Samantha Bee steps up to teach 'sex ed for senators' who legislate or even talk about abortion

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Full Frontal)

Alabama's near-complete abortion ban was sponsored in the State Senate by Clyde Chambliss, a Republican lawmaker who said he's "not smart enough to be pregnant" and admitted that fertilized eggs in labs aren't banned in his "fetal personhood" bill because they're "not in a woman. She's not pregnant." Chambliss "really is dumb," Samantha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal, soon after Alabama's female governor signed his bill into law, but Alabama isn't the only state trying to effectively ban abortion.

"There have been more six-week abortion bill than Godfather movies, so I guess men really don't love anything more than policing women's bodies," Bee said. "The one thing all these bills have in common is that the people writing them have no f---ing idea how the internal reproductive system works. 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."

And while some of Bee's class is NSFW, she really does teach. Her lessons include everything from the helpful "We don't know we're pregnant the moment it happens" to the very specific: "You can't reimplant an ectopic pregnancy, you old, tragic Kenneth from 30 Rock." There's "Miscarriage is incredibly common" and the useful "Birth control and morning-after pills aren't abortion" — "Neither of them causes abortions; banning them sure does, though," she added.

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But there's one lesson "every single legislator should learn before writing abortion laws," even those on the left, Bee said: "What even is an abortion?" and as importantly, what isn't an abortion, specifically anything that happens when a baby is full-term. "That would be homicide," she said. "Look, there are plenty of crazy positions on the left — for example, I believe the term 'manatee' is too gendered — but no one is advocating for legalizing baby-murder." Watch below, especially if you're a senator. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.