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Abortion ban: Samantha Bee debunks myths in scathing 'sex ed for senators' segment

'These laws are designed to oppress and control,' says Bee

Clémence Michallon
New York
Thursday 16 May 2019 16:33 BST
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Samantha Bee reacts to Alabama's abortion ban by dismantling fallacy women know the instant they are pregnant

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Samantha Bee has reacted to the abortion ban recently signed in Alabama in a blistering segment, delivering a special sex education lesson to senators.

The comedian included the lesson in her show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on Wednesday, after Alabama’s Republican governor signed the strictest abortion legislation in the nation.

Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia recently have approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy. The Alabama bill goes further by seeking to ban abortion outright.

“The one thing all these bills have in common is that the people writing them have no f****** idea how the internal reproductive system works,” Bee says in the segment.

“That’s why I’m going to do something that should have been done decades ago: I’m going to teach sex ed to senators.”

She goes on to debunk the idea that a person can tell whether they’re pregnant from the moment of conception, when in fact most tests can only detect a pregnancy at least eight days after conception at the earliest (though people will usually not be alerted to the pregnancy until they miss a period).

Warning: the clip below contains strong language.

Bee touches on whether it’s possible to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy, which is currently not a possibility, and discusses miscarriages.

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She also takes to task Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke for their comments on third-trimester abortions, telling them: “You guys really, really need to get your facts straight because when you don’t, the right takes that ball and runs with it all the way to hell.”

Her segment cut to a video clip of Donald Trump lying about abortion and falsely likening it to an execution during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Additional reporting by agencies

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