Samantha Bee needs to fact-check her fact-checking – especially when it comes to abortion.
For her Full Frontal show Monday, comedian Samantha Bee took a swipe at Donald Trump for his comments against abortion during the last presidential debate. Bee took the opportunity to insist partial-birth abortion “doesn’t exist” and joked that Trump would rather outlaw birth because “it makes the pussies too gross and screamy for grabbing.”
To begin her abortion rant, Bee bashed the last presidential debate where “old men talk about vaginas.” As evidence, she played a clip of moderator Chris Wallace saying to Hillary Clinton, “I want to explore how far you believe the right to abortion goes… you also voted against a ban on late-term partial birth abortions.”
But Bee didn’t stop there. Taking issue with Wallace’s abortion terminology, Bee shouted into her megaphone, “partial birth abortions aren’t a thing.”
“It's a non-medical term the National Right to Life Committee made up in the ‘90s,” she complained, “for a procedure that was outlawed in 2003 by the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seen here signed by George W. Bush along with some of Congress' leading women's health experts.”
It would be easier to take Bee seriously if the media consistently refused to use non-medical terms. But, they generally don’t (think: “cardiac arrest” instead of “heart attack”).
Not to mention that “non-medical term” – “partial-birth abortion” – is used by our own government in the federal law she cited. And while federal law bans partial-birth abortion on federal property, only 19 states ban it themselves. Which means, according to pro-life legislative groups, partial-birth abortion could occur legally, under certain circumstances, in 31 states.
But according to Bee, partial-birth abortion “doesn’t exist.” And while she admitted late-term abortion happens, she stressed it occurs “rarely.”
“Only 1.3% of abortions take place at or after 21 weeks and guess what?” she added. “It's not because women are selfish sluts who wake up in their third trimester and decide, ‘not into this, I want a procrast-abortion.’ It's usually because the tests done at that point reveal a fatal birth defect or serious risk to the mother's life.”
(Bee didn’t acknowledge contradicting research that suggests most late-term abortions are, in fact, elective, as documented by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List.)
Instead, she bashed Wallace – and Trump. “And if Mike Wallace's son got abortion that wrong, you can imagine how much wronger Trump got it,” she said. “Bigly wronger.”
Bee played a debate clip of Trump saying about abortion, “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day” (a statement which many in the liberal media have already incorrectly “fact-checked”).
In response, Bee agreed with Clinton’s statement that “that is not what happens.”
“It sounds a lot like Trump has confused abortions with bear attacks,” she joked. “Removing a baby from a woman's womb in the ninth month isn't an abortion, it's a birth.” (Except abortion means death and birth means life – but what difference does that make? None, to Bee.)
Bee was “sure Donald Trump would love to outlaw it” – “it” meaning birth, not abortion.
“It makes the pussies too gross and screamy for grabbing,” she jested before cracking a joke that the “entire Trump brand” will be “unviable” come November 9.
And, of course, Bee had offer her compliments to Clinton. “This debate was when Hillary's mask of self-control finally slipped, revealing the awful secret she's been hiding this whole time: authenticity and passion,” Bee gushed. She played favorite clips of Clinton speaking at the debate:
You should meet with some of the women that I've met with, women I've known over the course of my life. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make. I can tell you, the government has no business in the decisions that women make and I will stand up for that right.
To that, Bee responded, “Hell yes” and concluded by reprimanding men about the “dick-waving” Trump:
Men, if you don't get why it's important to have a woman as a major party nominee, check your social media feed. Actually, log in as your wife. You'll see that all week women have been sharing deeply personal stories of pregnancies that went wrong. They were buying T-shirts and warming to a passionate, unapologetic feminist we haven't seen since the ‘90's, one who stood in a shower of shit and managed to do what 16 primary candidates and the entire Republican establishment couldn't, namely, beat this dick-waving Berlusconi knock-off like a little bitch. Her name is Hillary. Ms. Rodham, if you're nasty.
