Doonesbury Hitting the Issues

Today I became a mature adult. It has been a grat birthday so far!

This past week, Garry Trudeau's cartoon strip Doonesbury, has been tackling the issue of the conservative view on abortion. The newly emerging abortion laws has led to Trudeau's posting a cartoon series on the Texas ultrasound law. Garry Trudeau told Comic Riffs that to ignore the vaginal-ultrasound debate would have been “comedy malpractice.”

The website Addicting Info has carried the Doonesbury abortion comic strip all week long. "Why?"

Because many newspapers have decided that censoring this topic is a good way to keep people ignorant of what Republicans are doing to women’s rights. These so-called “news” organizations have failed to keep their readers informed because they would rather bow down to conservative demands. We here at AI reject such censorship and will continue to bring you the Doonesbury comic strip as long as this abortion segment continues. Republicans have declared war on women and everyone has the right to know exactly how the GOP is waging that war. To that end, Garry Trudeau decided to include the war in Doonesbury.

Republicans don’t want anyone to see this strip because they know it will draw the ire of much of the country. Women represent just over half of the national population, yet they are having virtually no say in what middle aged white male conservatives decide about their sex lives and medical privacy. It’s wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated. The only people who should be able to decide what is best for women’s bodies is women. Republicans have completely obliterated their claim of being the party that stands for small government the stays out of our lives. They’ve decided that small government should violate our privacy, force us to get medical procedures against our will and dictate what we do in our private lives with others. If that is their new definition of small government, I want no part of it. To combat this war on women and Republican censorship, please be sure to spread the word and share this with everyone you know. Women are counting on us to stand with them and their rights.

Monday’s Doonesbury:

Tuesday’s Doonesbury:

Wednesday’s Doonesbury:

Thursday’s Doonesbury:

Friday’s Doonesbury: 

Saturday’s Doonesbury:

According to Garry Trudeau:

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. 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.

Texas's HB-15 isn't hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.