ART & IDEAS // COMMENTARY FROM SIGNE WILKINSON

by Signe Wilkinson

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EXCERPT //

I have needed all of these images and more for the hundreds of cartoons I’ve drawn chronicling the ever-evolving skirmishes and outright warfare over abortion. And, in my unbiased judgment, these cartoons are among my best even though, astoundingly, they have failed to settle the abortion debates.

I feel the subject viscerally. When I hear Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito pontificate on abortion, I feel like I’m on the examining table with my feet in the stirrups and the two of them discussing the view.

By another stroke of fortune, the Philadelphia Daily News printed the cartoons I drew, even after some ignited intense blowback. The thing about cartooning for what some called the “Dirty News,” is that, shockingly, not all of their once 200,000-plus readers agreed with my rational, well-argued points on the subject. Helpful subscribers kindly wrote me things like, “I wish your mother had aborted you!” After one particularly virulent dust-up over a cartoon, my real mother, since deceased, tremulously inquired, “Are you all right, honey?”

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