There’s something a little extra evil in the reality of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a birth giver herself, siding with the seemingly looming court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and torpedo the legal precedent guaranteeing a U.S. right to abortion. That’s the energy Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon is channeling here in this Weekend Update appearance as Barrett, at any rate.
It’s her flippant and repeated exhortation that pregnant people “do your nine,” as in spend nine months cultivating a single cell — that’s all it is at the start, folks — into a newborn baby, that hits hardest and loudest. The leaked draft decision that threatens to upend American life explicitly references a (the?) question Barrett asked during the proceedings about controversial “safe haven” laws that provide legal protection to those who surrender or abandon an unwanted newborn.
“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]. Just do your nine,” a matter-of-fact McKinnon-as-Barrett says with all the apparent thought and consideration of a toddler who sees an unattended box of puzzle pieces to dump on the floor.
This is a comedy sketch and a heightened take on reality, but they’re all monsters. Every one of these ghouls who want to inflict misery on people and situations that they don’t understand, purely due to political differences, religious beliefs that aren’t shared by all, misguided understandings of human biology, bigotry, and plain, old spite — monsters. That’s the case SNL is making here.
