On “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” the liberal and lovable host tackled the controversial and polarizing subject of abortion. Regardless of where you draw the line in your beliefs about the morality and legality of abortion – whether it is only for medical reasons including the life and health of the mother and fetus, or for pregnancy as a result of rape or incest, or simply because a woman has a right to choose what to do with her own body – current laws are making it ridiculously difficult for women to choose to obtain one.
This week alone, Tea Party darling Matt Bevin, the new governor of Kentucky, sued one of only three clinics to offer abortions in the state of Kentucky, which just began performing the procedures in January. Although the Planned Parenthood clinic in Louisville – the only Planned Parenthood to offer the procedure – was told by the licensing board that they could begin offering the procedure while they waited for their licensing application to be reviewed. Bevin forced the clinic to stop offering the procedure, effectively closing one-third of the clinics in the state, and now he’s decided to sue them for doing exactly what the licensing board told them to do.
It is laws like the ones which are holding up Planned Parenthood’s licensing in Kentucky, laws such as doctors who perform abortions being required to unnecessarily have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which restrict a woman’s right to choose so fully that women are being hurt. Just listen to the examples in John Oliver’s segment for proof.
