A GARRY Trudeau Doonesbury strip for publication this week lampooning Texas legislation on abortion has been pulled by some American newspapers.
Several newspapers are declining to use the strip at all, and others are switching it from the family comic section to editorial pages. The syndication company responsible for Doonesbury has offered newspaper subscribers an alternative.
The strip deals with a law introduced in Texas and other states requiring a woman who wants to have an abortion to undergo a sonogram, which shows an image of a foetus and other details, in an attempt to make her reconsider.
The strip portrays a woman who turns up at an abortion clinic in Texas and is told to take a seat in “the shaming room”. A state legislator asks whether she has been at the clinic before, and when she says she has been to get contraceptives he replies: “Do your parents know you’re a slut?”
Later, she says she does not want an intrusive vaginal examination but is told by a nurse: “The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10-inch shaming wand.” The nurse adds: “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”
Abortion, contraception and other social issues have resurfaced in politics in recent weeks, partly because they have been highlighted by the Republican candidates in the presidential race.
About 1,400 newspapers, including The Irish Timesand the Guardian, take the Doonesbury cartoon.
Trudeau said he would have been surprised if there had not been a pushback against the strip.
“Abortion remains a deeply contentious subject. Having said that, the goal is definitely not to antagonise editors and get booted from papers,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s just an occupational risk.”
Trudeau has used his cartoons as a platform for social commentary for decades and regularly finds himself in trouble.
The Kansas City Staris among the papers not running the cartoon in its normal slot. "We felt the content was too much for many of the readers of our family-friendly comic page," an editor told AP.
The Staris to use a replacement strip offered by Universal Uclick, the organisation that syndicates the Doonesbury strip, and will move the abortion one to its editorial pages.
Sue Roush, managing editor of Universal Uclick, said: “I can’t say how many papers will choose ultimately to run or not run the series, but we’ve had inquiries from 30 to 40 papers asking about the substitutes.”
Media blog jimromenesko.comis trying to tally the number of newspapers not running the strip. It quoted JoLene Krawczak, features editor of the Oregonian, as saying: "We thought the strips were over the line for the comics pages and won't be running them. We'll tell readers where they can read them online."
Texas governor Rick Perry signed the abortion measure into law in May 2010. His press spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said: "The decision to end a life is not funny. There is nothing comic about this tasteless interpretation of legislation we have passed in Texas to ensure that women have all the facts when making a life-ending decision." – ( Guardianservice)