SETH MEYERS (HOST): Now it wasn't just pro-choice advocates who are angry at Trump. He also received intense criticism from the right and from anti-abortion advocates, the last majority of whom do not favor any kind of criminal punishment for women who receive abortions. But while it's right for anti-abortion advocates to criticize Trump, it's also a little hypocritical because in state houses across the country anti-abortion advocates are still looking for other non-criminal ways to essentially punish women for having abortions.
Look at Utah, where Gov. Gary Herbert just signed a law that will require doctors to ignore best medical practice and give some women unnecessary anesthesia for abortions. Not only do doctors say such procedure is medically unnecessary and risky, it also makes no sense. As one doctor put it, “I've emailed the governor and asked him to tell me what to do, because I don't know what to do. It's like saying, 'Take someone's widget out using standard medical practice.' I don't know what that means.”
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Meanwhile in Florida, the Republican-led state legislature passed a measure intended to cut funding to reproductive health clinics, and in the process, the state would direct women to dentists and optometrists for reproductive care. Can you imagine having to go to a dentist for reproductive care? The only thing a dentist and a gynecologist have in common is they both say “open wide.”
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So while it's nice that everyone agrees a women shouldn't be criminally punished for getting an abortion, let's not forget the state legislatures across the country are still proposing plenty of other abortion restrictions that essentially punish women for making choices about their bodies.
