#09: Pills

Alt-text: She sits, troubled, ears back, in front of a large photo of a smoggy, grey town. The town has several landmarks: a sports stadium, a post office, and buildings labeled "Loan," "$," Flars," "Beer," "Rx," and "Fud." There are some USA flags on some buildings and in the parking lot of "Fud." In the background, there are buildings with crosses on them that go on for miles. In the foreground there is a window with smoke coming out of it and a building with male genitals drawn on the roof. In the immediate foreground is a cracked, poorly maintained sidewalk with grass growing in between the pavement and a wall against it that has been graffitied, "We're all gonna die."

"She lived in a very grey city. It wasn't a healthy place to live. There was a lot of hatred and not much money. She kept to herself most of the time."

She is shown popping some pills into her gaping mouth from an orange bottle. There are five colorful pills enlarged to illustrate. "She took medicine to cope with the hatred and the poor air quality. She also took fish oil, a multivitamin, and her pills for her cramps so she wouldn't barf. Some people took the pills to avoid pregnancy, too." A rectangular pack of pills is illustrated; "She take one a day. Same time," is written as the prescription.

"And yet other people with the problem of 'magical thinking' (there were a lot of these people in Weaselton) thought she was 'killing babies' by taking these pills."

There is a photograph of a turquoise car parked between two white lines in a parking lot. The car has a license plate with a cartoon uterus and ovaries drawn on it and "LIFE" written right beside of the cartoon. "They liked to drive cars with plates that showed they hated people like her."

She is shown livid and bright-red, with eyes squinted from anger and her hands on her hips (as well as her tiny arms can do). She is standing in front of greyed-out protesters with signs that have big red slash lines through a circle to indicate being against something. "Every time she would go to her doctor to get the pills, angry people would shout at her and beg her to 'keep the baby.' (This was supposed to be their magic trick.) As she walked past them, her face would turn hot from humiliation and sincere anger. The magical thinkers were everywhere! Their magic wouldn't work on her; she hated cramps too much."

This comic is dedicated to everyone who is currently fighting the tide of anti-choice bigots and others who want to deny access to abortion and other forms of birth control. If you think they have stopped at abortion, you're mistaken; now the loudest voices in our political sphere have seemingly forgotten Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird and are saying they would be up for (enthusiastically so!) making contraception's legality and availability a state-by-state issue.

(For readers who are still on the fence about the ethics of abortion but aren't totally anti-science, you may be interested in this article on Boingboing that casually discusses studies about cell-sharing between a mother and a fetus (Jan 3, 2012). Don't be afraid to be in the grey...)

(Edited for a really silly typo on Jan 16, 2012)