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‘Daily Show’ Bashed For Controversial Abortion Tweet Following SCOTUS Ruling

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 14:56 PST, Jun 27, 2016

The Daily Show ruffled the feathers of the pro-choice and pro-life community alike when it sent out a tweet about Monday’s Supreme Court decision to strike down an unconstitutional and controversial Texas abortion law. The Supreme Court’s ruling was much anticipated, and because of the current unusual nature of the SCOTUS (currently, the Supreme Court has only eight justices) people were truly unsure of how the court would rule in the contentious Texas abortion case.

The Daily Show has been suffering from some pretty dismal ratings since long-time host Jon Stewart retired and was replaced by Trevor Noah. It’s unlikely that Monday’s abortion tweet has done anything to further endear The Daily Show to current or prospective fans. After all, a comment has to be pretty bad to anger both the pro-choicers and the pro-lifers.

But, The Daily Show managed to do precisely that with its scathing (and most say not-at-all funny) Monday tweet, reports Fox News. Check out what got everyone’s undies in a bind.

Wow. To say the least. “Go knock someone up in Texas!” Yikes.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the almost-universal backlash against the “joke” to hit social media. Even the most ardent supporters of abortion rights didn’t seem to find The Daily Show’s tweet funny, and critics and former guests of The Daily Show alike called out the show’s Twitter account mods (or whoever posted the tweet) for their “bad taste.”

Whoever is manning The Daily Show’s Twitter feed tried to bail some of the water out of a clearly sinking ship, but it didn’t seem to do much good.

For a little background on Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, which The Daily Show so crassly and humorlessly satirized, the Supreme Court case stemmed from a 2013 Texas law that slashed the number of operating abortion providers in the state by half. The new Texas law forced any abortion provider to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and the surgical facilities of a “ambulatory surgical centers.” In a nutshell, abortion providers in Texas would have had to have facilities on par with and regulated at the same standards as hospitals. Many abortion providers simply didn’t have the resources to make this happen, and as a result, many clinics in the state closed.

The result? Many Texas women were left without access to safe, accessible abortion on demand.

While The Daily Show clearly felt that it was a joking matter, it certainly wasn’t a joke for the millions of Texas women who were unsure where or how they would get an abortion procedure performed.

As a result of the restrictive 2013 Texas abortion law, The Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit against the state, on behalf of a handful of Texas abortion providers.

Monday’s SCOTUS ruling, while funny to The Daily Show, ensured that millions of Texas women (and women around the nation who were being subjugated by similar legislation) would have fair and equitable access to the abortion services they require.

Had the Texas abortion law, mocked by The Daily Show on social media, been allowed to take effect, fewer than 10 locations in the state would have remained to provide abortion services to literally millions of women.

Anti-abortion proponents of the controversial (and now officially shut down) Texas abortion law said that it would have made women safer. Abortion rights groups argued that the now-stricken legislation would have made it next to impossible for Texas women to obtain a safe, legal abortion on demand, and such laws make no one safer.

The Texas abortion case was the highest-profile of the cases ruled on by the Supreme Court on Monday. It also delivered rulings on corruption and gun rights for perpetrators of domestic violence. Monday was expected to be the final day of the 2016 SCOTUS session.

What do you think? Did The Daily Show cross a line with its abortion tweet? Should The Daily Show retract its words or keep defending them as satire?

So far, The Daily Show hasn’t responded to media requests for comment on the controversy.

[Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Comedy Central]

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