The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling last week that frozen embryos fertilized in test tubes legally qualify as living, breathing human beings has left Republicans scrambling to clarify their positions to avoid losing votes from women in the 2024 election. – and John Oliver wasn’t going to let them get away with it.
On Last week tonight, Oliver said that equating in vitro fertilization (IVF) with actual humans is “wrong for a bunch of reasons — mainly if you freeze an embryo, it’s fine. If you freeze a person, you have some explaining to do.
But the Alabama court’s decision has “huge implications” across the country, as roughly 2 percent of Americans are born through IVF. The ruling prompted many of the state’s fertility clinics to immediately halt treatment for fear of being sued for wrongful death for any unused, discarded or destroyed embryos. This, in turn, prevents countless couples from continuing their efforts to have children. “IVF cycles take weeks of careful monitoring and expensive treatments. You can’t just hit pause and wait for the lawsuit,” Oliver said.
The case provoking the “seismic decision”, meanwhile, has an unusual story stemming from a patient who entered the freezers at a clinic and accidentally dropped several vials, destroying them. “And while this incident is truly horrific, someone wandering into a lab and dropping frozen embryos is simply not murder. If anything, it sounds like a script from a rather tasteless Mr. Bean sequel,” Oliver said, accompanied by a graphic of Rowan Atkinson in the spoof, Mr. Bean’s diagnosis is negative. Tagline: “Embry-uh-oh.”
The judge’s decision is in line with far-right theocratic efforts to ban abortion and women’s reproductive rights across the country, but as Oliver pointed out, it doesn’t help Republicans on the campaign trail. Former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley, for example, had to back down after initially reacting to the decision by saying, “When you’re talking about an embryo, you’re talking about … life.”
Oliver then played a clip of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) appearing to grasp the logical flaw in real time as he answered questions from reporters on Capitol Hill.
“I was all for it,” Tuberville said initially when asked. “We should have more children.”
A follow-up question wondering what this meant for expectant parents in Alabama prompted the senator to try to dismiss it, saying, “Well, that’s for another conversation.” But after some prodding, Tuberville had no idea how to approach the women , who are now unable to access their IVF treatment.
“Okay. Well, that’s hard. It really is. It’s really hard. Because again, you want people to have that opportunity.
“Guess what, Tommy?” Oliver replied after the clip ended. “I have great news. Since your political philosophy seems to start and end with “We need more kids,” you’ll be thrilled to know that thanks to a judge in Alabama, there are now entire freezers full of them. Play with all those frosty kids, Senator! Or maybe it’s not what you meant when you thought of kids, which is exactly the fucking point here!”
Oliver said even former President Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways, appealing to women publicly on social media last week in support of IVF while secretly making plans to enact a 16-week national abortion ban. Trump supporters also hope to use the 1873 Comstack Act — criminalizing, among other things, the supply of abortion equipment — to persuade judges to make abortion bans effective without the new Congress needing to pass a bill this. But they don’t want potential voters to know about it before November.
“There are politicians right now who are desperately trying to distance themselves from extreme policies that they have enabled,” Oliver said. “You may say we’re not trying to ban or burn books, but that’s what you’re doing. You can say we just want more kids, but you make life incredibly difficult for people, including those who desperately want them.
“Book-burning and ending IVF are the natural endpoints of the extreme policies they’ve faced, and if they don’t want to at least suffer those consequences, then they can, in the words of what I believe to be the greatest in this country speaker…”
At that point, he replayed a clip from an earlier segment in which elderly West Virginia women read aloud sexually explicit passages at a televised legislative hearing on a bill that would impose criminal penalties on schools and libraries containing books with explicit language: “Eat ass.”
Oliver’s line: “Well said. Well said, indeed.’
