A Daily Show Segment of Activist Lindy West Blasting the ‘Core of Anti-Choice Legislation’ is Going Viral After Restrictive Texas Law Passed
A Daily Show segment of writer and activist Lindy West highlighting “what’s at the core of anti-choice legislation and rhetoric” is going viral in the wake of the restrictive abortion law passed in Texas this week.
West joined Trevor Noah on The Daily Show in 2018 to discuss her campaign Shout Your Abortion, which encouraged people to share their abortion stories, and which was started in response to House efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
While sitting down with Noah, West reasoned that anti-choice people are less concerned with abortions than with who can have access to the procedure:
Writer, activist and Shout Your Abortion campaign co-founder Lindy West breaks down what’s at the core of anti-choice legislation and rhetoric: https://t.co/YqdVSXSMsO pic.twitter.com/ekMTwNY5nJ
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 1, 2021
“Anti-choice people are not trying to stop abortion, they are trying to legislate who can and can’t have abortions,” she said. “Because conservative politicians — their wives and mistresses and daughters — will always be able to get an abortion somewhere.”
West went on to say that anti-choice rhetoric is used to “keep people trapped in poverty for generations.
“That’s the goal and if it wasn’t the goal they would spend their time and money on comprehensive sex education, free birth control, and free contraception,” she added.
A meme of West explaining just that went viral on Wednesday following news of Texas’ abortion law, which not only prohibits most abortions after six weeks, but is also the most restrictive abortion measure in the United States.
The law that took place in Texas marks the first time since 1973 that a state has legally banned abortion, CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted on Wednesday.
“This is a peculiar situation designed to create legal complications,” he added.
“It is not the state of Texas that enforces the law the way it works in most states — the way it works in most states, the way it works in every state — it’s the system of private enforcement, ‘private attorneys general’ it’s called, and what this difficulty it’s created is that it’s unclear who the abortion provider should sue.”
Watch West’s Daily Show appearance above, via YouTube.
