I was a teenager when Trudeau did a funny week's worth of series parodying the "Silent Scream" movie that came out back in the '80's. I remember the Seattle Times didn't run Doonesbury in its regular spot, but ran all six strips in a special feature story on the controversy. It's damn sad that the Oregonian today is more conservative than the Seattles Times was back in the mid-80's...

Has the O ever strayed beyond it's borders to the degree that sets a precedent? Will they ever match the will of it's readership? Does the queen poop in the castle? Well who knows but what I do know is that some music always makes us think and sways our consciousness. But it is still wrong to murder unborn children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcwsfns7KPQ&feature=related

It's damn sad that Trudeau has to do very little embellishing or editorializing to illustrate how absurd and repulsive these laws are. The party of smaller, less intrusive government, my ass.

Arizona is now trying to pass a law where an employer can ask a woman if, and for what reason, she is using contraception. These tighty-righties do know that women vote, don't they?

This misogynistic BS is what I find so offensive, not a comic strip.

Neil, it's not so much "conservative" as "chickens**t". The last thing the O can afford to do is drive off its sole remaining readership (that is, other than writers for other publications and bloggers): the alter kokkers who blow a gasket every time "Judge Parker" gets removed from the comics section. If that means that everyone else goes online to get their "Doonesbury" fix, and then realize that they don't have to deal with news and entertainment being held hostage by a gaggle of schlubs, so be it.

I didn't know the strip was still running.

No kidding ex-bartender. The last year or so I've had this tendency to wonder what the heck it was that I was thinking in 2008 when I voted. Sometimes it's like I really can't remember or connect to myself then. But leave it to these guys to remind me - and bring me right back to - exactly what it was that I was thinking in 2008.

At the end of the day I'd rather be disappointed by a democrat than an accomplice to these Neanderthals. It's too bad those are my only choices.

I'm reminded once again by these comments as well as Trudeau's political cartoons and the Oregonian that we are all blessed because our mothers chose life and not abortion.

"Arizona is now trying to pass a law where an employer can ask a woman if, and for what reason, she is using contraception."

All I have to say to that one is "wow"...and then "WTF?" How do these people even come up with this creepy s_ _t? It's almost like they think that just because someone cuts you a pay check they actually own you somehow. I also think it's pretty perved out to want to ask an employee about her sex life. How about the men? Do you use condoms? What kind? How often? I thought we abolished slavery over 150 years ago in this country, and it looks like these clowns actually want to bring it back. The other one is drug testing people who collect unemployment benefits (as if its welfare or something), that one really pisses me off, and I've never collected a dime of it in my entire life!

mcminor, the point is - they CHOSE(presumably). Rather than have someone else choose for them.

As was even muttered when I was in college in the 70's - if you don't want or believe in abortion, don't have one.

Planned Parenthood performs an ultra sound before most of the abortions it performs (and it performs and profits from lots of abortions). It doesn't show the mother for fear she will change her mind. Requiring women to be informed and understand what an abortion is the right thing to do.

Doonesbury hasn't been funny or interesting for years.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Trudeau is an icon. I remember following the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post in college and digging for Doonesbury's take everyday. In May of 1973 a lot of papers (including the Post) refused to run a strip where Mark declared John Mitchell "guilty!". (They reasoned it was an affront to his due process rights- and he was the Attorney General at the time. Apparently the O had also dropped the strip on April 1, 1973 for some reason, not sure if it was Watergate or not, and weathered a big backlash. These kind of "crisis of the moment" decisions always look embarrassing in hindsight, even to the editors responsible. With this one, however, no hindsight is needed. I wonder if this was an editorial page decision by some new acting editor. It makes the editors looks petty and incompetent.

Correction: Actually I think Mitchell was a former Attorney General at that time.

Oooooo....the trolls are busy today.

Hey thanks john. Us dum wimmen folk just rilly doan git it.

It's perversely ironic to assert that we need this type of legislation to make sure women "are informed and understand" when, on the other hand, right wing pols are attempting to codify the right to lie to women about critical health issues. Once again, from the "great" state of Arizona:

It’s called a “wrongful birth” bill and it’s all about preventing women from having an abortion, even if it kills them. The Arizona Senate passed a bill this week that gives doctors a free pass to not inform pregnant women of prenatal problems because such information could lead to an abortion.

In other words, doctors can intentionally keep critical health information from pregnant women and can’t be sued for it.

The fact that women have to worry about any of this in 2012 is mind boggling. Time for a female general strike. Time for an "I can't spend, I have to save for the women's health services Rethugs won't let me have" non-spending spree.

In 2012, a women's demo to defend access to contraception here in the US was met with militarized police force. Why is this country so unbelievably backward? It's crazy.

Because of religion. Including the international pedophile ring based in Rome.

Someone needs to remind these folks pushing this that this country was actually founded by deists. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and quite a few others were all deists.

Admittedly, I don't usually lean in the political direction of Doonesbury, but a lot of what's going on with contraceptive/family planning right now is sheer lunacy, and I applaud Trudeau's candor in tackling this. In some ways, the controversy it's creating is probably bringing more attention to the comic and the issues than if it had been printed in the O.

The "gobmint" needs to stay out of doctor's offices and out of people's bedrooms, period!
It is fascinating to me that the so called less government party of the GOP is SO concerned with controlling the reproductive activities of women and so unconcerned with controlling much of anything else.
The old men don't want women to have any control over their reproductive rights, but these same old men don't want to provide or care for any child that is born either. Save the fetus, kill the kid.
If you don't want an abortion, don't have one!

Religious fundamentalists in the USA don't scare me because their agenda is largely going nowhere. Pro-entitlement-ists (?!) scare me much much more because they are going everywhere.

In fact the college student who set Rush off didn't want birth control; she wanted it paid for (leaving aside for the moment the question of whether "the rest of us" would "rather" pay for BC, abortions or children).

The only place where the religious right has made any inroads is to some extent on the abortion front, and that is largely due to the enormous overreach of the pro-choice side at the time, in demanding the right to abortion regardless of reason in all three trimesters of pregnancy. And that could be seen even at the time.