Texas woman who was forced to give birth to her baby, at great risk to her, even though it would suffocate to death within an hour. “It is a truly horrible thing to have to add to the list of things pregnant women are not safe to do … ride a rollercoaster, eat sushi, dye your roots and simply exist in the state of Texas,” Oliver joked.
“Medical professionals are now finding themselves caught in the middle between trying to do what they know is medically right for their patients while also not running afoul of the law, or having their license revoked,” he explained.
And health exemptions are so scarce that there are instances of women waiting for their conditions to deteriorate to be legally eligible for healthcare; in another clip, a Texas woman explained how she waited for days to become sick enough for doctors to legally be able to induce her doomed pregnancy. “When we say that these laws take away people’s right to control their own body, this is what we’re talking about,” Oliver said. “She had to wait from Tuesday till Friday to get close enough to dying to be saved. Pre-emptively choosing to save her own life was illegal in her state.
“It’s no wonder,” he continued, that women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die due to pregnancy, childbirth or soon after.
“The rhetoric around the Dobbs decision was that it simply ‘returned decisions on abortion to the states’,” Oliver noted. “Which is a very nice way of saying it removed decisions from individuals and their doctors, and placed them in the hands of state legislators. And those politicians are now legislating medicine without even a modicum of medical understanding.”
What do we do now? Oliver advised, first, screaming. “But the most important thing for you to do right now is – and I apologize for even saying this – to vote. Abortion rights are, for all the attacks on them, still widely popular.” In all six instances that abortion rights have been on the ballot since Dobbs, voters have decided to preserve them. “This is genuinely a case where voting can have an immediate and lasting effect,” he said.
“Abortion is a medical decision between a patient and their doctor, full stop. And it is maddening to see some push to make their states safe for ‘little babies’, while also making it far more dangerous for the people they grow up to be,” Oliver concluded.
“Hopefully, one day, we can eventually get to a place where people who want to end a pregnancy, save their own life or make any other medical or reproductive decision about their own body will not have to seek out the same legal loopholes that the money plane provides for those who want to bet on a dude fucking an alligator in front of Frasier.”
