In 2011, pro-lifers at Clarion University in Pennsylvania erected a display of wooden crosses representing unborn. Pro-abortion vandals pulled the crosses out of the ground, reinserted them upside-down, and dripped red paint “blood” over them. They also made baby footprints in the “blood” and wrote, “Pro-Choice” on the pavement. It was an act of vandalism but also a joke, part of a growing body of pro-abortion humor.
My fellow atheist the late George Carlin was one of the funniest, most articulate, comedians and social commentators America has produced. But he abused his comedic power, with skits that analogized abortion to the making of an omelette and accused abortion opponents of bad faith.
Other comedians have followed in Carlin’s steps. Sarah Silverman posted two picture parodies of herself on the internet, one where she appears to be pregnant, standing next to the unborn child’s father, and another in which she has a flat belly. She jokes that she got a “quickie aborsh” in case Mitt Romney got elected and Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
Comedienne Leah Krinsky claimed that she went to a “woman’s clinic” where she was confronted by hundreds of pro-life protesters. “It took me an hour and a half to fight my way through this mob of idiots—by the time I got through, I was so aggravated—I wasn’t even pregnant—I had an abortion just to piss them off!”
The Huffington Post published a series of prenatal homicide jokes collected by Greg Gutfeld: “A fetus wakes up one morning only to realize he’s in the process of being aborted. The fetus looks at the doctor and asks, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ The doctor turns to the patient and says, ‘Don’t worry, not all of them are this stupid.’”
Another joke from Gutfeld: “Girl: Did I ever tell you about the worst abortion I ever had? Man: no. Girl: It was great!”
Some of Gutfeld’s jokes implicitly acknowledge the tumult caused by prebirth infanticide. “Why did the fetus cross the road? Because they moved the dumpster.” “Little Johnny goes up to his mother and says, ‘Is it true babies come from storks?’ ‘Why yes,’ says the mom. ‘Do storks ever have abortions?’ he asks. The mother stops and laughs and then says, ‘Yes, but only the poor black ones.’”
As Gutfeld, a pro-lifer, seems to know, making light of life cannot help but expose the grimness of the claim that some lives are less worthy than others.
March 19th, 2013 | 8:45 am
Why am I not laughing?
There is a fine line between humor and tragedy. Here it has been crossed. The tragedy of abortion is shown by this vain attempt at humor.
March 19th, 2013 | 8:46 am
Our society’s fall into depravity seems to have picked up considerable speed in the past year or so. In some ways, therefore, the existence of “abortion humor” is not surprising. Is this what America is? Where can I go?
I do wonder Greg Gutfeld’s intentions, though. You have mentioned his implicit acknowledgement of the evil of abortion. Is this possibly his point? Most of his jokes would make me uncomfortable if I were pro-choice.
March 19th, 2013 | 10:00 am
Eh — is there really anything new here? Gross-out humor has been around for a long time; google “dead baby jokes” or “The Aristocrats.”
Indeed, the premise of the show “The Producers” is that discussing Hitler in anything but condemnatory terms is so transgressive that any production that attempted to do so would be doomed. The show is funny in part BECAUSE it’s transgressive. Doubtless many people regarded it as beyond the pale. And, evidently, many people did not.
Arguably, the health of free speech can be measured by the extent to which people feel free to transgress taboos. I don’t like the messages of the Westboro Baptist Church, but they clearly demonstrate that free speech is alive and well.
March 19th, 2013 | 11:03 am
Greg Gutfeld is pro-life. He was mocking pro-choicers with his jokes.
March 19th, 2013 | 11:21 am
I agree with Peg about Greg Gutfeld. Just in terms of pure mercenary self-interest, he makes his living as a conservative comedian, and it would be hard to believe he’d alienate his entire audience by delivering such jokes at their expense.
What he seems to be doing instead is something on the order of “heightening the contradictions” of the pro-abortion “argument.” That is, the jokes are meant to destabilize that argument.
Broadly speaking, the pro-abortion side has heretofore been protected, even insulated, by the delicacy and charity of the pro-life side. (This is true in many battles in the culture war, and is an unacknowledged source of strength for the left: they feel free to make any outrageous statement under the protection of “transgression,” with the understanding that they will be safe from return fire of the same kind due to the restraint of traditionalists.) Gutfeld appears to be matching the crudity of his jokes to the crudity of the act of abortion itself, in the expectation (presumably) that many people who profess to be pro-abortion will not have the stomach for having their “right” described in such terms.
It’s a tactic with great risks–chief among them that it depends on a reservoir of decency among most people that will allow them to awaken from their uncritical captivity to pro-abortion dogma. Clearly, that reservoir does not exist in some quarters (as the first item in your post shows). But I sometimes think that traditionalists are now in a position where their delicacy and impulse to charity makes the entire edifice of received wisdom vulnerable to the most vulgar attacks. In such a circumstance, is Gutfeld’s tactic here justified (assuming I’m right about his motives), because it’s part of a greater strategy to speak the ugly truth about abortion, and thereby combat it?
March 19th, 2013 | 12:31 pm
“Indeed, the premise of the show “The Producers” is that discussing Hitler in anything but condemnatory terms is so transgressive that any production that attempted to do so would be doomed. The show is funny in part BECAUSE it’s transgressive. Doubtless many people regarded it as beyond the pale. And, evidently, many people did not.”
But we need to take into account who made the joke and why they made it.
It could well be time to “shock” abortion supporters on their own turf with pointed jokes like Gutfeld’s, although if the bloody footprint “joke” by the Clarion College pro-choicers is any indication there are plenty who are impervious to irony. Their effort seems more effective as a pro-life tactic.
I cannot help but note that Silverman and Krinsky told jokes that were pretty cleaned up and bland, at least as far as the reality of abortion goes. That’s of a piece with the obfuscating lingo that is characteristic of abortion supporters. They like to stay comfortable.
March 19th, 2013 | 12:31 pm
ChrisZ – yes, that sounds about right. Jokes work because of some implied shared understanding. Here, that understanding is that abortion is a horror. There is the risk that some literal people will miss the irony and believe that he actually finds it to be straightforwardly funny, but that’s always a risk with any kind of sophisticated communication.
In general I agree that social conservatives need to be a little more aggressive with their message, before the left has the chance to totally isolate it through “hate speech” laws and the like, as has already happened in much of Western Europe.
March 19th, 2013 | 12:39 pm
Nobody.really and ChrisZ:
I like the analogy to “The Producers;” one of my favorite movies. The scene at the end of the film when “Springtime for Hitler” is first being performed is instructive. The play begins with what appears to be a legit Nazis musical number – not too absurd to imagine.The audience is first shocked and aghast; some people walk out; Bialystock and Bloom are sure their fraud has worked. Then what happens? The Hitler character comes on stage and is truly outrageous – Hitler – a flower child of the sixties!?! It is ChrisZ’s “heightened contradiction.” Now, seeing Gutfeld’s purpose, I get it.
March 19th, 2013 | 1:20 pm
if you can’t laugh at what you believe, you don’t believe it.
March 19th, 2013 | 1:32 pm
This is not humor. It is tasteless. Do their audiences laugh? That is scary.
March 19th, 2013 | 1:51 pm
I’m not persuaded George Carlin’s suggesting abortion opponents act in bad faith is an abuse of his sense of humor in every case. Clearly there are plenty of cases where some people do act in bad faith.
For the rest–it is a coarse culture. I don’t find any of this to be a particular revelation. The question for people serious about Christian faith isn’t whether this is disgusting. Rather, just as some abortion opponents are insincere or mean-spirited, we know that abortion advocates can be the same. A good beginning, it seems to me, starts from this common ground. Sinfulness overtakes us all. No hearts or minds will be won by scolding people as though we’re always right and they’re always wrong. There are plenty of feet of clay on both sides of this argument. What will it take not to ‘win’ but to convert??
March 19th, 2013 | 2:27 pm
Yeah, I kno the person in the pic was not pregnant for real, but even to make light of such a thing is cruel and dark.
March 19th, 2013 | 2:51 pm
George Carlin was far from the “thinking person’s” comedian that he was often hailed. His sketch on religiosity is case in point. He defended his atheism on the cliched grounds that if this broken world is the best God can do, then something is wrong. Yes, grave, inexcusable evil and injustice is rampant in this world–but whose fault is that, God’s or ours? For someone who touted freedom so much, Mr. Carlin had a difficult time accepting the reality that God gave his human creation’s–created in his creative image–free-will.
Furthermore, Carlin, Silverman, all the “shock” comedians really stand-out as reactionary–reactionaries to history’s only true revolution. The Christian purview of the human person is completely counter-cultural to our broken world. The revelation of the Paschal Mystery in history turned, and continues to turn, here and now, an upside-down world upside-down again, and thus right-side up. “Shock” comedy is desensitization to the shocking anchor of Hope cast into the wreck of every age, that redeems and offers true freedom to every age.
March 19th, 2013 | 2:57 pm
I don’t know Gutfeld’s character. I find Gutfeld’s ‘jokes’ to be not worthy of repetition.
March 19th, 2013 | 3:00 pm
I don’t know Silverman’s character either, but she is giving apt demonstration of it.
March 19th, 2013 | 3:15 pm
I am pro-choice and this is just wrong. The entire thing is in poor taste. Shame on them for showing their lack of class.
March 19th, 2013 | 7:21 pm
Perhaps Silverman and other atheists should have a discussion about abortion with fellow atheist Nat Hentoff. Mr. Hentoff is one of the most courageous people on the planet, and has never deviated from the prolife position. he might explain to her, and the other atheists who think abortion is “funny,” why injustice is not funny. That’s why decent people don’t laugh at racist jokes, for example.
March 20th, 2013 | 2:13 am
On the contrary, Ellen, this kind of humor is essential in order for people who embrace death culture to numb themselves to the reality they’ve enabled. Read the section on everyday humor in Richard Grunberger’s “The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945.” These jokes are hardly new, and just the thing the pro-choice crowd needs to justify this update of genocide against the unwanted. We’ve heard ‘em before.
March 20th, 2013 | 9:06 am
Silverman and Leah Dunham from Girls are silly twits who volunteered for Obama’s “War on Women” theme which unfortunately works. If you believe the pollsters, all single women worry about is having their birth control and abortions paid for by the government. As for the photo of Silverman with the young man, I suspect that very few men would want Silverman to be the mother of their baby.
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