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.
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