This past weekend, longtime Saturday Night Live cast member Cecily Strong made a pitch for voting for abortion on Tuesday. Making jokes as “Tammy the Trucker,” she said: “I am just trying to get through this moment, okay?”
She continued:
Gas prices are up and families are really hurting, but that’s not gonna magically disappear no matter who you vote for. We’re in a global recession fueled by corporate greed and war. Honk! Honk! Breaker! Breaker! But what will keep disappearing is safe access to abortion. It’s not really magic ’cause they told us that’s exactly what they’re going to do, and they have been doing it. Breaker! Breaker!
More Strong:
These are scary times. okay? Because they don’t want to just take away access to health care. They want to criminalize it too. It’s so bad, us truck drivers are all out here warning each other to delete our period tracking apps. I just want to know what week to wear my bad underwear, but I can’t in case some d***head in Texas thinks my period is evidence of a crime.
Strong ended with:
There’s one mother-trucking thing we can do to fight for mother-trucking freedom to make our own health-care decisions, and that’s vote. And I hope to hell everyone votes. Because remember: We all love someone who’s had an abortion. I mean: Drives a truck. Beep! Beep!
We all do know someone who has had or been involved in an abortion. And we can love them better by helping them heal and not making light of abortion. And we can love women and men and children better by not lying that abortion is freedom and health care, and embracing them with resources for a better, life-giving way.
Tammy the Trucker promises she’s here to talk about gas prices and definitely not abortion pic.twitter.com/JvvrNBudNJ
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) November 6, 2022
This wasn’t her first abortion skit. Last year, she was a clown who talked about her abortion at 23:
I confess I watched the clown skit shortly after it aired. When I rewatched the sketch, it brought tears to my eyes again. The culture of death is so cruel to women and men and children.
And I can’t help but think, as with Anne Hathaway talking about abortion as mercy on The View recently, that we may very well be hearing from a post-abortive woman. (Strong did confirm after the clown skit aired that she was sharing from personal experience.) Please pray for healing and conversation. What powerful witnesses they could be to help the next generation of women in comedy and acting have something better than abortion.