Abortion Ruling: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) 

Things that will reduce abortion: -Access to contraception -Comprehensive sex ed courses -Universal healthcare -Universal childcare -A living wage -Guaranteed family leave Things that will not reduce abortion: -Abortion bans

Always remember : you can't ban abortions, you can only ban safe, legal abortions.

Fun fact: when Roe was decided, marital rape was still legal in all 50 states. The first state to throw away it's marriage exemption to anti-rape laws did so in 1976; the last state outlawed marital rape in *1993*.

One of the best arguments I’ve heard for being pro choice is that organ donation isn’t even required if you die. Your organs could save people but the law says that even if you are DEAD you have a right to bodily autonomy. If you don’t want to donate your organs, you don’t have to. How can you have such a law but also have a law that requires women to donate their living body to a person that doesn’t even exist yet? How does that make sense?

I am from Spain, which is a deeply catholic country. So much so, that the great majority of our sayings and our national holidays have to do with religion - almost 70% of children are baptized. Still, most people do understand that faith is a personal issue and not one of law. Sex Ed is mandatory in every school (public or private), contraceptives are easily and affordably available, and women can get safe abortions at public hospitals and clinics. In order to promote people having more children what our country tries to do is make it less of a burden for couples to have children - maternity/paternity leave, tax breaks for families with children and single parents, heavy discounts for "numerous families", free healthcare and education.

I will never understand why judges in US can openly flash their party affiliations. Aren't judges suposed to be unbiased?

"Freedoms are never guaranteed. They are hard won and easily lost"

My mother said “Guns have more rights than women right now.” When hearing about this. Mother, I couldn’t agree more.

When my mom was pregnant with me the doctors strongly recommended an abortion because they didn't think she'd be able to carry me full-term and survive. Being staunchly pro-life she refused and somehow made it through. Nice story, huh? Except the part where she lost her job due to medical complications and was never able to find another. Except the part where my entire family fell into poverty and never made it out. Except the part where a combination of physical issues, mental illness, and the sheer stress of the situation turned a previously good mother (according to my older sister) into an abusive monster. I honestly wish she'd aborted me. It might have saved my sister a lot of trauma and it's not like my non-existent self would have known the difference. Abortion is healthcare.

The same people that screamed "my body, my choice" over wearing a piece of fabric during a pandemic are now SILENT. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

I'd also say that the most important point he made in this is "some women get an abortion BECAUSE THEY FUCKING WANT ONE"

Calling a fetus an unborn person is the logical equivalent of calling a person an unkilled corpse.

As an American who lives in Europe, John Oliver has become a depressing part of my Monday morning routine where I'm reminded weekly why I'm never going home.

Trying to make abortion as close to impossible as they can while providing no paternity leave and no affordable health care is so insidious I can't even wrap my head around it

I'm back here after Roe Vs Wade got overturned. This is a dark day in history.

Let them move somewhere else is the Let Them Eat Cake approach to women’s rights

I’ll never forgot the time my mom told me the story of her going to an abortion clinic in the early 90s after I was born. There were people outside protesting. She had to be escorted in by security. A woman in the crowd yelled out that she shouldn’t do it. My mother then replied that she just lost her baby and had to get it removed. The woman was speechless. It’s clear that these politicians don’t understand the basics of how a woman’s body works and what we go through. We should be allowed to make our choice on what to do when presented with something that can completely alter your life.

My great-great-grandma died from sepsis, after she and her husband tried to preform an abortion at home. It was the depression, and they couldn't afford another kid, so she knowingly risked her life. My great-grandma was shipped off to her distant relatives without even knowing what had happened to her mother. These laws hurt families for generations.

"No matter what men think, abortion is a fact of life. Women have always had them; they always have and they always will. Are they going to have good ones or bad ones? Will the good ones be reserved for the rich, while the poor women go to quacks?" - Shirley Chisholm, Unbought And Unbossed

I am so enraged by this and I don't even live in the United States. Reading the experiences of people in this comment section makes me teary. And yes John, you are right this is just as much about people who need it medically as about emotionally, financially

As a CPS worker, I see the tragedies that happen to children that are born and unwanted.

Imagine being the republican party, calling yourself the party of individual freedom and government staying out of your lives....and then saying they are going to have the government force women to bear children against their will. 🤷‍♂

Still can't believe that a man who cried over beer just took away my bodily autonomy

I know a lot of people who work in social services and one big issue with banning abortion is that the people who are hardcore pro-life, dont actually give a shit about the child. They dont try to get more funding for social services, foster care systems, adoption, welfare for single parents, supporting disability government funding, nothing. Nada. I was one of the lucky few who could get social services as a child for much needed support but other children dont have that. It just makes me upset when people claim 'moral superiority' (if they truly believe a clump of cells is alive), but dont actually do anything about said 'children' (of course there are few that will support social services, but they arent even 1% of pro lifers as a whole)

You know things are fucked when John uploads TWICE

My ex-wife had to get an abortion. We wanted to keep the child, but she kept getting sicker and sicker. Then she started bleeding from her uterus. We went to one doctor who told us there was a 50/50 chance only we could keep the baby. After 3 months my wife was so sick she couldn't get out of bed. We went to a different doctor who then told us if we continued there was a chance that she could die also. He also stated that at this time surgery had to be done because the internal bleeding was getting serious. We took a week to think about it and in that week my wife would barely wake up and was sleeping 20 hours a day. She could barely eat and was losing weight fast. I got really scared when she went into a coma-like state where I couldn't wake her. Finally after a couple of days she came around only to declare that she couldn't continue like this. She felt like she was dying because she was. Reluctantly we had the abortion and doctor ordered it medically necessary. He said there was a chance that if she continued with the pregnancy that there was a high chance that would go into a coma and never wake up. Even after the surgery she didn't come to until 3 days later and was in the hospital for a week. I couldn't imagine having to go through that in the US without the Roe decision.

Watching this shortly after I found out it as officially over turned. Thank you for the Elmo joke. I NEEDED a good chuckle after how pissed I am over this.

Somebody should make a website that keeps track of how many women die from complications from birth and other deaths from the illegalization, I think it would be very enlightening to pro life people.

The one thing I wish he'd also touched on is that if abortion is legally considered murder, and murder is legally considered a felony, and felons (in many states) can't legally vote, then this disenfranchises exactly the people who would vote to protect their right to an abortion.

The question we need to ask the Supreme Court is "how do feel about orphans, like a lot of them?"

After being incredibly depressed about the results of the RvW case last week, thank you for making me laugh again. I really hope that we can win this fight for women everywhere

My mom had an abortion when I was 5-my little sister was 2. She wanted the baby, but it was in the wrong spot during implantation. It didn’t implant in a tube like ectopic pregnancy, but too low. The pregnancy was very high risk-worsened by the fact that she was 37 at the time. 10 weeks in and she was in constant pain and had to be admitted to the hospital. Week 11, she was told that she would have to spend the entire pregnancy bedbound inpatient. At week 12, she made the very hard choice to lose the chance at a third baby, in order to keep herself able to take care of her two kids that were already there. My little sister had special needs at the time. She is a superstar in med school right now, but back then, she didn’t speak and would freak out if my mom was even in the other room. I’m a grown woman now, and I remember my mom as always being there for me. As present. Who know how differently my life would have gone had she not been there during that pregnancy, or after if it had killed her. It’s no one else’s right to dictate if she should have gone through that pregnancy. Her health concerns were and still are between her and her doctor. It’s up to every woman to make these important choices about our lives and our health by ourselves-whether we make those risks or not is up to us.

"You Have no Rights. Rights aren't Rights if someone can take them away, they are Privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country: a bill of TEMPORARY Privileges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter." -- Paraphrased from George Carlin

This is also a fight over your right to GET pregnant. A lot of people with uteruses, myself included, are in a horrible position of having to decide if we want to get permanently sterilized or not for their own safety. I would like to carry a pregnancy someday. Right now though I cannot safely do that. If I got pregnant and didn’t get an abortion I could be permanently disabled. I am genuinely considering getting a hysterectomy just to avoid that risk.

Please remember: if you take a pregnancy test, after your period is a SINGLE DAY late, you are 4 weeks and one day pregnant. Even if you only had sex one week ago.

When you consider that many of those states have laws allowing the marriage of minors to middle aged adults, it becomes more horrifying. Also it's my personal opinion that forcing a child to be born into a family where it will be unloved or malnourished is a far greater crime than an abortion, because it is the deliberate torture of a human being.

"I cannot defend the system we currently have". Strong words, John.

Welcome back everybody. I'm not at all surprised we're here as promised, yet it still cuts deep

Imagine living in a country where we could stop circling around to the same issues every generation and do something more worthwhile. We're still fighting about the same things for 100 years and it's exhausting.

The scariest line in this show was, “Under the current Supreme Court, your basic rights today, could become crimes tomorrow.”

It really is horrifying how Alito's reasoning could be used to overturn Obgerfell v. Hodges (gay marriage), Lawrence v. Texas (privacy to perform any sex act between consenting adults), Griswold v. Connecticut (access to contraceptives) and Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage).

I am from the Netherlands. Since we use Viability as the boundary, someone can get an abortion until the 22nd week. We feel that is a healthy middle ground between respecting the mother's right to choose and not forcing doctors to abort pregnancies that are so far in that you could consider it a fit-for-life Human. Contraceptives and condoms are readily available, sexual education is mandatory, and we got a pretty good child support law in the 40s. I was not expecting that the USA would do half of it's citizens dirty by taking their rights away. But since they're so keen on telling people who don't like it to leave the country, feel free to consider moving back here. The language might be a pain in the ass but we all learn English in secondary school anyway so who cares.

So, I have a take on this. I’m Christian, and I believe that life begins at birth, as the Bible says. But even if I thought it didn’t, and that a fetus is a living human being, it still wouldn’t be my right to choose whether or not other people can get abortions. That should be their choice, period

I wish more people would also stress that a lot of what is being swept up in this is what even many people who are against abortion would not consider abortion. D&Cs after miscarriage. Ectopic events. Non-viable pregnancies. This does not just affect those seeking abortions. It affects every single person who can get pregnant and their families. If affects every single American. It could be you or someone you love who suffers sepsis or dies because doctors refused to remove an already dead baby such as happened in Ireland and in Poland -- both of which supposedly had exceptions for life of the mother but in a state in which performing an abortion can lead to fines or prisons, doctors will let women die. Anyone who thinks this won't affect them because they make "good choices" is living in la la land.

When I had an abortion I was in an abusive relationships, just diagnosed with a brain disorder, living in a trailer park, and blood tests showed that my body was starving. Getting an abortion was the best decision I ever made, and it's the reason I'm a successful person now.

“ I'd call it dystopian if it weren't so fucking American.” John Oliver

My view of abortion is simple let the woman actually enduring all this pressure stress and emotional distress make the decision. In every other health related decision if they capable to answer for themselves they can, why not here? And for those thinking from a life and religious aspect, then if she does decide to abort then that's a private matter for her to discuss with her God for forgiveness. And for the life aspect sometimes it's not as simple as I want an abortion, sometimes it has to be if we don't do this you can die also. And while yes tragic to think of the unknown life, it's better than someone essentially being stuck to die due to not having access to this procedure. It feels so disgusting to me that people having absolutely nothing to do with the conceiving of this pregnancy all of a sudden want full say over your life.

"Progress requires a consistent, sustained struggle, a willingness to disrupt everyday life, and actual courage from the people that we choose to lead us." Such a beautifully written line. I wholeheartedly agree.

"They understood that voting is only meaningful if the people who win actually do what they promise you." THANK YOU JOHN

Watching this... today... the day it was overruled, really means a lot... a leap back of feminism, leap back for women's rights.

Even if a fetus has personhood, no personhood has a right to use another person's body/bodyparts without consent. So personhood is a moot point

I love love LOVE the argument that if WE don't like something, we can go someplace else, but if THEY don't like something, we'd better change the rules to suit them.

Sadly there's an even bigger issue here; The legitimacy of the whole supreme court. What we're supposed to have is the separation of the three powers, but both the executive (president) and the legislative (congress) branches have meddled with the judicial for decades trough appointments primarily motivated by politics and meddling with the confirmation of appointees respectively. Separation of these branches is clearly not working and they're merely a tool for party politics.

If a fetus can be frozen for 27 years and then carried to term but the same baby can’t be frozen for 27 years and live, how can they possibly be considered the same thing?

Sadly, in Montana, the following restrictions on abortion were in effect as of May 26, 2022: An abortion may be performed at or after viability only in cases of life endangerment or severely compromised health. So that means those who are raped or can't afford the child or any other things that isn't health don't have a choice.

Why do people not realise that no one “likes” having an abortion. It is a mentally and physically difficult thing to go through but sometimes, that is the best option. It can save years of financial and emotional trouble. And adult women can decide for themselves what their best option is. If someone is making the choice of an abortion, they will not be doing it flippantly.

Pro-choice is pro-life. A child should be born into a family that feels capable of meeting their emotional, mental, and physical needs.

This aged like fine wine.

Now they are talking about taking away my protect right to... MARRIAGE and medical care. I'm gay.

I love the part where the lady says “this is not an opinion that’s going to undo abortions in this country” and literally the next day Mitch McConnell says “it’s not impossible that we try to ban abortion at a national level”

It is absolutely unreal seeing the same group of people that freaked out about fucking face masks and literally said "my body my choice" but when it comes to growing a literal human being these same people think no one should have a say over their own body

"5 of the biggest weirdos in the country." Classic John Oliver line and completely 100% true.

Even if it'll save 10 lives, it's still illegal to use the organs of a corpse if that person had not indicated that they wanted to donate them. A dead body has more autonomy than living women in most states...

Hi, I’m from Poland. Exactly two years ago the same situation was happening here in Poland. Since Poland is a country that consists mostly of Christians and elderly people who chose the far-right government that we currently have, abortion has been a very controversial topic. During the peak of the pandemic while people were forced to quarantine at home the government decided that they want to impose an abortion ban. Despite multiple protests that people attended risking their lives because of Covid the government still went through with it. The ban applied also in the instances of fatal fetus illness. Soon after, there was the first death of a woman who died because of a septic shock because doctors couldn’t remove the fetus after it died. The woman was already a mother to two kids. After that more instances were made public of women dying because the doctor’s hands were bound by law. Multiple women also shared their stories of miscarriages and how badly they were treated because of it. To take things further the government made a law saying that anyone who gets an abortion or performs it faces up to 3 years in prison. I’m afraid to live in a country where I’m treated as a replaceable incubator. Please don’t let them do it in the US as well.

One of my best friends committed suicide because she couldn't get an abortion due to being raped after she moved out of Ohio. Having to live without her being bubbly and cheering me up - it hurts. So, banning abortion shouldn't be a law. Rape and incest as well as medical issues is a perfect reason to get an abortion. Telling a woman to do with her own body is wrong.

Women are banned from having one until a man doesn’t want to be burdened and then see how fast he drags her to get one…

Land of the free is the greatest lie ever in history.

Just dropping by with a reminder that the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, a shitty healthcare system which is bested by some third-world countries, and honestly embarrassing health insurance bested by most of the developed world.

My Dad was telling me that all a woman needs to do is take care of herself for 9 months and just have the baby - it's as simple as that. I think his ideas of the emotional and physical tolls of not only bringing a baby to term but delivering and adopting out the child speaks to reason why this is a debate to begin with. Also, how my mom, his wife, responded best summarizes how the pro choice feels about pro life: "Your father is an ass."

really appreciate how he used gender neutral language to talk about those that need abortions. trans, intersex, and non binary people need abortions too, and it’s important that our language includes them in these conversations.

It takes a village to raise a child. That means paying taxes and redistributing wealth to single mothers. Until America is willing to do that, it doesn't get a say in what people do with their foofoos.

As an Irish man I proper laughed out loud when John said he wouldn't weigh in on Irish history because of his accent 😂😂

"The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are “those people.” The truth is…we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”-the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door." - Brené Brown

I don't understand how you can be for guns but against abortion. Privacy is a right.

And another right bites the dust. Still makes me laugh whenever people say we should teach history only through the lens of progress when there is just as much regression.

Gotta love how everyone cares about the baby until after it's actually born

John, as an Irish citizen, I think you're one of the only people who sounds like that who I'm 100% okay with speaking about ireland's history

I'm a Canadian, and I'm so, so, SO angry. It might be time for the left to get more comfortable with guns. I don't think the american Right is going to stop short of mass armed violence.

“Yeah I just do like voting” “Yeah I don’t believe in voting.” “Yeah I just couldn’t stand Hilary.” “Yeah I didn’t like either candidate.” You did this. All of you.

I'm from Colombia, and I can assure you the activists who led the fight to decriminalize abortion are as hardcore and dedicated as John Oliver perceives them to be 💚💜

I thought my marriage was safe after Obergefell. Now I’m reminded there’s nothing stopping this court from essentially rendering my marriage null and void. That’s terrifying. If Roe v Wade isn’t safe, even after FIVE DECADES, nothing is.

The supreme court has done two things for two reasons. One: they say, "violates" the constitution. The other was "never rooted.." The last time I checked, 'well-regulation' is required by the rights of that same constitution and there will always be consequences for our personal actions or behavior, but the right to choose (something) has always been, and will always be perpetual.

Whelp Looking forward to a re-run of this ep tomorrow

I can't imagine what it would be like to be pregnant for nine months against your will and then after that experience labor and childbirth against your will. Persons experiencing this have zero control of their own bodies.

People seem to not realize how easily birth control can fail. I knew a girl in high school who was on the pill, but she took antibiotics for an ear infection and the antibiotics made the birth control less effective. So she got pregnant. We were a month out from graduating. She was going to go to culinary school.

Key lesson here: It's not about what's right. It's about what works.

And the ruling just came out. C'mon people, don't let the Senate fall on GOP's hands.

As an Irish person, me and my friends were just talking about how wild it is that in our lifetime Ireland has gotten more and more progressive (when I was born divorce was illegal in Ireland, now there's been referendums passing marriage equality and abortion) as things in the US seem to go backwards. Also I love how everytime John brings up Ireland it's followed with "and that's all I'm going to say because I sound like this" haha.

I didn’t know I was pregnant for three months. I was 20 years old. I was incredibly fit. I still had minor bleeding, that I attributed to be my usual low-flow period. One day, my boss sat down with me at lunch and very kindly said that I could work for her as long as I wanted to or felt that I could. (I worked on a horse farm.) I didn’t understand what she meant. She said, “Well, you’re pregnant, and I want you to know that your job is safe.” I immediately took a test and yes, I was pregnant. I had NO idea. My husband and I used condoms. I did not use birth control because at that time it was incredibly expensive and we had no insurance. (That’s a whole other discussion.) So much for that. Point is, we had our first child, so that worked out. But many women don’t even know they are pregnant and may have been taking prevention measures that failed. Point is, these decisions should not be made by anyone but the woman, her partner, and anyone else she chooses to have the discussion with like her medical provider, clergy, family, or friends. This SCOTUS disgusts me.

Roe V Wade should 1000% be an Amendment.

I had a psych patient tell me, I didn't want to go to the hospital, but they made me go, now I have to pay the bill. If abortion is going to be illegal, then the woman who is forced to have a baby shouldn't have to pay the bill.

1:00 - Just in case John misses to cover this point: that whole argument about it "not being in the constitution" is illegal. Literally illegal. the 9th amendment explicitly makes such arguments illegal, in plain text. In very plain text "Nothing in this constitution may be used to construe that an unenumerated right does not exist", its one of the most plain, cut and dry parts of the constitution as you can get.

Something a lot of people don't realize about these restrictions is that even if they have parts that say abortion is legal "if the mother's life is in danger," that is not how medicine works. There's not really a clear line where someone goes from "not in danger" to "in danger," but rather someone just progressively becomes more endangered as their condition worsens. It means that even if the mother's life is in danger at a hospital, the doctors might have to leave her suffering until her condition worsens enough that it is deemed "justifiable" to perform the abortion. By this point, there will be cases that will be too late, and women will die. The scariest part is that the people who will be deciding what counts as "justified" will likely be a bunch of lawyers and politicians, with zero medical experience. Not to mention, doctors aren't lawyers. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if it criminalizes abortions, doctors are going to be super, super scared to do them, since they'd literally be risking getting charged with a crime each time they performed it. This is what happened in a case that was almost singlehandedly responsible for Ireland legalizing abortion. A woman was rushed to the hospital in extreme pain due to a miscarriage, but the doctors were scared to perform an abortion since they could still detect a heartbeat, even though she was literally in the middle of a miscarriage. She died an excruciating death due to complications from the miscarriage, all because the doctors were literally risking being arrested for murder if they authorized an abortion that might get deemed "unjustified." TL;DR, exceptions for if the woman's life is at risk isn't nearly as useful as most people think, and if abortion becomes illegal again, women will die painful, unnecessary deaths, no matter how many exceptions they try to put in.

As a German, I sometimes am unable to understand the complexity of US culture, but it feels to me like US parties don’t move with the electorate in opinion. Which is weird because we hate politics for flipping to easy with public opinion. I guess after watching US news for 4 years, I still have so much to lern an understand.

we now no longer live in a country that has roe v wade. *donate to your local abortion providers*

Thank you John Oliver for calling out Obama (and Democrats in general) on this issue. If more of us were willing to do this in the first place we could have a party that was worthy of our votes.

They're all for protecting kids! Until they're out of the womb and it's time to regulate pollution, so they don't get sick. Or make healthcare affordable so their parents don't go bankrupt just giving birth, let alone dealing with any illnesses. Or regulate guns so they aren't massacred on their first day of school. Or raise the minimum wage so their parents can afford to feed them healthy food, and be able to spend quality time raising them. Or work towards raising our education standards so they have a shot on the world stage when they join the workforce. Or... oof. This is a lot of typing. Look, there's at least 50 more lines of this stuff, but I'll let y'all fill in the blanks.

if the state forces a woman to give birth then the state is legally and morally responsible for paying for that woman’s health care including the delivery and all pre and post natal care, as well as the cost of raising that child. hold the state accountable for those costs and abortion will remain legal and safe.

I don't think I realized just how trapped people are in that country until I heard most people don't have the time or resources to travel out of state. Like, not having the right to abortions is terrible, but not being able to take a week of work for an important medical procedure is downright dystopian.

As George Carlin put it: You don't have rights. You have privileges. A list of temporary privilges. And if you read the news even just badly you can see that the list gets shorter and shorter every year.