During his monologue on Monday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel handed the reins over to his wife, the show’s co-head writer Molly McNearney, for a commentary urging people to vote for candidates that support abortion rights during the midterms.
The remarks came around 7 minutes in, when McNearney interrupted Kimmel’s jokes using a large red alarm. After some brief banter, she began.
“Tomorrow is election day, and abortion rights are gone or endangered in 26 states, even thought the majority of people in this country supports a woman’s right to choose. Let me ask you something: Every time you have sex, is your intention to have a baby?” she began.
“No I just wait until you eat a gummy and try to snuggle in,” Kimmel joked.
McNearney clarified that her remarks were for the audience and not him, and continued: “Being a mom is the best and the hardest job on the planet. I can’t imagine forcing any woman who doesn’t want that job to take it against her will. Six out of 10 women who have an abortion already have kids at home. They know how hard the job is.”
“Ninety-two percent of abortions happen in the first 13 weeks. A good portion of the women who need one after the first trimester do it because of health complications that could kill her or her baby. Roughly half the women who have abortions live below the poverty line. They don’t have the resources to raise another child. They don’t have the money to drive to another state to get health care,” she continued.
“The only person who should be making a life-altering, potentially life-saving decision for a woman and her body is the woman herself. I’m not here with this dumb alarm asking you guys to love abortion. I’m asking you to love women enough to trust women enough to make their own difficult decisions. and to vote for the people who will make that happen tomorrow,” she added.
“Our daughters should not have to fight the battles that our grandmothers won,” McNearney concluded, before joking that when she gets home, Jimmy Kimmel had better have dinner and a gummy waiting for her.
Watch the whole monologue above — as we said, McNearney’s remarks begin just before the 8-minute mark.