SNL opened its latest episode by tackling the biggest story of last week: the leaked Supreme Court draft that revealed the right-leaning bench was on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade. The decision, when it’s finalized, likely in June, would remove protections from safe and legal abortions, endangering the lives of women in about half the country. But one dig at the decision wasn’t enough. On Weekend Update, they went all-in on the decision.
“Good evening, everyone,” Colin Jost said as the segment began. “Well, guys, tomorrow is Mother’s Day, whether you want it to be one or not.” Jost later addressed the leak. “The Court is usually careful, but they slipped up… and now they have to live with it forever. Sounds really unfair.”
Co-host Michael Che weighed in, too, wondering why Republicans were so obsessed with controlling women’s reproductive rights. “Maybe don’t think of it as abortion,” Che said. “Think of it as a patriot storming the uterus to overturn the results of an unfair pregnancy.”
Eventually Kate McKinnon made an appearance as Amy Coney Barrett, the justice hurried onto the bench in the final months of the Trump presidency, shortly after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who McKinnon has also played) and while Americans were already in the process of voting in the 2020 election.
“I just don’t understand why you need an abortion,” McKinnon’s Barrett told the crowd. “You can leave a baby anywhere in the United States. Just plop it!” She suggested leaving unwanted babies carried to term on a sidewalk or near a body of water. “Like Moses in a basket? Plop it. Like an infant in Jungle Book? ‘Do your nine,’ and then plop that baby and give it to a panther.”
She then told the crowd how she really feels. “You are a murderer if you have an abortion, but you are not a murderer if you put a baby in a bag in a mailbox,” McKinnon’s Barrett said. “I have seven children and a job and I make it work, so why every single other woman can’t do the same is beyond me—unless I’m missing something about class in America. Don’t answer that.”
You can watch McKinnon above and Jost and Che below.