You may have seen or read about the recent Saturday Night Live Weekend Update skit ridiculing the Texas Heartbeat Act. Longtime cast member Cecily Strong appeared as “Goober the Clown” to talk about the “clown abortion” she had when she was 23 years old, saying: “It’s a rough subject, so we have to do fun clown stuff to make it more palatable.”

My friend and fellow SNL fan, Destiny Herndon de la Rosa, founder and president of New Wave Feminists, had this reaction on social media:

This whole skit seemed odd… and really sad.

The lengths SNL had to go to in order to make abortion “palatable” felt bizarrely forced, and as a friend put it, “I feel someone failed her.”

Like, yeah, it was about “clown abortion,” but was it really? It appeared more like Cecily Strong was telling her own story of having to sacrifice her child in order to have the career she has now. I think she’s amazing and brilliantly funny, but instead of laughing, my heart was breaking for her throughout this whole skit… and it was also breaking for all the little girls who will see this and hear, “You can’t actually have it all. Making it big on SNL could cost you your child.”

Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know her story. But that was my take away. We have to do better by women in comedy and in this country. While she’s incredibly funny and talented, I don’t think Cecily Strong’s a “clown.” I agree with my friend, she’s a woman who was failed at some point.

It turns out, USA Today reported a few days later,  Strong was talking about her own story:  “Though Strong never explicitly said she was drawing on her own experience in the sketch, she took to her Instagram Stories on Monday to relay that it was indeed personal. ‘I didn’t tell my own wonderful and supportive mom for years and Saturday I told live TV,’ Strong wrote, adding three clown emojis.”

Accolades came from likely sources, such as CNN: “In her ‘SNL’ skit, Cecily Strong opened a dialogue on abortion” (she did, seemed one-sided to me! ); The Daily Beast: “The SNL’s Cecily Strong Slams Texas Abortion Law in Bizarre, Brilliant Weekend Update“; and my favorite, from Salon: “On ‘SNL,’ Cecily Strong’s Goober the Clown nails the joy and comedy of abortion. Abortion isn’t all doom and gloom — it’s helped ‘clowns’ like Strong live their dreams.”

But what about the missing child—sorry, ghost clown baby–whose life is completely ignored? Destiny’s further comments get to the heart of the matter:

The only “rule” of comedy is that truly good jokes don’t punch down. As someone who got pregnant at 16 myself, and perhaps more importantly, someone who’s mom got pregnant with them at 19 (wherein she had to drop out of college to bring me into this world) I felt punched down upon by this skit. I could’ve easily been the one terminated so my mother could “succeed.” I’m sure few people would’ve blamed her, and many would’ve said that was the only responsible choice. But she didn’t abort me because she understood my humanity. So that’s not a narrative I can ever embrace because by doing so, I would be denying my own humanity, the humanity of my son, and the humanity of other unborn children in similar situations.

That said, because of the struggles both my mother and I faced, I was given immense empathy for other women facing unplanned pregnancies, and I will always work to make sure women are given better resources and that the patriarchal structures demanding we sacrifice our children to “succeed” in a male-normative world are finally smashed once and for all. Including for women like Cecily Strong and all the other aspiring young female comediennes following in her footsteps.

You can see the skit for yourself here. And keep up with New Wave Feminists here.  They are on the ground in Texas and have an exciting new initiative in Mexico:

With the legalization of abortion in Mexico, as well as the newly enacted heartbeat bill in Texas, women WILL be crossing the border to access abortion services. Giving women true choices, means offering them alternatives to terminations as well. This facility would allow us not only to serve migrant mothers in Juarez, and the community as a whole, but also women crossing the border who might be unsure of the decision they’re about to make.

Our goal is to EMPOWER all of these women and families with as much information and support as possible – from free sonograms, to pregnancy support, to helping them access continuing resources back home if they’ve traveled into the city for an abortion and ultimate decided not to go through with it.

There is nothing else like this in Mexico. It would be the first shelter/pregnancy resource center hybrid in the country, and it’s almost as if this space was built with precisely these services in mind. It’s literally perfect for what we want to do there.

Women walking the walk with other women and saving lives? That’s a cause for joy, no need for painted-on clown smiles!