We Heart: Michelle Wolf’s Salute to Abortions

Michelle Wolf gained comedic notoriety earlier this year when she hosted the White House Correspondents’ dinner—and leveraged her moment in the spotlight to challenge the Trump administration and the mainstream media’s coverage of their policies. Wolf now hosts a weekly Netflix series, The Breakand its newest episode is abundant with not only her quick wit and insightful antics, but a frank and unabashed celebration of reproductive rights.

In light of Justice Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court, Wolf’s “Salute to Abortions”—which aired one day before Trump’s eventual nomination of far-right judge Brett Kavanaugh to the benchfocused on the political threat to women’s rights that could come of the Court’s latest vacancy.

“Abortions should not be a luxury,” Wolf yells at the opening of the segment. She then cites statistics on the commonality of abortions, critiques the hypocrisy of abortion opponents and takes on the silence surrounding a safe, legal and common procedure for women across the country. “Abortion is super common,” Wolf asserts, “and the stigma against it is bullshit.”

To conclude this poignant, timely and tragically comedic segment, Wolf defends women’s constitutional right to abortion without apology—with trumpets blaring the national anthem in the background.

Over the commotion, she shouts an anthem fit for a more feminist union: “God bless abortions and god bless America!”

About

Cori Bratby-Rudd is an eclectic writer from the Bay Area. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA’s Gender Studies department, and is a current MFA Candidate in Creative Writing at Cal Arts. Cori enjoys incorporating themes of emotional healing and social justice into her works. She is currently living in the Los Angeles area and has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Gordian Review, Califragile, among many others. She recently won the Editorial Choice Award for her research paper in Audeamus Academic Journal and was nominated as one of Lambda Literary's 2018 Emerging Writers. Her writing also appears on her website: www.coribratbyrudd.com