The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling last week that frozen embryos fertilized in test tubes legally qualify as living, breathing human beings sent Republicans scrambling to clarify their positions so as not to lose women’s votes in the election. 2024, and John Oliver was not willing to allow it. they get away with it.
In Last week tonightOliver said equating in vitro fertilization (IVF) with real people was “wrong for a number of reasons, mainly if you freeze an embryo, it’s fine. “If you freeze a person, you have to do some explaining.”
But the Alabama court’s ruling has “huge implications” across the country, as an estimated 2 percent of Americans are born through IVF. The ruling led many of that state’s fertility clinics to immediately suspend treatments for fear they could be sued for wrongful death for unused, discarded or destroyed embryos. That, in turn, prevents countless couples from continuing their efforts to have children. “IVF cycles require weeks of careful monitoring and expensive treatments. You can’t just pause and wait for the court case to end,” Oliver said.
The case that caused the “seismic decision,” for its part, has a wild origin, resulting from a patient who accessed the freezers inside a clinic and accidentally dropped some vials, destroying them. “And while that accident is truly horrific, someone breaking into a lab and dumping frozen embryos is not murder. If anything, it sounds like the script for a pretty tacky Mr. Bean sequel,” Oliver said, accompanied by a graphic of Rowan Atkinson in the fake movie. Diagnosis of Mr. Eggative Bean. Motto: “Embry-uh-oh.”
Babies’ dreams dashed by Alabama court’s IVF Nightmare ruling
The judge’s ruling is in line with far-right theocratic efforts to ban abortion and women’s reproductive rights across the country, but as Oliver noted, this is not helping Republicans on the campaign trail. Former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley, for example, had to backtrack after initially reacting to the ruling by saying, “When you’re talking about an embryo, you’re talking about… a life.”
Oliver then played a clip of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) apparently catching the logical glitch in real time while answering questions from reporters on Capitol Hill.
“I was all for it,” Tuberville initially said when asked. “We need to have more children.”
A follow-up question about what this means for expectant parents in Alabama prompted the senator to try to brush it off and respond, “Well, that’s for another conversation.” But after some prodding, Tuberville had no idea how to address the women who now cannot access their IVF treatments.
“Okay. Well, that’s a difficult question. It really is. It’s very difficult. Because, again, what you want is for people to have that opportunity.”
“Guess what, Tommy?” Oliver responded after he finished the clip. “I have great news. Since his political philosophy seems to begin and end with “we need more kids,” he’ll be thrilled to know that thanks to a judge in Alabama there are now freezers full of them. Go play with all those frozen kids, senator! Or maybe that’s not what you had in mind when you think of children, which is exactly the fucking point here!
Oliver said even former President Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways, publicly appealing to women on social media last week in support of IVF, while secretly plotting plans to enact a national 16-week abortion ban. Trump supporters also hope to use the Comptroll Act of 1873, which criminalizes shipping abortion kits, among other things, to convince judges to enforce abortion bans without requiring the new Congress to pass a bill. law in this regard. But they don’t want potential undecided voters to know this before November.
Trump finally breaks his silence on Alabama IVF decision
“There are politicians today who are desperately trying to distance themselves from the extreme policies they have enabled,” Oliver said. “You can say we’re not trying to ban or burn books, but that’s what we’re doing. “You can say we just want to have more children, but it is making life incredibly difficult for people, including those who desperately want them.”
“Burning books and ending IVF are the natural goals of the extreme policies they have adopted, and if they are not at least willing to take those consequences, then they can, in the words of who I believe is the greatest politician in this country. public speaker…”
At that point he played a clip from an earlier segment in which elderly West Virginia women read aloud sexually explicit passages at a televised legislative hearing on a bill that would impose criminal penalties on schools and libraries that contain books with explicit language. : “Eat an ass.”
Oliver’s reply: “Well said. Well said, by the way.
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