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SNL’s “humorous” take on abortion

Nov 8, 2021

By Dave Andrusko

Chelsea Steiner was right, only not in the way she celebrated:

Last night on Saturday Night Live, Cecily Strong did the unthinkable. She delivered a poignant yet hilarious message about the importance of reproductive rights, all while dressed as a clown.

In reducing abortion to a “punch line” (to quote Alexandra DeSanctis from National Review), it was “unthinkable” in three ways.

First, only to an audience primed to clap for any pro-abortion message could anyone think this three+ minute exercise in pro-abortion cant is a “poignant yet hilarious message.” Although Cecily Strong was not remotely funny—it was painfully unfunny– the audience dutifully yucked it up. I’m guessing they found her using “clown” as code for women who aborted as original, as funny, and as a way to approach a life-and-death subject through the back door of comedy.

Second, to anyone other than the usual subjects, it was bizarre to hear “Please give them their preemptive Emmy right now,” as The Atlantic’s Deborah Copaken (referring to the team that cobbled this together) swooned. Added reporter Caroline Reilly, the sketch “literally brought tears to my eyes.” And those were the more restrained responses,

Third, solidarity and the “need” for abortion was the thread that held this together and which unsurprisingly brought Strong a chorus of pro-abortion hosannas. Steiner wrote

After sucking down some helium, Strong says, “Here’s my truth: I wouldn’t be a clown here on TV today if it weren’t for the abortion I had the day before my 23rd birthday. Clowns have been helping each other end their pregnancies since the caves. It’s gonna happen, so it ought to be safe, legal, and accessible. We will not go back to the alley, I mean the last thing anyone wants is a bunch of dead clowns in a dark alley.”

(“Safe, legal, and accessible” is a long way from “Safe, legal, and rare.”) The message is clear: Were it not for legal abortion, women could not compete.

Yet an amicus brief filed in the upcoming Mississippi case with the Supreme Court,) law professors Teresa Collett and Helen Alvaré, along with legal scholar Erika Bachiochi, representing 240 women scholars and professionals, “reject the argument that the ‘ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation’ requires the availability of abortion.”

But, in a real sense, this is beside the point. This is the converted talking to the converted. How can mere “facts” compete with the subtleites of Cecily Strong?

Categories: Abortion
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