Over the past forty years, Garry Trudeau’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip “Doonesbury” has tackled its fair share of controversial topics. But this week marks the first time that Trudeau will address abortion, and as a result newspaper editors across the country are refusing the run the six-day series.

The series will focus on mandatory ultrasounds, such as the ones in Virginia and Texas that have drawn national scrutiny in recent weeks. “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,” Trudeau said in a recent interview. “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.”

In 1985, Trudeau created a ”Doonesbury” series that dealt with the anti-choice film The Silent Scream. But, as Trudeau explains in the same interview, the president of the company that syndicated “Doonesbury” “felt that it would be deeply harmful to the feature, and that we would lose clients permanently. They had supported me through so much for so long, I felt obliged to go with their call.” That series was never given wide release in newspapers.

The objections to this week’s series, however, are all coming from newspaper editors. Portland’s The Oregonian ran a letter to their readers stating that 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 Gainesville Sun and Ocala Star-Banner are among other papers that are refusing to run the strip outright; other newspapers, including The Kansas City Star and The Los Angeles Times, are running the strip on their op-ed pages (where many papers routinely place the comic). As David Averill, the editorial page editor for the Tulsa World, said in explaining his paper’s decision, “We run ‘Doonesbury’ on our op-ed page, and this series is an example of why … Many of our readers will disagree with the political stance the series takes, and some will be offended by the clinical language. I believe, however, that this series of strips is appropriate to the abortion debate and appropriate to our op-ed pages.”

Without seeing the entire series, it’s hard to know whether the editors that are pulling the strip have a valid reason to do so. But such censorship seems particularly odd when you consider that Trudeau is addressing laws that are actually being enacted in this country – he’s not making them up, though he may have coined the phrase “shaming wand” to refer to the transvaginal ultrasound probe. If readers disagree with or are offended by what he’s saying, then perhaps the bigger issue lies with the laws themselves. After all, if it’s so offensive to see this language in a newspaper, how much more offensive must it be for a doctor to be forced to read something similar to a patient? And how much more offensive must it be for the woman that is forced to hear it? These are political decisions that intrude on the doctor-patient relationship and on the ability of a woman to freely choose a legal health service; they deserve to be held up to every kind of scrutiny, including in “Doonesbury.” As Garry Trudeau put it, “This is happening in statehouses across the country … It’s lunacy, and lunacy, of course, is in my wheelhouse.”

This piece originally appeared on Feminists for Choice, and is cross-posted with permission.

Photo Credit: IsaacMao via the Creative Commons License.

During an interview on Face the Nation, Santorum criticized President Obama’s healthcare law for requiring insurance companies to cover specific prenatal tests. According to Santorum, since some tests are used to detect genetic abnormalities, they can “encourage” abortions. Therefore, his logic follows, having insurance companies cover the costs of these tests “is a bit loaded.” While Santorum singled out amniocenteses as a test that insurance shouldn’t cover, he said he had no problem with sonograms – even though it is possible for those images to show birth defects or other abnormalities. But I’m guessing in Santorum-land, sonograms are only important when forced on women that want abortions – or trying to make his stance on women’s health issues seem less batshit crazy than it actually is.

Implying that prenatal testing is some sort of gateway drug to abortion procedures is, frankly, ludicrous. According a survey conducted of over 1,200 women that chose abortion, the top reasons for the decision were: concern for/responsibility to others; inability to afford a child; concern that having a child would interfere with school, work, or their ability to take care of dependents; or having problems with their partner or spouse, or not wanting to be a single parent. “Possible problems affecting the health of the fetus” fell far down the list of reasons that these women gave for having an abortion.

Much like his opposition to birth control, this latest stance seems to be much more about Rick Santorum than about what’s best for women and families. Prenatal testing provides information, plain and simple – information that women, and their partners and doctors and whoever else the woman may choose to involve – can then use to make the best decision for themselves, their fetus, and their families. For some women, the choice will be to terminate – but not for every woman. And for parents that choose to continue a pregnancy where there are specific problems, prenatal testing gives those parents the time to prepare themselves for the unique challenges they and their child will face.

But Santorum doesn’t appear to be interested in research, or giving women information, or even what’s best for families that aren’t his. This is just Santorum’s latest attempt to demonize abortion and anything that can be tied to pregnancy termination, no matter how tenuous the threads. If insurance companies no longer covered testing, expectant mothers that can afford it will still have access. But those that don’t have the means may end up with otherwise avoidable complications that put them or their newborn in serious harm.

To even suggest that women and their families should be put in that position is infuriating, and illustrates just how little Rick Santorum trusts women to make their own choices.

This piece originally appeared on Feminists for Choice, and is cross-posted with permission.

It had been a lovely wedding, and now the reception was packed. We sat down to dinner; at my table was my husband and three of our friends, along with three of the groom’s friends from grad school. Introductions were made and small talk ensued, and as our salad courses were cleared away one of the men I’d just met struck up a conversation about abortion with one of my friends.

My husband nudged me and one of my other friends grinned as I inclined myself towards the conversation, trying to discern the tone and content of the discussion – or was it debate? After a few minutes, the man noticed me listening and asked my opinion, and I offered it up, along with the caveat that I was writing a book about that very subject and had worked in the field for years.

He was less pro-choice than I was (admittedly, that’s not difficult), but not exactly anti-choice; rather, he seemed neutral and curious about the subject, though very opinionated about Tony Kaye’s documentary Lake of Fire. But it’s funny – I don’t remember a lot of specifics about our discussion. It’s as though a kind of mental tunnel vision took over, and I was so busy listening and responding that few other details even registered.  It was kind of exhilarating, to be honest, being in a zone of such extreme focus and energy.

The word ‘abortion’ has been invested with so much power, loaded with associations and assumptions and politics. The number of people that still say ‘abortion’ in a hushed voice, the way that uttering the word can bring a conversation to a grinding halt, belies the fact that nearly one-third of all American women will have an abortion by age 45.

Perhaps that’s why this conversation sticks out when I think about what actions I’ve taken in the name of the pro-choice movement. This conversation, and the ones I’ve had with other strangers on planes and subway platforms or with my own mother-in-law at my kitchen table. Conversations that I never initiated but that naturally followed the question, “so, what do you do?” (or, in my mother-in-law’s case, “how’s work going?”).

The discussion at the reception wrapped up by the end of the main course. As the band began playing and guests got up to dance, the man and I thanked each other for an interesting conversation. As we shook hands, I could feel my husband relax next to me. And then we all stood up, and joined the rest of the party.

This post originally appeared at Feminists for Choice and is part of the Intimate Wars Blog Series appearing at Fem2.0 and On the Issues Cafe January 17-18, 2012 in celebration of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the release of Merle Hoffman’s memoirs, Intimate Wars.  You can purchase a copy of her book here.  To submit a post for the blog series, please contact us, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter using #intimatewars.

Photo Credit: Tony Simkin via Creative Commons License.