“Saturday Night Live” host Benedict “Dr. Strange” Cumberbatch and cast members gave one more blast of support for Roe v. Wade as the program closed out, wearing T-shirts reading “1973” — the year the Supreme Court issued the groundbreaking ruling recognizing women’s right to abortions.
Cumberbatch, members of the guest band Arcade Fire, and Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Chris Redd, and Cecily Strong all wore white T-shirts with 1973 in red and blue as they gathered together on stage to wrap up Saturday’s episode.
Just minutes earlier, Arcade Fire’s lead singer Win Butler — whose guitar sported a 1973 sticker — proclaimed: “Women’s right to choose forever and ever and ever, amen” at the end of the song “The Lightning.”
The episode featured two powerful sketches and “Weekend Update” attacks on a leaked draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gutting a half-century of reproductive rights.
In the cold open, Cumberbatch and crew traveled back to 1253 for “moral clarity,” mocking Alito’s references to justify his opinion to a 13th Century treatise from England (and repeatedly quoting Sir Matthew Hale, an English jurist who had women executed for witchcraft in the 1600s).
Kate McKinnon did a hilarious — and disturbing — impression of Justice Amy Coney Barrett making nothing of women “plopping” their unwanted newborns anywhere to be picked up by someone instead of getting abortions.
Do “your nine, leave it on the sidewalk. Wrap it up like a little Moses, put it in a little basket, send it down the creek. ... It’s simple,” McKinnon smirked.
What is “more traumatic?” she asked. “Safely ending an early pregnancy or giving full birth to a baby you can never see again because you put it on a Ferris wheel?”
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