By Dave Andrusko
Gary Trudeau
If at first you don’t succeed…Twenty-seven years ago cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of “Doonesbury,” and his then-syndicate, scaled back distribution of a series of cartoons attacking Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s hugely influential video, “The Silent Scream.” Dr. Nathanson, who traced his own pro-life conversion back to the impact of ultrasounds, galvanized a national debate when he used an ultrasound to show an actual abortion. Trudeau satirized the unborn baby as “Tiny Timmy.”
Trudeau is back this week with a six-parter intended to mock the new ultrasound law passed in Texas and deride its pro-life Gov. Rick Perry. Trudeau’s comic strip is said to have about 1,400 clients. Some newspapers are not running this week’s “Doonesbury.”
In a note to readers Friday, the editors of The Oregonian in Portland said 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.” According to the Associated Press, two Florida papers, the Gainesville Sun and the Ocala Star-Banner, have also decided against running the strips. The St. Pioneer Press is not running the cartoons, either.
Sue Roush, managing editor of Doonesbury distributor, said Trudeau has provided alternatives for papers that choose not to run the sonogram series. “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,” Roush told the Dallas Morning News.
While the locale is Texas, Trudeau’s latest drawings are obviously a spinoff of the huge controversy created by pro-abortionists in Virginia. As National Right to Life News Today reported, a two-part myth {lie} was created in an attempt to squelch any ultrasound legislation.
First, that the law required a trans-vaginal probe; it did not. Second, that somehow this was equivalent to “rape,” even though abortionists routinely use trans-vaginal probes to date the age of early babies!
Trudeau told Michael Cavna of the Washington Post that ignoring ultrasounds “would have been comedy malpractice.” Picking up the hyperbole and misinformation of the Virginia ultrasound debate, Trudeau announces what is taking place in Texas is “rape.” In his first strip Trudeau has the mother being directed to a “shaming room” where, she is told, “a middle age male state legislator will be with you in a moment.”
Texas Gov. Perry’s press secretary, Catherine Frazier, told the Dallas Morning News, that the governor is “proud of his leadership in enacting the sonogram law and his staunch anti-abortion record.”
“The decision to end a life isn’t funny,” Frazier said. “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
National Right to Life’s Department of State Legislation has been the driving force behind passage of state ultrasound laws. As director Mary Spaulding Balch, JD, has explained, “The new ultrasound law provides mothers an opportunity to view real-time images of their unborn children, and then provides an appropriate waiting period before rushing her through an abortion.”
She also added, “This basic medical information should be provided to women, but because a life-affirming choice takes business away from the abortionist, they will often hide all the facts of abortion and the child’s development from mothers.”
Which is ironic since according to reports, the very last panel in Trudeau’s series portrays the woman paying the abortion clinic on her way out the door.
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