Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 14, 2012

You can’t trust someone who spend 8 years in college and medical school and then 4 years on the job training: he might tell the truth!

Here’s some info for everyone: My local paper is also printing reruns this week, and I sent a grumpy email to the editor. She replied that United Features Syndicate is sending them the reruns, and per their contract, they cannot pull the comic from another source. She was also surprised and disappointed, and will be writing an editorial later this week. So if your paper is printing reruns, maybe it isn’t their fault.

Poor Republicans. No credibility on reducing the size of government.

And the world is once again laughing at the USA…

But of course it’s perfectly OK to regulate everything ELSE your doctor does into oblivion. How about letting them regulate NEITHER? Less Government = More freedom. I’m for that, thanks.

Orion

And what happens to the kids they guilt-trip women into not aborting? Kids whom the women don’t want, can’t afford, and can’t bring up? Do they pay for them?

cali has legalized pot for medicinal use. the feds say it is still against federal law and have started shutting down dispensaries and making arrests. the feds also define rape as any forced or COERCED penetration ….. i cant wait for the first doctor/nurse/tech to be arrested for rape.

Perry and Texas are just trying to make sure that women can’t avoid Eve’s punishment:with the help of modern obstetrics:

“Unto the woman, he [God] said, ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’”

After all, a woman who exercises her Constitutional right to abortion will greatly diminish her “sorrow” and will utterly escape her husband’s rule—-and that just ain’t Bible!

Most of the serial killers were unwanted, unplanned babies (a la Ted Bundy). Since their many victims did not choose to die, the term “pro-life” should not apply to anti-abortionists, who would not care to see unwanted babies born into an environment where there is no hope of living a decent life.

We all suffer when the government begins making medical decisions best left between a patient and a doctor. It is humiliating and just wrong for a woman to have to go through a situation like GT is depicting.

Imagine, back room abortions again, millions of women getting mutilated, millions of women having to go through this, it isn’t “birth control”, it is control over your own body. KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY AND MY DAUGHTER’S BODY, MY GRANDDAUGHTER’S BODY AND THE BODIES OF ANY OF MY SISTERS.

Scripps-Howard in the Treasure Coast area of FL isn’t running the strips in the comics, just reruns. But, they did promise the entire “thread” would be run in the Editorial section next week. Cowardly, cowardly, cowardly…

Yes, they are carrying this in the Chicago Tribune.

The government does need to protect each human being from violence, from murder. Abortion is murder. It’s taking an innocent human life. If the government can’t protect our right to life, then there’s no point in having a government.

You might be giving Perry too much credit even with that

Less Government=More Freedom?What about the health insurance industry?.Our ‘better company plan," doesn’t start until I spend $4k for my family, including prescriptions. Plus I have to have anything pre-approved, besides a yearly physical.. .At this rate, I’d rather be on a single payer plan at a less cost per month, than this hurry up and die plan..

Invasive? She’s worried about invasive !? Ask he fetus what he/she is concerned with.

So your opinion is that some mothers do a favor to their sons and daughters by killing them?

Women have minds. We deserve the opportunity to make an INFORMED decision. To see the ultrasound and be informed of all the possible consequences.

Richard, lumping all religion – or all believers – into one pile of ignorant, anti-science, pro-war cretans is akin to lumping all Americans into the Tea Party pile. It’s neither fair nor accurate. There are plenty of religious people who embrace, for example, evolution as entirely compatible with their faith, who embrace gays as made just as much in the image of God (thus have no problem with same-sex marriage), who are perfectly fine with birth control and who, though taking its ramifications seriously, support a woman’s right to safe and legal abortions. I read Christopher Hitchen’s book, by the way, and found it fairly shallow – there are better arguments than his. AND, if you think life without religion would be any less contentious or brutal, I think you are being naive. People poison everything, and if there had never been any religion, they would have found other excuses to do the same things. The abuse of religion, I grant you, is rampant and vile.

How does that phrase go …. Those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Seems to cover it for the US.

The best we have for ‘unconscious life’ is term limits.

Pregnancy is not a neutral thing. In the most ideal case for a completed pregnancy six to nine pounds of squalling human being rips through your genitals with its head. Hormones soften your bones and shove them outward from the inside. Women can range from being perfectly healthy and able to work to being incapacitated by actual nonstop vomiting. Pregnancy can KILL you dead. The fact that women choose to go through this all the time shows how strong the parenting instinct is in humans. But the idea that the hard work of growing an unimplanted blastocyst into nine pounds of human for almost a year is “just leaving it alone” is ridiculous. 61% of women who have abortions already have had a child and are still making this choice. I don’t know how much more informed you can get than that.

Republican men. You can frighten them into believing President Obama is going to take away their guns, but they don’t even notice their wives and daughters are losing ownership of their bodies.

Well….. if it isn’t a baby, your not pregnant.

Under Ceaucescu, Romanian women who became pregnant had to report periodically to the government to show they were still pregnant. Sounds like a logical extension of the Republican plan to overpopulate the USA with unwanted children.

I like that idea!

Kudos to the Philly Inquirer for having the guts to run the series. And as a former practicing gynecologist, I still find it hard to believe how many steps backward some of our politicians expect women to take regarding contraception and reproductive choice. Hoped I’d never see this in my lifetime again.

I think the only way out of this abortion debate is for biotech companies to start pursuing “human incubators” that’ll act as an artificial uterus capable of nurturing a fetus to full term. Debates over the ethics of this will surely take place, but I’ve a feeling this is in the distant future.

If abortion were criminalized, that would create a significant, unregulated black market for a surgical service that, if things go wrong, can be dangerous. What’s “pro-life” about that?

I read that Tuesday and Thursday’s strips will be controversial so I can’t wait to see tomorrow’s.

Okay, pro-lifers, how about this? Put yourselves on a list promising to adopt unwanted babies and put yourselves on another list agreeing to pay an added tax to meet the medical and educational needs of these same babies who have ‘special needs’. Then you can have a say in the matter.

Several posters have alluded to whether or not doctors can be trusted. Oklahoma has passed, Kansas has before the state legislature, and Arizona is considering, a law making it legal for doctors to lie to pregnant women. Fact. The Kansas version is HB 2598.

I’ve read this strip for many years and was wondering if was going to get moved to a different section of the newspaper and this site. It tends to be closer to editorial material than comics fairly frequently. The views are expressed in similar, if a bit elongated fashion.

This exam is part of the process anyway. An informative movie is 180movie.com

We inform, per Surgeon General’s warning, the dangers of smoking- select municipalities forbid it. We employ a waiting period and background check for handgun purchases. These are potential life-enders. Now Texas takes a similar approach to a 100% CERTAIN life-ending process, and he rabid left (well-represented in this comics group) predictably takes the low, primal demonization approach towards religion in society and conservatives in general. You people reek of self-satisfied ignorance and seem very comfy in leaning on trite one-liners and flawed post-hoc arguments about the utility of life. Shame on you all.

I figured that the Dallas Morning News would scrap this storyline for sure… but lo and behold, they’re running it in their comics section. Bravo to them!

The term is “anti-choice”, not “pro-life”. Medicine has changed a lot in 2000 years. I would not rely on something that old for medical care – and it doesn’t even mention abortion. When you allow old white guys to determine your health care, this is what happens. As an Aggie, Perry only understands stump-broke heifers and the application of velcro with sheep, not women’s health care issues.

Oh no a female body part is mentioned, scrub our children’s eyes with acid!

My paper doesn’t carry Doonesbury at all but according to my Dad the Boston Globe is running this strip right it its comics section. The Chicago Tribune is apparently doing so too!

An interesting point a friend of mine had was that the probe is actually used by any responsible health care provider to confirm the stage of pregnancy. The narrative (including forcing the woman to listen to her baby’s heart beat and see her baby) is what we should really be protesting. That’s coercion.

At that point the baby is going to look like a little parasitic alien, which at that point, isn’t far from the truth anyways. ;)

Given the comments on this page, I suspect you really cannot trust a doctor to tell the whole truth. I’m still waiting to see if Trudeau shows an accurate representation of a fetus at the typical age of abortion. I’m not holding my breath, however.

Yes, I do. For starters, go to operationrescue.org

I am not SIR. I am a female. Most pro-life activists are female, believe it or not. For proof, go to operationrescue.org

@MLEON: You completely misunderstood my point: I did not say that a fetus should be aborted because they may have the potential to be serial killers. I said that the the term “pro-life” should not describe anti-abortionists as they are condemning future children who are unwanted by their parents to a miserable life of deprivation and may ruin the lives of others.

I am not a Republican. I am pro-life. I am talking about abortion. You are changing the subject.

@ palin dromeWow, I never realized that when a man wants to fertilize his wife, she MUST consent and obey! THAT is news.

@MLEON & MONA WARNER: It appears that MLeon’s responses to each poster misses the point of the poster. Mona Walter merely says that if MLeon is so against abortion and would prefer each fetus to come to full term, then he should agree to adopt a child that would have been unwanted by their parent who would have otherwise aborted the fetus.

My newspaper heard from me and many others objecting to their publishing a rerun strip this week; They had to do an explanatory editorial. Their supplier sent them the real strips and an alternate if they felt it would upset their readers. My paper is not a right wing paper and they were very torn, but told me that the strip for tomorrow they felt was more for shock value and would upset people. So I will wait to judge that.

the lansing state journal isn’t running this week’s strips either.

Everything is big in Texas, even the government, OOPS!

I also hear that Obama is planning to nationalize the auto industry, poison the wells and kidnap Christian babies.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch like the cowards that they are refuse to run Doonesbury this week. This is not the first time they have censored Trudeau and probably not the last time.

Damn it, if pregnant women are made to think about the consequences of their choices – WHERE WILL IT END?! We have to join with Trudeau in stopping compulsory thinking while we still can!

Abortion is legal. We can’t go back to the back alley quack doctor days.

Posting the F word will get you banned from posting on this site. I wouldn’t recommend it.

“The subtitle of the late Christopher Hitchens’s book God Is Not Great says it all: “Religion poisons everything.”

FINALLY – an intelligent comment!

Socialized medicine was inevitable. They have it in every other country in the developed world. Get over it.

These impassioned assertions by rmleon vividly expose the contradictions of her side in the abortion/death penalty split. (The opposite side contradicts itself in being for abortion but against the death penalty.)

Even if you deprecate, as I do, the inconsistency of both major groups, you cannot avoid the contradictions that arise whenever we try to define human life. Those who say its value or meaning is obvious are merely refusing to think about it. If the meaning of human life were obvious, the abortion/death penalty inconsistency would not exist and this Doonesbury arc would not have stirred up such a hornet’s nest.

Those of us who seek a moderate, logical way to address the question of when human life begins—-or when a fetus acquires “rights” including a right to life—-should pay attention to the clue Spaghettus has given us. He asks, “Do you actually think a fetus is capable of making a decision?”

If your answer is no, then logic leads to the next question: who is in the best position to decide whether or not the fetus should live until it acquires human “rights” and is capable of making a decision?

It seems obvious that there are only three cadidates: (1) God (2) the mother (3) everybody else.

Roe V Wade means a woman owns her Choice period. No matter which of the threeleagl choices afforded her. Whether it is keeping, adopting out, or having an abortion.

The antichoice crowd are pissed because they can not have a say and try very hard to interfere with that process.

That is as unAmerican as one can get.

On the flipside, abortion is BIG business…god forbid we stand in the way of capitalism. And if anyone is smart enough or brave enough to take a step further, women who undergo an abortion are 4 times as likely to suffer from depression than their counterparts who have never had one (either due to not needing one or choosing to terminate the pregnancy by actually giving birth.) Just an FYI.

Ps. to my last:

I’m willing to grant that the decision on whether to abort a fetus is ultimately God’s. The question then becomes, Do you believe that God operates through the mother or through some other decision-maker?

I hope this really, really really offends anyone in the dumb damn Texas legislature.

@palin drome Women don’t have a constitutional right to abortion. In fact the constitution does not apply to women at all. Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified. We have laws that protect us and give us rights, but not the constitution. Maybe that’s part of why this is still such an issue. Women really are still second class citizens in the US.

My newspaper, the Oregonian, deliberately chose to block the current Doonesbury story line. The cowardly editors of the decidedly Republican editorial board did not like the pro women’s health, pro choice viewpoint of the strip. Interestingly, shortly thereafter, one of those same editors (a married white male) died while having sex he routinely paid for with a young unmarried female student 40 years his junior. The Oregonian initially reported that he had died elsewhere and praised his marriage. The paper had to retract that when the truth came out, but they have not retracted their ban of the current Doonesbury and will not do so long as it continues to reveal what old white males are doing to young females. See http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Oregonian-says-editor-died-involved-with-young-woman-142424595.html

Others have made the point I was thinking of, that the state defines murder, not the individual.I was also going to mention that I keep hearing, “What’s wrong with a pregnant women wanting to see an ultrasound?”. First, maybe she doesn’t want to see it, and is being forced to by the government, and second, if it has to be a vaginal ultrasound, how is it not rape?

Why is it, in the conservative mind, that life is precious until the child is born and then scorned as a welfare cheat afterwards?

I have been sending these comics (with my comments) to my “Tal-i-ban-Repub-li-can” state legislators. I have included state senator Dan Patrick of Houston who is responsible for this nonsense.

@Antonio Roji

I doubt very many people laugh at the US. We’re definitely sad. We mourn, we fear, we hate, and we cry maybe, but we don’t laugh.

@palin dromeSensible comment at last… I’d take issue with two points:

a) It’s consistent to be pro-abortion but anti-death-penalty if you don’t believe a foetus (at least Brits know how to SPELL the word ) is a life. I cannot, however, come up with any consistent interpretation of ‘pro-life’ that allows you to be anti-abortion but pro-death-penalty.

b) However, I wouldn’t accept the idea that the ability to make a decision is what makes for life. A new-born can’t make a decision, most countries treat infanticide as murder. Where life begins is, to me, a process and not a binary decision, so I would support progressively more restrictive rules on terminations.

The system stripped out my (ironic) irony on and irony off switches in my comment about spelling. I do, of course, know that fetus is the correct US spelling.

@ corzak- GOP only wants to reduce the size of government as it applies to business and their pet projects. If it comes to legislating morality then no amount of gov’t is enough.

Doesn’t Texas lead the country in state run executions? With Perry first in line to pull the switch. Hypocrisy at it’s finest.

Have you ever noticed that the motivation for almost the entire current agenda of the Republican party seems to boil down to just Hate, Fear and/or Greed?

Since we women have such wonderful minds, it is also up to us to decide if we want an invasive procedure using a transvaginal wand or not!

@Astolat

Thanks for your response acknowledging the abortion/death penalty inconsistency. (The comment by kmarsh just above illustrates the confusion of those absolutely against the death penalty, corresponding to the confusion of those absolutely opposed to abortion.)

Everybody makes their own estimate of the value of a human life. This inevitably breeds inconsistency, as I tried to show by focusing upon two extreme specimens of human life: the murderer who deliberately snuffed out a life, and the foetus (your old-fashioned spelling is familiar to me as an English prof.) who can’t yet deliberate or decide how to act towards others.

In both cases, somebody has to decide about their future: the future of the murderer, who has forfeited the right to choose, and that of the foetus who has not yet acquired the right.

Colleagues in the U.K. have boasted to me that “we live under a government of men, but Yanks are governed by impersonal laws not by real people.” That’s probably true; but then, you no longer have to worry about a Richard III or a Henry VIII, a Chrales I or a James II.

We Yanks do have to worry about a Rick Perry, who wrests the laws of Texas (and its legislature) to support his tyranny.

That’s why I’m seeking an objective, legal basis upon which to determine the value of human life. The best I can come up with is the mother’s choice, in the case of a foetus; and, in the case of the remorseless murderer, the natural law of retaliation (lex talionis).

a(bou)t RMLeon:

judging from her circular and illogical arguments, i think it’s safe to say she is a girl child, in the grips of group-think. Sending folks to operationrescue for facts on abortion is like sending folks to the bible for historical facts. however, if she’s as young as she seems to be, given time, she might learn how to think for herself.

in the mean time, i’ll pass my salt shaker to anyone here who needs it…

Under Shrub Bush, Congress passed amendments to the Bankruptcy Code giving out two pages of worthless, but moralizing, things that an attorney daring to represent a consumer filing bankruptcy MUST be told. And there has to be a signed certification under oath that this useless advice was given. And the Supremes upheld it.

I have spent 25 years as a foster mother caring for infants whose parents wouldn’t/couldn’t manage. Abuse, drug addiction, birth defects, chldren of rape and incest – I’ve cared for all of these. If politicians want to insist that every pregnancy is brought to term, they need to start writing laws to bring up the resulting unwanted and un-cared for children to become healthy (mind and body) productive adults.

@banderpal

Thank you for what you do! Sounds like we’re going to need many more willing to take on this heart-wrenching work if women lose in this battle for control of women’s bodies and minds…

Anything can happen in Tex-ass!

Most anti-choice people want to prosecute the doctor, but not the woman (“She’s his victim, too.”). I don’t get this. The woman approaches the physician and they reach an agreement. If you see abortion as murder, this is a conspiracy to commit murder, and both should be executed. But most won’t go that far. Why? Because if they did, they know the whole debate would go away, with them having lost. So they compromise their “principles” to get their way. I consider this rank hypocrisy.

Why isn’t the governor required to meet the people for whom he signs execution orders???

Ps. to my last: The militant anti-abortionists aim to define abortion as infanticide. Their cause is quixotic, because throughout civilized history abortion has been held the lesser of two evils—-a way of avoiding the crime of infanticide.

As this Doonesbury arc demonstrates, these rabid policemen of the womb want to be able to prosecute the mother for infanticide in case the fetus doesn’t become viable. They seem to think medical science entrenches on God’s prerogative, instead of being God’s gift.

Enough for today. I’m going to save my outrage for tomorrow, when the womb policeman is expected to brandish his WAND in the face of the hapless mother.

Appreciate that Trudeau keeps it real in a phony world … (or, at least, country…) Thanks, Garry.The Denver Post dropped this comic a while back. (but kept some lame, right-wing dreck called “Mallard Fillmore” which seems incapable of wit.)

I drew a cartoon to prove my point. Your argument is invalid.

With the advent of the Plan B pill, much of this discussion should go away soon. Surely, Plan B is only the beginning of pharmaceuticals which should be available to women so that they will finally be able to make their own decisions. Then it is only a matter of some right wing pharmacists getting in the way… and in at least some cases, one can get a drug through a doctor’s office visit as well.

You go, GT! Nail their sorry hides to the wall.

We think “The United States” is A society. It is actually a wildly varied bunch of social units.

There are parts of Texas where a large percentage of where the majority of people think all of this is as absurd and anti-American as… I do. However, there are part of Texas (and lots of other states) where different religious groups and different political groups dominate. We have all been taken down the garden path. Of course, some are happy with that. Some are leading us down the garden path.

Look at how well Rick Santorum is polling in the deep South… and… some other places. Exit polls in Mississippi (of the Republicans voting) said most voted for him because he shares their religious views.

Nearly every state has pockets of… different… views. Some have overwhelming same views.

We, on the liberal side, have to work harder and smarter.

Happy π Day everybody. Can you believe it, DT got his own holiday. He sure picked a fine week too miss, with his liberal instincts interacting with his religious foundation, (Only person I know to post a prayer outside of a sports context.) we may have gotten 400 comments.

Too bad Nemesys isn’t posting much any more, he identified himself as an abortion survivor, this week would have been up his ally. Some of the other posters including myself use to give him a hard time. I wasn’t as bad as some of the others, even though one time he said, “… and I hope California falls in the ocean”, but I guess everybody’s said that at some point.

It seems like elephant in the room about abortion is, “Are we killing people?” So then someone has to answer when personhood begins.Everybody’s favorite GOP presidential candidate (when he was a senator) and my senator wrestled with that question in the toe in/toe out debate. Until the question of when personhood begins is answered, a good pro-life work around is to name the fetus IBM. That’s how you can get Citizens United to work for you. The bigger the corp the more protected the fetus. It’s only a matter of time before the SCOTUS hears a fetus named General Motors v Planned Parenthood.

OK, I’m going to try to overcome my feelings and discuss this wand. Because I had cancer, I had to have everything checked, including my reproductive organs. The wand is to a tampon what an oversized zucchini is to a grape. It is huge. And it isn’t just inserted. It has to be moved around. I came of age in the ’70’s and took part in all the fun and craziness, so I’m no prude. But I like some privacy, modesty, if you will. This made me feel shameful. It was very different than your sweet doctor doing a quick check once a year, and talking to you as she goes. This was just icky. I’d rather go through chemo again than another TVU.

" You can only stomach so much brutality, you know? Then you kill the oppressors."

Dang Pete, That’s the most extremist pro-choice argument I’ve heard yet.

@rmleon: As per your last post: YES! The operative word is CHOICE. If a woman CHOOSES to have her fetus reach full term, then murdering her with her fetus should be counted as a double murder because she CHOSE to have pregnancy reach full term. CHOICE!

I really do not understand the pro-choice viewpoint. It is a right to get an abortion, but you should not have to know the consequences of it? If you are afraid to see what is in your uterus, maybe you should reconsider throwing it away.

Red Rascal fiction at its finest. Its OK to KILL KILL KILL as long as its just babies…

“I am all for abortions, especially if they could be retroactive to Kenya… (oh, whoops, forgot—Hawaii)”You, yourself,are the best argument FOR abortion I j have ever encountered.

My paper just pulled it.