Days after the Supreme Court announced the overturning of Roe v. Wade, eliminating abortion access for millions of women across the United States, a slew of late-night TV hosts used their platforms Monday to condemn the decision.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, comedian Chelsea Handler, who is covering the show’s hosting duties while Kimmel is on vacation — “I will be here all week long — or at least until Republicans make it illegal for women to talk,” she joked — used her opening monologue to highlight the absurdity of the Supreme Court’s decision. “Remember like five days ago when Fox News told us the biggest threat facing America was drag queens? That was cute,” she said. “At this point, I’d probably have more rights if my vagina was an AR-15.”
Handler soon turned her ire toward Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a figure who has become a firebrand for left-leaning Americans in recent days due to his absurd conclusion that the overturning of Roe should also force the court to re-examine other key cases — including those that legalized gay marriage and gave Americans the right to use contraception. “Friday’s decision has made me a very strong advocate of the pull out method, which is when you pull Clarence Thomas out of the Supreme Court,” Handler said to applause before going on the offensive against Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas and her shadowy involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. “Isn’t is so beautiful when two disgusting and awful people find each other? They are the ultimate ‘abuse of power’ couple.”
Revealing she had three abortions as a teenager, Handler concluded by highlighting the seemingly tone deaf manner Democrats have utilized in recent days to address the Roe ruling, saying, “We need to do something about this — and we need to do it soon, because I cannot have Nancy Pelosi emailing me 500 times a day.”
James Corden, who is filming his Late Late Show this week from London, shared his views on the elimination of abortion rights in America in a pre-taped segment filmed in front of Parliament. Mentioning that the United Kingdom legalized abortion in 1967, Corden shared with his viewers the difficult process by which British lawmakers would be required to follow in order to make the procedure illegal. “It would take at least 326 elected officials to agree to such a thing. It would then take another 400 appointees in the House of lords to vote on that bill before it could ever become law,” the British talk show host said. “So, that’s nearly 800 people would all have to agree before the fundamental rights of half the population would be endangered in the United Kingdom.”
Calling the U.S. “a place I love,” the London native said he felt “utter disgust and anger” with the decision. “We move instantly back to a dark age where a court has imposed a minority political view on a country for decades to come, with a decision that endagerns millions upon millions of women in their families,” he said. “To say that i’m outraged and devastated would be an understatement. It’s incomprehensible that in 2022, we should even have to say out loud that women should be entitled to control their own lives and bodies, let alone live in a country that won’t allow it. If only the American leaders on the right would care and fight as much for the rights of women as they do their guns.”
The Daily Show host Trevor Noah also addressed Friday’s ruling in a lengthy segment on Monday’s show. “The Constitution didn’t change,” Noah said before making a quick quip about the 2004 Nicolas Cage film, National Treasure. “The only thing that changed is that Donald Trump, of all people, managed to appoint three pro-life justices to the Supreme Court — judges, who by the way, went on and on in their confirmation hearings about how much they respect the important precedent of Roe v. Wade. And we all knew they were full of shit, too.”
Like Handler, Noah was quick to pounce upon Justice Thomas — whom Noah called “Justice QAnon himself” — and his bizarre concurring opinion. “This dude is so extreme, he’s talking about banning rights I didn’t even realize could be banned,” he said. “Like, at some point, you’re not even a judge anymore. You’re just a cockblock in a fancy robe.” He then focused in on Thomas’ curious exclusion of Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage, from the concurring opinion. (Justice Thomas is Black, while his wife Ginni is white.) “Apparently, if something affects Clarence Thomas personally, he’s okay with it. Makes me think if we could just somehow get him impregnated by, like, a gay man, all of our problems would be solved,” Noah joked.
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