Doonesbury ABORTION Cartoon Controversy. Since when is ABORTION a Joke? Pro-Choice Humor? I don't find it funny at all!
"Doonesbury" Abortion comic strips have newspapers, partisans divided
Conservatives are not laughing at “Doonesbury” comic strips this week.
The often-controversial strip by Garry Trudeau waded deep into the heart of the Texas abortion sonogram debate, with a week-long series focusing on a woman who enters a Texas abortion clinic and deals with a succession of bumbling pro-lifers. Some papers are not carrying this week’s strips.
The foil in Tuesday’s comic, for example, is a Texas legislator named Rep. Sid Patrick — an obvious reference to Texas Rep. Sid Miller and state Sen. Dan Patrick, the sponsors of the abortion sonogram bill.
In the strip, Patrick asks the woman if her “parents know she’s a slut” after she says she uses contraceptives.
"My skin is pretty thick, I'm disappointed at some of the papers for printing it inside the comic book pages," Miller told the News late Tuesday. "I don't see anything funny about it, the one yesterday or today, but I respect the right of Mr. Trudeau to give his opininon even if don't necessarily agree with it."
“Abortion remains a deeply contentious subject,” Trudeau told the AP. “Having said that, the goal is definitely not to antagonize editors and get booted from papers. It’s just an occupational risk.”
The comic strip’s distributer, Universal UClick Syndicate, offered its 1,400 newspaper subscribers the option of an alternate “Doonesbury” instead of the abortion-themed ones. "Doonesbury" apears in the print edition of The Daily News, but has never appeared on the web site because of rights issues.
“We have heard from 40 to 50 papers to ask for substitutes,” says Susan Rouch, the syndicate’s editor.
Other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, decided to move the strip out of the comics pages and onto the Op-Ed pages.
"The kids reading 'Peanuts' or 'Nancy,' I don't think they're going to get much benefit out of read it," says Miller.
A number of newspapers, like the Oregonian, the Forth Worth Star Telegram and The Press of Atlantic City, decided to strip out the week’s “Doonesburys” entirely.
“In next week’s strip, ‘Doonesbury’ author Garry Trudeau, in our judgment, went over the line of good taste and humor in penning a series on abortion using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page,” the Oregonian editors wrote in a letter to readers.
Trudeau told Reuters that he was inspired by the “appalling” bills in Texas and Virginia that call for women to view an ultrasound of their unborn child before undergoing an abortion.
Not surprisingly, reaction to the “Doonesbury” story line pretty much fell along partisan lines. For instance, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called newspapers that pulled the comics “cowardly.”
On the other side of the debate, “The decision to end a life isn’t funny,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s press secretary, Catherine Frazier, told the Dallas Morning News. “There is nothing comic about this tasteless interpretation of legislation we have passed in Texas to ensure that women have all the facts when making a life-ending decision.”
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Sources: Doonesbury, NY Daily News, Youtube, Google Maps
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