Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 16, 2012

Now she has one more reason to get the abortion: spite for the state of Texas.

Well if I had a little parasitic sea monkey that got there despite my measures to prevent that I’d be questioning its motives too. ;)

Sorry lefty, I deleted my comment there. 8th amendment, I just realized that only applies to people who actually did illegal things unlike abortions.

Trudeau is letting his fancy run wild. When has a doctor ever dealt with “hopes and dreams”? Doctors are tethered to the practical world of medical choices and consequences.

This is a serious subject, but it is a comic strip. Therefore, the doc is not entirely tethered as in real life. Although, some levity is often required even in real life situations, especially in the medical world.

Let’s hope we can keep abortion legal, despite the crazies on the other side. We don’t ever want to see women dying again because of the needs of some to control others. If only they could be satisfied with controlling themselves. By all means, if you don’t want to have an abortion, don’t have one!

Unfortunately, this “exaggerated for comic effect” version is not that far from the truth: http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/the-right-not-to-know

The doctor’s obviously putting his own ironic spin on the situation. He’s not the girl’s enemy.

Yo, not to be nasty, but this isn’t the doctor, its a politician. said so a couple of days back. He also said doctors don’t approve of this tactic (or maybe that was me)

Does the cynical doctor think the sonogram shows a fetus ripe for aborting?

If so, he’s quite different from the sympathetic doctor in the alarming article referenced by RanaRavens.

@Sosaidh and King Shark

I agree the doctor was being ironical when he read the Texas statement to her in the last panel two days ago: “your doctor cannot be trusted”

Need I say new meaning to the phrase: “flush Rush”?

To Quote from the article referenced by RanaRavens:“But what good is the view of someone who has never had to make your terrible choice? What good is a law that adds only pain and difficulty to perhaps the most painful and difficult decision a woman can make? Shouldn’t women have a right to protect themselves from strangers’ opinions on their most personal matters? Shouldn’t we have the right not to know?”

Also from theTexas Observer (7th Feb I think):Judge Sparks knows what it was about. In yesterday’s ruling he states, “There can be little doubt that (the law) is an attempt by the Texas Legislature to discourage women from exercising their constitutional rights by making it more difficult for caring and competent physicians to perform abortions.”

this current series is among the greatest of many truly great and important strips of your career. congratulations on the use of this medium for advancing political dialog. and in hilarious manner (“hopes and dreams”).

@montessoriteacherThose in the UK, or otherwise able to access BBC iPlayer online, should watch the second episode of ‘White Heat’, broadcast last night. The series deals with the lives of a group of students sharing a house, and this episode was set in 1967 just before abortion became legal in the UK. It had a horrific scene of a back-street abortion on a kitchen table. Those who oppose abortion should remember that the result is not that every child is born, it is that many are aborted by untrained practitioners in unsafe surroundings.

It depends on if you see being always ready for purchase a redeeming quality.

This is getting sick.

The Tex@$$$ political commissar can sit on his probe and spin…

A zygote with its undeveloped nervous system has less of “human” thoughts and feelings than a goat does. If abortion, especially early abortion, is murder, then so is a hamburger or a steak. There is no simple hard and fast line between potential human and human. Every time a woman does not have sex during ovulation she and her husband are denying to a specific egg the chance to develop into a human being. Chastity is murder, too, then. We all agree there has to be some line where chastity/contraception/abortion becomes infanticide; but wherever that line is drawn there will be a degree of arbitrariness about it. That’s why this issue is so tough. But laws have to represent a consensus view of the society as a whole, not the imposition of one extreme religious view. But perhaps I am making a false assumption: are there any strict abortion-banners out there who are not religious?

Rick Perry is an idiot. Yet another example of men trying to exert control over women. It’s a woman’s body, it is a woman’s choice. KEEP LAWS OFF MY SISTERS’ BODIES!(Thought this one was settled in the 70’s!)

This week’s story provides an excellent reason to vote, both in state and federally. We must protect our courts from being as overrun with regressive, sexist, yahoos as is the Texas state legislature, and we must run the yahoos out of our legislatures, both state & federal.

J J & M!!!! ONLY in Texas – it is almost (or maybe it is) enough to make you want to immigrate ………. I truly saddens me that we have become a nation of irresponsible unenlightened, self-righteous, judgemental, self-serving idiots – this crap only happens when we don’t pay attention and we don’t vote! DO NOT JUDGE ME OR MAKE DECISIONS FOR ME UNTIL YOU HAVE WALKED A MILE IN MY SHOES or at least evaluated the humidity of my drawers…….

The Left Wing Liberal Radicals would have us believe that we must murder millions more babies in the womb to save women from dying from back alley abortions. I am not the most religious person in the world but I do believe there is a God who will judge us one day. Think hard on this one before you act again. Trudeau has gone way too far this time in pushing his Liberal agenda. Give him his pink slip now.

As a Texan, I will answer your last question. No. Rick Perry has no redeeming qualities.

Didn’t the Texas Grand Ole Perverts want to strap women into the chair from A Clockwork Orange, with eyelid hooks at the ready, to force them to view the sonogram? Wasn’t this pretty much the law in Idaho and Mississippi a few years ago?

ENOUGH!

As a republican, Trudeau is once again getting on my nerves. Like so many liberals he tries to put us all into the same box. It was funny on Monday, amusing on Tuesday and now it’s just shameless politics, indiscernible from those he makes fun of.

First trimester, it’s not a fetus. . .it’s an embryo.

Meanwhile, Kansas is considering a bill that will make it legal for doctors to lie to their patients if doing so prevents an abortion. What is wrong with some people?

And here are the gill slits, and there is the tail….Fetuses of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish look similar.

Margaret Atwood is looking more like a prophet lately.

Didn’t I say I was not holding my breath waiting for an ACCURATE portrayal of the fetus from Trudeau’s fantasy world?And as to “hopes and dreams,” how capable is your 6-month old or 1-year old able to discuss those with you. Infanticide is infanticide, even in the womb.

After reading the storyline and many of the comments, I’m reminded of JF Kennedy’s words…the difficult we will do now, the impossible we will do later. Abortion is one of what is really a very few issues over which we cannot agree as a nation. Anti Abortion/Contraceptives is an immovable object and Pro Choice/Options is an irresistable force and like the ocean crashing into a cliff face, both are waste of energy. We need to become nine issue voters…not just one or a few…and the things we can’t agree to move on, move around and let’s fix the things we can. We can start by remembering we are neighbors, and citizens of the USA, and move on with respect for one another. Err on the side of love and respect.C

Wouldn’t be ironic if the fetus turned out to be the first female POTUS? Better check the gender image again before a tragedy occurs.

Love you GT! This weeks’ strips were even more brilliant, astute and hilarious than usual. Especially today’s. The deep southern red states are outta control as it is, but this misogynoustically-inspired law gives new meaning to the words outrageous and absurd. We need to amend the constitution to allow these states to secede.

‘Has he destroyed all of his political ambitions? Has he no redeeming qualities?’None that I have ever seen; however, I’ve never shot innocent animals at his ranch, so I’m sure I’m biased.

God help all of you. Amen.

There is a cartoon about the Doonesbury controversy on Crowded Comics today. How meta! https://www.crowdedcomics.com/node/3806/3810

You mean women are not subservient now???

Slam on that last panel! LOL!(BTW, as I read nearly all my news online, I only just picked up on the fact that the ‘paper’ newspapers are running a whole other plotline with ‘Red Rascal’. My moment of ‘Duh!’) ; p

Nailed it again GT. Keep it up! So glad to see that you are still touching many nerves on the other side. It just shows you are doing a great job. It is a free country and you aren’t calling any names, just mirroring what is going on. Just tell the truth and they think it is hell.

OK, who’s the father? He should be paying ALL the medical expenses.

“I understand the motivation of the proponents; they are hoping that seeing an ultrasound of the “fetal tissue” will cause women considering abortion to reconsider. There might be a few who will. But I really don’t see that taking the Democratic position—that the government has a right to mandate medical procedures—is terribly wise. It cedes an important philosophical position to the left."http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2012/03/republicans-need-to-stop-acting-like.html

As C Downs says above, “We need to become nine issue voters…not just one . . . We can start by remembering we are neighbors, and citizens of the USA, and move on with respect for one another.”

In that spirit, I’d like to put in a word for the religious fundamentalists who are either ignored or ridiculed by satirical liberals like GBT.

The God——whoever s/he is—-who created life does not beget individual living creatures. Begetting is left to the creatures themselves. Human beings are different from all the other creatures in that we are conscious of and able to control our begetting.

Fundamentalists, if I understand them, are asking both parents (but especially the mother) to take to heart their responsibility for begetting. The casual, unconscious sex practiced by many of us becomes a problem when it results in an unwanted conception.

When they make light of this problem, secular-minded liberals can always provoke the fundamentalists. The liberals’ mockery—-not just of bigoted Texans but of the notion that God cares how we use our privilege of deliberate betting—-this mockery only confirms the fundamentalists’ view that liberals do not take seriously either the begetting or the life that is begotten.

I’ve accused christlibs of a similar inconsistency when they urge the murderer’s right to life and forget that the murderer took away the victim’s right.

When begetting (or murdering) is done accidentally, the law should not punish the deed to the full extent, particularly if the doers show remorse (belated consciousness). On the other hand, intentional begetting, like deliberate murder, has serious consequences. In the one case, you choose to beget an individual life; in the other, you choose to take it away.

Here the parallel breaks down, however, because the begotten life is still in the womb whereas the murdered life was a fully conscious, autonomous human being. The begotten, embryonic fetus is not autonomous (cannot govern itself) and depends on its mother to give it being as an infant. (Latin infans means a child that has emerged from the womb but is unable to speak.)

I sympathize with the fundamentalists’ wish to make a mother answerable to God, but I ask them to consider that God empowered the mother to make the final decision in this complicated nine-month gestation (or “begetting”). And who are we, or who is the Texas legislature, to second-guess God’s plans?

" the Democratic position—that the government has a right to mandate medical procedures"AK, can’t wait to see the examples of this one! Got any?

I’m sure that Garry is making a lot of new enemies with his latest storyline. Good for him. Garry has always had great enemies. Frank Sinatra and Hunter Thompson hated Garry. Donald Trump and Jeb Bush still do. Anyone who inspires hatred from creeps like that can’t be all bad.

It’s about time that Garry Trudeau spoke up in favor of a woman’s right to abort a fetus and enjoy it on a Ritz cracker with just a dollop of cream cheese! Thank God the Left isn’t afraid to stand behind the “Tastes Like Caviar” banner!

Fundamentalist “religionists”, mostly, almost exclusively, MALE, have come up with irrational twists on “reproductive biology”, and ignore the simple CONSTITUTIONAL fact that they are trying to inflict religious tenets. Their objective is to take “women’s curse of pain in childbirth” for getting stupid Adam to eat the pom (there weren’t any apples there), into pain at every step of the process, for the female, while males get their jollies.

The issue is NOT about “medicine”, reproduction, or “life”, except to mandate a religious concept of MEN’s design on women. THAT is against our Constitution, folks!

If Texans, Virginians, and other legislators want to get serious, any MALE who has sex with a woman against her will, in any manner, shall be taken into the O.R. (to keep it “civilized”) and come out a total eunuch! No debate about whether sperm are “persons”.

Progressives, liberals, and other “lefties”: It’s time to start the process of reclaiming our country from the right wing fanatics. Read George Lakeoff’s eye-opening book : “Don’t Think of an Elephant”. It will get you off your butts.

Kim says, “God help all of you. Amen.”

That reminded me of something: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Did you intend to express your superiority and self-righteousness? Your brief comment sets you apart and above those whom you address. Try it this way instead: God help all of us. Amen.

Lighten up people! It’s only a comic strip! Besides, everyone knows that doctors are just paid-off patsies for the drug companies! Anything can happen in Tex-ass!

From what I have seen and heard of Rick Perry, no, he has NO redeeming qualities. He is a bigot, and an idiot with poor ethics. That trifecta pretty much cancels any attempt for redemption.

dtroutma, aren’t you aware that.“Every sperm is sacred, in its own way,and if even one gets wasted, God gets quite irate.”Monty Python (I think)

It is possible for a person to have a finger, hand, or even arm cut off, and, if the limb is properly handled, it can be reattached. It cannot be the cells that make it up have perished. The limb remains, in a very real sense, alive for some time. It is human tissue. Human flesh and blood. If it is not reattached in time, do we say that a human being has died? Something human has died, but not a person. It is lacking too much for us to call a severed limb a person. By exactly the same token, a human fetus, though most assuredly human flesh and human bone, is not a human person. Too much is missing, too much is not yet there. So I don’t buy the ‘how-can-you-deny-that-a-fetus-is-human’ argument. A human being requires a bit more than just human DNA, and human tissue. The hair you leave on the barbershop floor has both of those.

I sure hope so.

No.

1. Never assume. You know what that makes me and you.2. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.3. We are talking about Texas.

There is a woman rep in Ohio who is proposing some requirements for men who wish to get Viagra. They have to have extensive psychological evaluations for their reasons to receive it and lots of physical exams in regard to it. She is just looking out for them… She was on the Lawrence O’Donnell show last night. Interesting.

He’s probably got nice hair. Once he ran for president he opened himself up to criticism. It comes with the territory. If he makes a fool of himself that’s grist to the mill. If you or I have conflicting ideas we are unlikely to be lampooned.

Where are the adults in our country? We seem to be in the hands of adolescents who only care about sex! Thank God for Doonsbury!

No it is all a matter of a small group of narrow minded people minding their own business.

As a native Texan and obsever of our ludicrous state legislature – this legislation tops all your past – even the bill that forbid killer bees from entering Texas. The best week of Doonesbury in years. Thanks Mr. Trudeau.

Trust those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

We’re missing the point: W lowered the bar so far even a bigger idiot like Perry could run for president. Let’s abort the Republicant party in Nov.!

Here’s an irony that often amuses me. The issue of abortion is one of the few where Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism agree…once again putting the fun into fundamentalism.

This should not be banned from the Oregonian.

It often amuses me that people who are against abortion tend to only be against it for other people. If it is your daughter or your son’s girlfriend who is pregnant, that is different. They are also so into shame that many of them are unaware of the fact that they know people who have had abortions. People are going to have to wake up soon in regard to these folks. They are a small number of folks but they are vocal. The silent majority is neither.

From the other side of the world, I can only wonder at the behaviour of some in the so called “land of the free” how can American women keep voting for these idiots.

ii called to complain of the strip’s being censored and was told that the editor agonized over the decision and it seems the word rape was what was found most objectionable. i said that i thought it might be the only word that would adequately describe what the girl in the strip is feeling. I’m not happy to go thru hoops to read or view an opinion and I don’t expect everyone to agree with the strip or read it!

Veeeerrrrryyyy interesting, people.

But the argument is mote. Aren’t we all scheduled to die this December?

No not funny but it is accurate… the most shocking thing about this is the Oregonian not placing it on the editorial page this week or even swapping with the strip in the classifieds, but just not running it.. am I in Texas or Oregon? Carol

I cannot determine the date. I might have to update my phone.

Go get ’em, Garry!

@Sosaidh is right. The character in the white lab coat doing the sonogram is definitely a politician, not a doctor. Said so several days back. He’s a representative of the Texas legislature.

But surely she wouldn’t want to be responsible for a Rick Perry shortage?

Spoken in the very spirit that led us to invade Iraq. This kind of comic heroism makes us feel good, as we know from the exploits of Sorkh Razil.

This is ungoodthink, Ingsoc! Siri will speedwise rectify this misprint.

Once again, thank goodness for Doonesbury. Keeping us honest since the 1980s.

So we all agree that abortion on demand is bad? Glad we got it settled, and that nobody called anyone else any names!