Cecily Strong reveals she's 'very happily pregnant' via IVF, reflects on SNL Goober the Clown abortion sketch

Cecily Strong is pregnant — and she's using her big announcement to share a personal, political message ahead of Tuesday's election.

The Saturday Night Live alum announced that she's pregnant from IVF in an Instagram post Friday, and connected the news to her 2022 Goober the Clown sketch on the show.

"A couple years ago I did a piece on SNL as Goober the Clown, who had an abortion the day before her 23rd birthday," Strong wrote. "I'm happy to report that same clown is now very happily pregnant from IVF at 40."

In the sketch, Strong adopted the persona of Goober the Clown to discuss her actual abortion experience in her early 20s, juxtaposing her emotional vulnerability and political urgency with goofy clown gags. "Did you know one in three clowns will have a clown abortion in their lifetime?" she asked the audience. "You don't, because they don't tell you. They don't even know how to talk to other clowns about it. It's going to happen, so it ought to be safe, legal, and accessible."

Strong said her colleagues at SNL offered her overwhelming support at the time. "I had so much anxiety and frustration, and it was like, 'I'm either gonna write, every night, essays for nobody, or I can finally just put this on the show,'" she said on The View. "And luckily… right away, the show was very supportive. I think it was the only thing I've ever done where I haven't had any notes. I don't think anybody wanted to give us notes."

Strong said she felt a responsibility to share her story given that reproductive health care is on the ballot in many states. "It's kind of insane and scary to disclose all of this," she wrote on Instagram. "But for me — it's much scarier to think about what could happen after Tuesday's election. I currently live in a state where I will be able to receive all the health care I may possibly need. But we won't be safe anywhere in the U.S. if there is [a] national ban like the one promised by Project 2025."

Project 2025, the radical right-wing agenda that some have linked to the Trump campaign, does not explicitly mention a nationwide abortion ban, the BBC reports. It does, however, outline a strategy for pulling the abortion pill mifepristone from the market. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services Department to "return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care," per PBS.

Strong continued in her new post, "The Supreme Court has already decided it's okay to let some of us die depending on our geography, and the current Republican nominee brags about being responsible for that Supreme Court decision." Indeed, Donald Trump has boasted about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, and maternal deaths have increased by almost 25 percent since 2020, reports Vox.

The comedian went on to recall her experiences with reproductive health care. "I've been in lots of waiting rooms with other women throughout my life," she wrote. "Feeling terrified and lonely all those years ago at a clinic in California, to feeling frustrated and anxious in fertility offices in New York the past couple of years, to giddily talking everyone's ear off and wishing everyone around me good luck like I was Forrest Gump the day of my transfer."

She continued, "I've had a friend sit with me and give me the biggest hug after my abortion at 23, only for me to sit with her and give her the biggest hug 17 years later after a difficult pregnancy loss. I had family and strangers reach out after Goober and tell me of their own experiences — some of whom had never shared with anyone before."

She added, "I've seen so many women in these waiting rooms going through their own struggles and journeys with their reproductive health and family planning and bodily autonomy. Some look relieved. Some look excited. Some look fearful. Some look like they are carrying the deep sadness of prior losses and the even deeper hope of some good news finally. Some look as simply dumbstruck-happy to be there as me as Forrest Gump on my transfer day. But the one thing nobody in those rooms has ever looked is unable to make her own decisions."

Strong ended her message by urging her followers to vote in favor of reproductive rights. "Let's all please vote to protect and uplift and support all of us that share or have shared those waiting rooms together," she wrote. "And for the future ones like the little miss thing I'm really, really hopeful I'll get to meet next spring."

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