For those of you who didn’t see this on line during the week, there was a series of Doonesbury comic strips focusing on the Texas law requiring pregnant women to receive a transvaginal ultrasound and then wait 24 hours before having an abortion. A number of US newspapers refused to publish the comics, and others moved it from its usual spot in the funnies to the opinion pages. The full series was leaked on the internet during the week but they have now all run. A full-colour version of each strip is available on the official Doonesbury page, starting on March 12. There is some background information about the series and the forced ultrasound law here and here.
Well, obviously Doonesbury should have stuck to his usual completely unpolitical subject matter. Like those totally innocuous strips he ran on the Iraq War.
Quite right!
You know what I think the sad thing is… This Texan law that is causing such an uproar & what this women in the US have to now go through is NOTHING compared to what women in NZ have to go through. When is NZ gonna get with the frecken times?!
PS. Not that I am belittling, nor would I happily have a Transvaginal Ultrasound any ‘ol day, especially when it is being ENFORCED/IMPOSED upon me against my choice/will.
Yep, it’s definitely time for a change to our outdated laws!
I’m trying to see it as a positive sign that the increasingly fascistic surveillance and control over women’s health is seeping out into mainstream U.S. culture via strips like Doonesbury etc. After all, positive abortion stories — or even any abortions — are effectively banned in TV and Hollywood land these days. The abortion rate in TVland and Hollywood is around zero; the real abortion rate is somewhere around one in three to one in four women.
I totally agree. I saw a film the other day where a sexually liberated (self-proclaimed ‘slut’ with the morals of a man – hey, I didn’t say it was a good film!) discovered she was pregnant, didn’t know who the father was, and abortion was mentioned precisely once, and immediately attacked by another character as “evil” and then forgotten about. It just didn’t ring true. At least UK and NZ TV shows talk about abortion even if the characters don’t always make that choice – much more realistic.
Sorry, that reply was from me (La Ranita)
If governments focused on what actually mattered, running the country, and stopped worrying about trying to rest control over individuals choices then we might be in a better shape. I totally missed these cartoons though and its the part of human nature I love. When all else fails, comedy fights on.
If people want to be so arrogant they believe they have any right to control other peoples lives, laugh at them, a politician who cant walk into a room without the entire audience laughing at him wont survive very long.