Virginia's ultrasound bill, one of the most controversial pieces of anti-abortion legislature in recent years, was the topic of a excoriating sketch on Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Tuesday night. The intrusion of politics into reproductive heathcare issues have become a regular feature of the show, in a section he has called the "punanny state".
Stewart explained that the bill would force women seeking a first trimester abortion to be subjected to a trasvaginal probe, which would then transmit an ultrasound image.
"I don't really have a joke here," Stewart said. But the one upside is women don't have to look at the ultrasound image, he said.
"Hooray!"
"During the entire wand-forcibly-inserted-in-your-most-private-area experience, you still have complete and total control over what direction your head is turned," he said. "So just set your iPod to shuffle, flip through a copy of Vanity Fair and try to ignore the fact that you're being handled like a human popsicle."
He showed a clip of Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who up until recently was in favour of the bill, opposing TSA patdowns at airports as a civil liberty issue.
"Women might consider this a TSA patdown inside their vagina," Stewart said.
