“There isn’t anything particularly funny about the leaked Supreme Court draft decision that would dismantle Roe v. Wade, but Saturday Night Live found a way,” Olivia Truffaut-Wong writes in The Cut.
“Instead of opening with a more modern political spoof, the May 7 show hosted by Benedict Cumberbatch went all the way back to the 13th century, putting Justice Samuel Alito’s references in painfully depressing, and funny, context.”
“As for how they would punish women bold enough to get an abortion, Cumberbatch spitballs, ‘We could always put her in a boat and let her sail off the cliff at the edge of the world.’ (Get it, because back then, we thought the Earth was flat? And now politicians and justices want to regulate women’s bodies according to those times?)”
I still don’t get it.
Those mad at Justice Alito for referring to historical abortion laws should probably take it up with Julie Rikelman, the abortion provider’s counsel in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
During the oral argument in December, Rikelman invoked “a tradition under the common law for centuries of women being able to end their pregnancies.” She stated that “at the Founding, women were able to end their pregnancies under the common law.”
Trouble is, this isn’t true — as Alito noted in his draft.
“English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises’ statements that abortion was a crime,” Alito wrote. He also clarified that “although a pre-quickening abortion was not itself considered homicide, it does not follow that abortion was permissible at common law — much less that abortion was a legal right.”