The religious right has successfully
melted America's minds to make people believe that God
outlawed abortion straight from a burning bush,
but the truth might actually surprise you.
I spoke with religious leaders to learn more.
The Supreme Court just heard the most serious
legal challenge in a generation to a person's
right to obtain an abortion.
The law under review, passed by Mississippi in 2018,
would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Why 15 weeks?
How would I know?
But the religious right, who need no more airtime so she'll
hear and be played by the Gemstones,
believe this law is righteous because God,
for sure, like 100%, said that abortion is a no-no.
And since in college, I took intro to comedy
instead of intro to religion.
I invited a Catholic,
a Muslim, and a Jew
to a bar to talk about abortion.
Let's start with a really easy question.
Whose religion is right?
I'm just kidding.
Is God opposed to abortion?
There's no ban on abortion in Islam.
There is no ban on abortion at any point, for any reason,
by any method.
All right, OK.
In Judaism, abortion is permitted,
and where the pregnant person's life is at stake,
it's required.
Because the health and well-being
of the pregnant person comes first.
OK.
Jamie, a little more complicated.
Bad news.
Well, let's bear in mind that what I'm about to say
is a teaching created by men, who are ostensibly celibate,
who have no in-roads or connection to the lives
of women because they do not have wives,
they do not have daughters.
Great start.
Yeah.
And the Catholic church teaches that, in almost
every circumstance, abortion is murder.
Is that in the Bible?
No.
In the Christian scriptures, there
is no mention of abortion.
I mean, does everyone just think
that these things are mentioned, and we're
all just like misremembering?
Is it like a Berenstain Bears thing?
But there are no two ways to read the Mississippi Law.
Its intention is to move the goalposts
and make getting an abortion harder.
Why?
Because a small minority of religious people
are basing laws that will affect my body on the idea
that at conception, the fetus has a soul,
and that's something that even the majors don't agree on.
The Talmud says, for the first 40 days,
the fetus is mere water.
That would be about seven to eight weeks of gestation.
Yes.
The Quran does say that, at 120 days,
the soul enters the body of the fetus,
and that is roughly 17 and 1/2 weeks.
Is there anything that your respective religions say about
when the soul leaves the body?
Like, is it when you run for office or is it actually when?
I don't know when the soul enters, or what the soul is,
or whether I even believe in the soul,
but I did like this movie.
I'm so glad our laws are being written
around this mystery riddle.
Is it fair to say then that the 15-week Mississippi
ban could be an infringement of your religious right?
Absolutely.
Yes, it could.
Which is why it's offensive to apply this blanket idea of what
is allowed in terms of abortion on communities
like Muslims, who don't actually believe that.
Have any of you folks consider going to the ACLU?
This is so messed up.
The laws that some of these religious people like
are infringing on the rights of these religious people.
Within the Catholic Church, how many people support abortion?
The majority of Catholics, 56%,
think abortion should be legal in all or most cases,
and 68% of Catholics do not believe Roe versus Wade
should be struck down.
68%.
That's a lot of Catholics.
I mean, I did go to Catholic school,
and I think the number was a lot higher than 68%.
Exactly.
SAMANTHA BEE: According to my drinking buddies and this Pew,
Pew, Pew, Pew, Pew study, even the majority of Catholics
support Roe.
So what the fresh hell is this really about?
How are your versions of faith so open-minded?
But then, you look at Mike Pence's version,
and it's so ripped and dark, and it just like fits
like a fist in your uterus.
What I realize more and more is that fragile men project
their own fragility onto God, and their God
is male and does not believe in women's equality.
Religion has been used to justify atrocity
and to maintain power for centuries.
Now, it is being used to hold and maintain and entrench
existing power structures.
Right.
They're allowed.
And scary.
If you look at how they're willing to treat
pregnant people, you can tell that they're
a bunch of sadistic--
Sorry, is [BLEEP] the word you're looking for?
Absolutely.
SAMANTHA BEE: Got it.
Abortion laws help the religious right in their quest
to uphold the patriarchy.
Congrats, boys, it worked.
Should've seen that coming.
The long game that was played by the religious right
is the most cynical of all games.
And I do have to ask the question,
do we just have to be more evil?
Well, I feel like part of the problem
is that we think about reproductive justice
as a women's issue.
So we have these bills all around the country,
around the regulation of trans bodies and denying trans people
health care.
And they really stem from the same logic.
And so, I think it's actually really
useful if we were building solidarity with other people.
Right, we're facing all of these big cases.
It feels very dire for people.
How do you infuse yourself with any type
of hope for a good outcome?
You're laughing.
You're like, I don't even.
No, I smoked a lot of weed.
OK.
SAMANTHA BEE: The religious right isn't going anywhere
except farther to the right.
But honestly, they, like all of us,
are allowed to hold whatever personal religious beliefs
they want, as long as I'm not expected to abide by them.
I'm sorry, the Garden of Eden is not in Missouri.
And even if it is, I'm still not going to visit.
The country is supposed to be a country for atheists,
for Buddhists, for Hindus, for Muslims,
for every kind of Christian, for every kind of Jew.
So the questions about when the soul enters the body
should not be relevant, and they certainly should not
be behind how a law is written.
Yes.
Yeah.
Freedom of religion means freedom from religion as well.
- From religion. - Yeah.
SAMANTHA BEE: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
the law should be atheist.
And speaking of people who are free from religion--
Everyone say the amount of abortions they think
Donald Trump has paid for.
I think, five.
That's so low.
Maybe 13?
It's like 76.
We'll be right back.