If you listen to the GOP or anti-choice movement, it sounds like getting an abortion is as easy as say, getting a cup of coffee. But it’s really not that simple, like at all. NARAL Pro-Choice America’s new video, “Comedians in Cars Getting Abortions,” shows just how ridiculous TRAP laws are, in a spoof of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It would be really hysterical if it weren’t so fucking sad. The joke is on us, ladies, as everything Alice Wetterlund experiences trying to get an abortion with Nato Green driving her around, is real. Too real.
Source: Huffington Post
NARAL President Ilyse Hogue said in a statement about the video, “Whether it’s clinics being forced to close, anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers tricking women seeking abortion care, or medically unnecessary restrictions on health care providers, this parody barely exaggerates the hoops women have to jump through thanks to anti-choice extremists.” She added, “We still have a fight ahead of us, and this video uses comedy to remind us just how much is at stake for women this year.”
Even with the big Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt win in the Supreme Court last month, which ruled that TRAP laws requiring doctors to have admitting privileges in a hospital to even hand over an abortion pill place an undue burden on women, restrictive and medically unnecessary anti-abortion laws still exist across the country. The video shows how stupid these laws are.
It starts off with a beleaguered Wetterlund explaining to her companion that she’s made a choice to not procreate. Also, she doesn’t even like kids. The first clinic they go to in their quest for an abortion is of course, closed. They Google some more and decide that another close-ish clinic will be too busy because it’s the first month after Coachella, which is a pretty bad, yet very funny, joke. They decide to move onto a clinic someone said was “nice” in a review.
They end up in a “fake clinic” — also known as a Crisis Pregnancy Center, which fronts as an abortion clinic. So if you Google “abortion clinic,” Crisis Pregnancy Centers show up, but they actually try to talk you out of getting an abortion with Bible verses, brochures about fetal development, models of baby skulls, and lots of warnings about your “choice.”
The comedy duo does go to a real clinic, eventually. But Wetterlund’s still faced with restrictions, like having to come back in exactly 32 hours (“From when we walked in or from now?,” she asks, showing just how con-fucking-fusing it can be). The doc is also forced to tell her there’s a risk of breast cancer (“Which is not true,” she mumbles under her breath) and show her pictures of “her baby.”
In all, Wetterlund ends up just where she started, looking for a place to get a fucking abortion. The doctor tells her that she’s better off going somewhere where it’s legal to get one, like Canada or international seas.
The video illustrates everything that’s wrong with the state of women’s reproductive health and choices: misinformation, being subject to someone else’s religious beliefs, and clinics scattered all over a state, some pretending to be what they are not. Even the fact that as a white woman with a friend who owns a Prius, she actually has more freedom than anyone else — some women don’t have cars or money or time to drive all over the place looking for somewhere to assert their right to choose.
It’s a funny video. It’s also absolutely infuriating.
Original by: Karen Fratti
