Samantha Bee Takes on Ohio’s Draconian Anti-Abortion “Heartbeat Bill”

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“Every day I wake up, take a breath, and turn to face the non-stop shit-geyser of presidential news,” Samantha Bee says by way of intro to her segment on anti-abortion restrictions on last night’s episode of Full Frontal. “Meanwhile, god only knows what the states have been up to while are eyes are full of feces — oh, what a surprise, they’re up someone’s skirt!”

In the segment, “Ohio on the Pulse,” Bee provides an outraged explainer on the so-called “heartbeat bill” that Ohio’s legislature passed on Dec. 7, the first state legislature to pass a bill that would ban abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks — when most women don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. “Especially now,” Bee quips, “since every time we wake up and realize Trump is president, we all have morning sickness.”

Why are so many anti-abortion advocates obsessed with the heartbeat milestone? “Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing that’s remotely person-like about a six-week-old embryo,” Bee suggests. “And pro-lifers are geniuses at making a lentil-sized cluster of developing cells sound like a fully-baked pageant baby. I’m surprised they haven’t passed a law forcing women to put their sonogram through the puppy Snapchat filter before they decide whether to keep it.”

Bee claims she can understand why, for instance, the Duggar family — of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting — supports the heartbeat bill; they were the keynote speakers at a 2013 banquet held by the anti-abortion conservative group Faith 2 Action, whose head, Janet Porter, has been pushing this bill for the past five years. But, Bee asks, “Why would lawmakers want to waste taxpayer money defending this turd?” Well, the fact that Republicans are about to have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House probably has something to do with it. On election night, Bee says, every Republican state senator “came so hard they passed out. Then they woke up and got busy squirting out ever-more unconstitutional laws in the hope that one of them would make it to SCOTUS and break through Roe v. Wade’s defenses.” Gulp. Watch the full clip below: