‘Saturday Night Live’ Cold Open Goes Back To The ‘Moral Clarity’ Of The 13th Century To Spoof Samuel Alito’s Abortion Opinion

‘Saturday Night Live’ Cold Open Goes Back To The ‘Moral Clarity’ Of The 13th Century To Spoof Samuel Alito’s Abortion Opinion

Saturday Night Live opened with something a little different: The show went back to the 13th Century to mockSupreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion that overturns Roe V. Wade.


The skit opened with a narrator announcing that Alito explained that “no woman has a right to an abortion and abortion is a crime.”


“He cites a treatise from the 13th Century about the quickening of the foetus, and a second treatise that says that if the quick child dieth in her body, it would a great misprision. We go now to that profound moment of moral clarity almost a thousand years ago which laid such a clear foundation for what our law should be in 2022.”

The skit then went to Benedict Cumberbatch, playing a medieval figure, who wonders if they should pass a law to ban abortion. “We should have a law that could stand the test of time, so that hundreds and hundreds of years from now, they will look back and say, ‘No need to update this one at all. They nailed it back in 1235’,” he says.

More to come.