Newspapers Won't Carry Doonesbury

Doonesbury has been pulled from several national newspapers today for running a strip dealing with the intrusive ultrasound bills being written in red states. Garry Trudeau deserves praise for doing this strip. Doonesbury will spend the week focusing on the ultrasound storyline.

Jodi Jacobson has a good round-up of the media reaction to Doonesbury. My favor nonsensical reason comes from the SC Herald.

“I am concerned about the graphic content.”

We are talking about a comic strip. Newspaper editors are acting like this is the torture scene from Reservior Dogs. If this doesn't prove that the media doesn't have a liberal bias then I don't know what will.

Update: Trudeau talks to the Washington Post about the content of this weeks strip.

A: Oddly, for such a sensitive topic, I found it easy to write. The story is very straightforward — it’s not high-concept like [the satiric] Little Timmy in “Silent Scream” — and the only creative problem I had to work through was the physician’s perspective. I settled on resigned outrage.

Texas’s HB-15 [bill] 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.