Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 13, 2012

Do his parents know he’s a creep?

I hope that abortion remains safe and legal in this country.

Sounds like Legislator Sid is more worried about her rejection of the traditional family (his kind of family). He can’t appreciate her efforts at family planning because he thinks wives don’t plan, they just produce. He’s probably married to a slut and doesn’t know it.

Do you know this is fiction? Do your parents know you rely on a comic strip to justify your political beliefs?

A string that is definitely puling folks’ strings.

Bet he volunteers at the clinic for all the free Viagra samples.

This must be how pathetic old bald fat men get their jollies – harassing young women who are getting it more than they are. No one attractive ever protests at an abortion clinic.

Next frame – Sid Patrick in hospital ER room with the nurse asking if he learned anything or not.

There are some words you simply DO NOT use and the S-word is one of them

Poor Republicans. No credibility on fixing the economy. No credibility on balancing the budget. No credibility on immigration. No credibility on foreign affairs.All they got is ‘tax-breaks for billionaires’ and ‘put wimin back in the kichen’.

Seeing the contradictions in the views of abortion/death penalty taken by either group, I too find it hard to form a consistent opinion.

As a man, I get to pass on the decision to terminate a (potential) life. The death penalty’s an easier call, and I’d take it as a civic duty—-much like clearing the street of trash—-to throw the switch, or perform a retro-abortion, on an admitted and proven murderer.

Sid Patrick will probably be greeting his granddaughter and her friend (his paramour) next.

This is how Republicans feel about you, in case you were wondering.

Re: Yesterdays postings. The Seattle Times is running Doonesbury, but putting the strip in the news section. Page A2, to be exact. The column discussing the move received 233 comments — the vast majority agreeing with the sentiments of the vast majority in the internet postings.

Wow! 257 Comments yesterday. Is that some kind of record, or what?!

You know, I was in the bathroom at the Austin Airport and a guy who looks just like him bumped into my foot with his shoe. I said, excuse me and he said, “sorry, I have a wide stance.”

Catching up with comments from yesterday’s strip:

1. I have no idea how I got this stirp earlier than a Miami resident. I’m in Des Moines and I just go to this site for a few comic strips as the Des Moines Register site does not carry strips.

2. The Des Moines Register and, for that matter, all Gannett papers, are not running this week’s strip. In short, no balls. It’s a real shame.

3. Someone commented on femal legislators and their possible take on all this (anything sexual, contraception, abortion). In my experience, they can be just as close minded, sanctimoneous and out to shame young woman as any troglodytic male legislator. While she was not a legislator, I do rmember from my student days at FSU when in May, 1971, Regent Elizabeth Kovachevich labeled the decision to end curfews for women’s dorms as turning thewm into “taxpayers whorehouses.”.

Ooooo the clownservatives have their panties in a bunch!!! WAY TO GO GT!!!!!

Contraceptives? You use contraceptives?? JEZEBEL!!!!!!!

Things are bigger in texas.

We used to have a doctor who spoke exactly like that practicing where I live. Thankfully he’s no longer around.

Being in favor of freedom does not mean being in favor of every thing that every one does with his or her freedom. Nor is it hypocritical to encourage people to do what they do, even when you disapprove of what they do, in the safest way possible, even to help them. Being against prohibition does not mean being pro-alcoholism. Nor does teaching teenagers about condoms, nor even providing condoms to them, mean that you favor unbridled teenage sex. Nor does providing drug addicts with clean needles mean that you favor drug abuse. Nor does favoring legal and safe abortions mean being pro-abortion. But I guess there are many people for whom such distinctions are too deep for them to fathom, who require simple-minded principles to guide them: “Four legs, GOOD! Two legs, BAD! Four legs, GOOD! Two legs, BAD! Baa, baa, baa!”

ook at what the Arizona legislature has said to doctors. You may lie to the woman about her choice to have an abortion so that she is dissuaded from having it. Not the facts, just whatever you can tell her to not have it. I am not for abortion but lying to the patient is unethical and against the Hippocratic oath.

I still don’t understand why my local paper isnt carrying these Democratic campaign ads. I still prefer Mallard Fillmore.

Call it like it is: not ‘conservatives’ at all. CONFEDERATES.

Believe this or don’t: I’ve had T Party members tell me they DO intend to REPEAL votes for women. that was last year, when they were so full of themselves…they were going to start with ‘babies born here are citizens’…remember? once they got THAT one opened…these are serious people about their drive to put you “all” back in “your places”…

note: I don’t suppose ALL t potz hold those views…or that they think much at all, really. Most I know are just deluded and don’t give a damn what I think…or you. But their “DELUDERS” are paid or very very rich.Their “place” is quite a bit different than yours.

Apparently at least one newspaper won’t print this series, even on the editorial page. That was in Indianapolis – I don’t remember the name of the paper. This Doonesbury arc, and the buzz its causing, are even being covered by the BBC. Go Trudeau!

My body – my rules; stay the heck away from the LAW!

and bill maher calling sarah palin a c@@t is acceptable

It comes down to this. YOU have the right to decide what happens to YOUR body. You DON’T have the right to decide what happens to MY body.

Women are just so weak and girly. That’s why he will probably survive when she shoots him with her little pearl handled gun. But one hopes she aims nice and low.

to MassieVoter: Sid considers the clinic a speed dating site.

And you have just proven your ignorance of the facts. Ms Fluke was testifying about a friend of hers and access to contraceptives for her. NOT for herself. Rush did not call her friend a slut. He called Ms Fluke a slut when she was not discussing contraceptives for herself. She made no mention of her sex life in the slightest. Rush (and you by extension) are attacking the messenger which is very poor.

Just kick him in the nuts

I have nothing against abortion but using it as a “contraceptive” somehow sounds frightening. Besides if this lady has to use the services regularly why isn’t she avoiding the whole unpleasantness by using the birth control pill? Or is the education system so crap in the US that girls are not taught about that choice?

My H.A.L.-9000 computer has informed me that Rush plus truth does not compute.

My Funk & Wagnell’s defines a slut as an untidy woman, strange how words change their meanings over time.

Christians scare me.

I’ll support abortion on demand when there’s a chromosome test for pre-natal liberalism.

nurse, why is there big government in my uterus?

I only wish this was fiction. If it is fiction, it certainly isn’t very far off. Sad, but true.

Nobody cares when you will support abortion on demand. I will be happy to pay taxes when I know that none of my tax money goes to support war. Nobody gets their way all the time. Get over it. Rachel Maddow had a preview of this week’s Doonesbury on her show last night, BTW.

Perhaps the free market will finally get rid of Rush. He is going down. He only wanted $$$ and lots of it and that is going away.

Are you suggesting that GT is behind the censorship?? And what is “anusol milketoast” supposed to mean? Your statement on cowardice makes no sense as it is written, but are you calling GT the coward? What is he supposed to be afraid of??

In Missouri, someone has sponsored a bill in which men who want to have vasectomies are subject to a “morals clause.” It was designed by a woman who is disturbed by the current trend toward restricting abortion rights. Not sure if it will work, but that is happening.

Wait ’till you see who the nurse turns out to be.

There will always be abortions. Let’s not let religious zealots send women back to dark alleys and scary psuedo-doctors as it was pre-Roe v Wade. I remember it all too well.

This series is brilliant.

It sure as hell isn’t Trudeau. He doesn’t own or work for GoComics.

I copy text to the clipboard before I post, as the site often doesn’t accept my comment on the first try. I have to reload the page and paste the comment in so I don’t have to retype.Congratulations, you just turned a run-of-the-mill computer glitch into a left-wing conspiracy.

What a joke! The right likes to pretend that only liberals have abortions! You do know right wingers who have had abortions. They almost certainly have not told you about it, just as we so often hear of right wingers who have breakdowns over being gay, but it does happen. Right wingers are, believe or not, human too.

Google Jolie Justus, state legislator of Missouri, to find out more about the morals clause for men seeking vasectomies.

I disagree with the term “pro-life” – it is more “anti-choice”. It is the old couple across the street telling you how to live your life according to their beliefs. This country is as much about freedom from religion as it is freedom of religion. The moral codes of people who claim to follow someone’s teachings, when in reality they are as far removed from them as the people he preached against, are not something I want to live by.

Good Morning, Oregonian Editors: So this is what you are so afraid will permanently warp the minds of your readers?

My suggestion: send your editor, N. Christian Anderson, Esq., back to Orange County, where this kind of Puritanism will remain forever in vogue, and let Oregonians decide for themselves what is offensive.

Hypocrisy seems to be au courant at the Oregonian offices at the moment.

R. Dean Duvall, Esq.

The position on this has always defied logic to me. You don’t want women to have birth control and you don’t want them to have abortions. So this means there would be a surge of single mothers – but you say that’s bad because you want traditional families. So unless you intend to make every guy go and marry and financially support the woman he impregnated (and in some cases this would lead to polygamous marriages, which also goes against the traditional family drum beat), then you, my republican friend, are an idiot.

Of course, there is the Lysistrata alternative. Women just stop sleeping with men altogether, including husbands and boyfriends unless the woman has decided she wants a kid. But given how often a Republican is discovered to have been cheating on his wife, you’d think that wouldn’t set to well with them. (Heck, in that case you’d think they be all-in in favor of birth control.)

7 Democratic women stood for 7 hours to speak about birth control in the Missouri statehouse and were never given the chance to speak! The silent seven has now offered up a bill which denies men the right to a vasectomy unless he can show dire circumstances, etc. Many men have been shocked by this. How dare we suggest that we tell them what to do with their bodies? The hypocrisy of all this is astounding. There is a group of people in this country who are really not the majority and they also are certainly not silent. It is time for the rest of us to be heard and we are the majority.

Definitely supporting Garry Trudeau and this week’s storyline for Doonesbury. It’s very timely with the Rush Limbaugh business of weeks. Apparently Rush’s ratings are up, which is sad. Let’s get Doonesbury’s ratings up! I don’t like seeing the shame card being played when it comes to sex, so a big thumbs up to Garry for speaking out against this. We should be making decisions based on reason, not fear of shame.

..and you blame this on Gary Trudeau?? Trust me, he doesn’t have the time to care what individual posters are saying about him.

and I never called you left-wing. Look again.

I repeat (and I feel like nobody’s really listening) Look past the pro-choice\anti-choice noise, and think about the long-(or maybe short-) term results of NOT controlling our ever-increasing OVERPOPULATION. PLEASE, someone, consider the consequences

Nice going GT. Good to see that someone is fighting back.

Ha! Go get ’em Garry.

I like how GT combined Dan Patrick and Sid Miller, the two texas sponsors of the sonogram bill into Sid Patrick

Now we know where bullies go when they graduate from high school. They become right-wing GOP politicians.

I live here in Texas. I have sent this comic to my state Represenative and Senator as well as Dan Patick of Huston who is the subject member of the legislature in said comic.

G.T. hit a major nerve on this string.

<Ole GT is censoring (or having his sycophants censor) this week’s comics’ comments with extreme prejudice …>Thanks for exposing this vast conspiracy! I can just picture Trudeau sitting in front of a bank of computers, racing back and forth, furiously deleting GoComics comments as they roll in. Somehow, Dandwriter1’s posting, which heroically exposes the nefarious censorship plot managed to slip through GT’s filter!

Re: the use of the word – slut – name calling is what kids do – they don’t think, they react – so sad that so many have lost the ability to articulate their feelings/thoughts with respect for the other person

Personally I would only get an abortion in very limited circumstances that I pray never become an issue. HOWEVER, this is a very personal choice that I made based on my feelings. Like religious reasons for not aborting, my reasons are purely personal, and I firmly believe it is not my place to impose my feelings on the rights of others. I believe those with religious reasons for being pro-life should stop trying to force their beliefs on others as well. I am pro-choice because that lets me do as I believe right without compromising the personal beliefs and decisions of others, which are none of my darned business.

thank you, Trudeau, for letting us see how ridiculous this is…

Pro-Choice: the political position that advocates that a woman have the freedom to kill her child if it is an inconvenience or responsibility she must otherwise take for her actions, i.e., her irresponsible actions of having sex without using contraceptives, with a man she did not wish to have a child with.

“Sid Patrick” is fictional. The name is based on the two sponsors of the Texas law, Sid Miller and Dan Patrick. Although this story is presented satirically, it’s essentially what happens in Texas and will happen everywhere if we don’t stand up for our rights. Keep abortion safe and legal! Fight laws and lawmakers who oppress women!

For those that missed it, the name of the legislator, “Sid Patrick” as a reference to Dan Patrick & Sid Miller, the co-sponsors of the Texas law.

Read the article in “Time” magazine re: Doonesbury!

Nice one Garry. Love it

Sid Patrick a combo of TX State Sen. Dan Patrick and TX State Rep. Sid Miller may they live in infamy.

Gee, Are these guys present when someone buys a condom too?

The job of a cartoonist is to make people think. GT is doing his job superbly.

When has Rush told the truth?Ever??

Still waiting for the “shocking” part. And something “offensive” beyond attacks knee-jerk attacks on women using birth control and/or getting an abortion.

I think the Repubs have make a bit of a mistake here, alienating the “sluts”, which, by their definition, is about 90% of the women in the US. They’ve done a great job of alienating the Hispanics, gays, all they have left is older rich white guys. Of course, they have the perfect candidate in Mitt Romney. I guess GOP now stands for “Greedy Old Pricks”!

I’m almost certain this is a repeat from last year.

No need to “mess with Texas”, as on about all counts, they’ve messed things up enough on their own. It’s when they try to EXPORT, like well “W”, and Perry, that the nation should shudder. This “profligate projectile” argument is just one more case in point.

In the newspaper business it’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve often felt that a great political cartoon is worth a million words. Good for the Seattle paper for putting Gary T. on a news page. We, Americans, are in for the fight of our lives against the GOP scum that has polluted our politics. And the Dems aren’t a whole lot better.

in 1992 the supreme Court in it decision in “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey (91-744), 505 U.S. 833 (1992)”http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-744.ZS.html

That it will not over turn RvW. Paragraph (g), (h), and (i) slams the door on any possibility of it ever occurring.

Ending all hope for the far right to see that Roe V Wade over turned.

That is why these Bills making it has difficult as possible for a woman to receive an abortion has become rather stylish for a far right republican scum to promote in legislation.

Pardon my french.

My stance on has always been as a man I stand with women for Choice per Roe V Wade.

Their right to having autonomy over their bodies and reproduction is the same right a man also enjoys.

So the question really becomes. Why are so many people so willfully ignorant in working against their own best interests. A religious belief is just not an adequate answer in my opinion.

The Oregonian likes this guy and his take on women who use contraceptives!

It’s buried a bit, I know, but we’ve just published Trudeau’s original, un-published “Silent Scream II” strips (that never got to run in the 80’s) on Doonesbury.com. Enjoy!

Are you seriously suggesting, most woman would think, "I don’t need to take precautions prior to sex, because if I do get pregnant, I can always go through the emotionally and physical trauma of an abortion! Secondly, you do realise that no method of contraception is 100% sucessfully!

Love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it.

Yesterday’s comments record (260) was more than three times my guess. So many new commenters adding lots of sparks. Hope you will stick around.

I wore a gigantic ERA braclett to a county reporductive-birth control clinic in 1974 to check on the suspicion of complications from the Copper T IUD. Without advance “numbing” jell, or advice, I was put on a table to beaver 7 men (who walked in unannounced) to watch a 7-inch needle scrape the walls of my tube sacs to ensure if I had a pregnancy within the sacs. Screaming in shock, the table fell 4.5 feet to the ground, beaver in tact. The men leaned forward, and then filed out. The doctor smiled at me and said, “Are you going to be ok?” ERA was the Equal rights Act (Initiative?) for women’s rights movement of the early mid-seventies..equal rights for pay, credit status and opportunity.

PS: I had syphlis – and they never told me-they lied.

Admitted and proven murderers are not necessarily what’s on death row. There have been 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations so far http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/ but the Innocence Project does not have the money to find out whether people were innocent if they were already executed.

Go the Seattle Times! Yay! Doonesbury deserves to be in the News section all the time.

I am firmly pro-choice, but I do have sympathy for those who feel it has become all too easy and values have been eroded by women AND men who give no thought to sex and reduce sex to a bodily function. “Fancy a curry?” Oh, yeah I think I’ll pick up some sex to-go as well. There’s always contraception and if that fails I’ll just pop into the clinic."

So, the right wing doesn’t want to pay for contraception or abortion? How about all of the crack babies that will be born as a result? Wanna pay for that? What about the prisons that will that will house people who can’t support themselves and have to resort to crime and then have to be subsidized by taxpayers who couldn’t help with family planning a few decades earlier? Wanna pay for that? I could go on and on…

THANK YOU gocomics.com for publishing this strip and the previous one. In THE FRESNO BEE (Fresno, CA), the past two strips have been replaced by “reruns” as the content of the strips has been deemed inappropriate. Yes, Doonesbury is being censored in FRESNO, CA. Is this happening anywhere else?!?

Maybe she’s married, and has 6 kids already. Is that question on Sid’s questionnaire? This stuff makes my head explode.

Taxpayers probably feel their money is well spent if it prevents another unwanted child’s dropping straight from the womb into the safety net they pay to maintain.

Do Trudeau’s parents know he’s a creep as well for being so stupid?

..so have you ever had sex? Does that make you a slut?

You said “She allows herself to get pregnant without taking any precautions” when the young lady plainly says she has been using contraception. All contraceptives have a failure rate, so although GT doesn’t specify, evidence indicates she was one of the unlucky ones who became pregnant even while taking precautions.

How are taxpayers subsidizing her promiscuity? The only role of the government in this scenario is to force another set of regulations onto doctors and their patients, something I thought the right wing was against.

“My comments stayed up for several hours but then disappeared.”

Welcome to the party pal, you must have said something that really honked someone off. I was tracking my comment until about 11:30 pacific, when it got aborted. At that time there were 40-50 hits on the links, then nothing, there was someone in Uruguay following the arc I went to my profile page and it looked like a Stalinist picture, history never happened. Now I know what it feels like to have your uterus torn out.

I know it must have been that link I posted about the namesake of Roe v Wade, Norma McCorvey forsaking the cause. That was too far off the rez for some of the reliably orthodox. Even in the progressive community there’re limits to how much a woman can express herself. Either that or somebody didn’t like my position on the death penalty and Alfred Jodl.

No guarantees you’ll see this before before they do, but I’ll keep an eye out for your missing comments. Remember it’s not how many times your comments get knocked off the forum that counts, it’s how many times you can get your links back up that matters.

BTW DanD, McCorvey is a Ron Paul activist from way back. She even got arrested at an Obama appearance at Notre Dame, talk about someone who has known diversity in her life.

No I am sure they know that he is very bright. If you don’t agree, why bother reading the strip?

Yes, it is.

Out of curiosity, are you a idiot? This is a series…. Read yesterday’s strip. This is the first time she was here. Obviously she is just giving the guy crap because he’s an easy target…..

Cultural conservatives surely are hypocritical, sanctimonious and not too bright. They all vote Republican, despite the fact that very few of ’em are millionaires. If Santorum becomes president, he will be just as horrible as Bush ….

Christ, I hate them

Go get ’em, Garry. A direct swipe at Limbaugh would be nice, also. :)

Yes, it is her choice!

It’s sad that this Doonesbury segment was totally removed from the Oregonian. It would be educational for readers. Why not include this current and critical subject in the Editorial section of the paper if it is deemed “too political” for the comics. The legislators who feel comfortable controlling the medical decisions of women and their doctors deserve to be exposed for the misogynists they are.

INGSOC’s mindless comment shows the confused notion of “rights” held by Republican misogynists:

“Women shall choose their right when they choose to do so…. That is their right, not yours”

Rights are individual, never collective, for the simple reason that a “right” is always granted to the individual (or, in commerce, to the individual corporation) over against the rest of society (the collective).

The right to choose was established for every individual woman forty years ago by Roe vs. Wade. Women who choose not to exercise their right do not invalidate the rights of other women. Not even an entire legislature composed of women (much less of men) can take away that right.

So all that Sid and INGSOC are doing is trying to confuse a pregnant woman under stress not to exercise her right. They are being mentally dishonest. They ought to tell her that her Constitutional right makes her absolute mistress of her choice, which is between her and her conscience.

Some women, unable to distinguish their own conscience from that of paternalistic males, will decline to exercise their right. But those who do are probably choosing for themselves, not trying to please somebody who’s eager to “kill another baby” (where are these monsters, by the way?)

Re: censorship, when and where individual papers run “Doonesbury”, etc.

Trudeau submits the strips he wants to submit. That is his choice. Individual papers run the strips they want to run. That is their choice. If Trudeau wanted it in his contract that every paper that runs his strip runs ALL his strips, he could do so; he has enough clout (see the controversies over the SIZE of the strip in past years). However, Trudeau’s only alternative is to allow a paper to run his strip or not; if he withholds that privilege, it must be for ALL of his strips. We, as end users, have no right (Constitutional or otherwise) to be given access to the strips Trudeau produces (any or all).

A paper that runs “Doonesbury” may choose to run it in the comics page, or elsewhere; Trudeau has no say in that (unless, as above, he withholds permission for them to run it AT ALL).

Trudeau has been producing this strip for a million years. Any paper that RUNS this strip has probably been running it for a million years. Trudeau knows when he submits strips like this that some papers won’t run them (it’s happened before), and papers know that Trudeau may sometimes submit strips that they won’t want to run (at least on the comics page). Most papers will choose to run the strips somewhere. For the rest of us, there’s “GoComics.” There are no violations of anybody’s rights at any point alomg the line (and, unlike Walt Kelly and the “Bunny” substitutes, it’s evident to readers that they MAY be missing something [although I’d like to have seen a compilation of Kelly’s “Bunny” strips; I don’t know that they’ve ever been collected]).

For what it’s worth, the San Francisco Chronicle is running these strips, and running them on the comics page. But then again, this is San Francisco. :-)

I apologize for troubling your rest with aggressive politics, but when you post statements on this blog about “rights,” you ought to expect a political answer. (Politics includes religion.)

Years ago in grad school I had a neighbor, divorced, single mom through no fault of her own, who was violently raped in her own home by a complete stranger who had broken in. She called 911 and the ambulance took her to the Catholic hospital in town—where they refused to give her a morning-after pill. She had to find her own ride in the middle of the night to the other hospital so that no child of hers would have to grow up knowing they had a monster for a father.