



On Sunday, John Oliver tackled the increasing number of abortion laws recently enacted that aim to restrict a woman’s access to an abortion clinic and weaken reproductive rights.

“Since 2010, new state laws have contributed to the closure of about 17 abortion clinics and these four states are down to exactly one abortion clinic each,” Oliver said. “That’s right, Mississippi now has four times as many s’s as it does abortion clinics.”

Since abortion is technically legal, lawmakers in these states have instead introduced TRAP laws to create significant obstacles for women seeking an abortion. Lawmakers justify these laws by saying they protect a woman’s health, but as Oliver notes, many of these laws lack a medical basis.

“Legal abortions have a mortality rate of 0.00073 percent,” he said. “That is nearly 10 times less than what one study found was the risk for dying from the result of a colonoscopy. And let’s agree, all of us, that death by colonoscopy has to be one of the worst ways to die.”

As Mother Jones has reported, many of these anti-abortion laws range from requiring a medical consultation 24 hours before getting an abortion to outright bans on the most common method of second trimester abortions. For more on the war on women and abortion laws, check out our in-depth reporting here.