Doonesbury creator causes a stir with ultrasound-before-abortion comic strip

Talks about “the shaming room”

The creator of the Doonesbury comic strip decides to get a little edgy with this week’s publication. Gary Trudeau became apart of the recent political debate that emerged in Texas and Virginia about ultrasounds-before-abortion.

Doonesbury is supposed to be directed at a family audience, and due to this week’s graphic nature, many newspapers have decided to pull the strip. The comic book with satire as its weapon is set to fire at politicians on the side for these ultrasounds. Editor JoLene Krawczak tells Comic Riffs that her paper, The Oregonian, “has decided to pull the week’s strips and will direct readers online if they want to read them.”

“Doonesbury’s abortion-law series features a woman receiving a compulsory ultrasound and refers to a “shaming room” and a “’10-inch shaming wand’ -and seems to equate the procedure to rape.” The Oregonian, wrote in a note to its readers stated, “Trudeau 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.”

Another publication News-records.com pulled the strip and received some negative feedback on their decision, “As fans of the comic strip Doonesbury know, we elected to withhold publication of this week’s strip from the daily newspaper. We deemed the content — graphic descriptions of proposed pre-abortion screening requirements — as far too graphic for a family newspaper, especially as the story line progresses later in the week.
In response, we’ve heard from a handful of readers who didn’t like our decision. Now, for them and any others who want to see this week’s Doonesbury strips, we’re publishing them at News-records.com. Each day’s new strip will appear in the morning,” wrote Editor Jeff Gauger, Executive Editor.

The Washington post got a hold of Trudeau and asked him why?

“I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states.” Said Trudeau, “For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.”