Controversial abortion Doonesbury strips pushed online only

Like many newspapers around the country, The Free Press will not be publishing this week's "Doonesbury" strips in the print edition of the newspaper.

The strips contain some rather graphic illustrations and language involving abortion that would be better suited to our online site where people can view them at their own discretion.

I just didn't feel publishing the controversial strips would go well with the "Garfield," "Family Circus," and "Peanuts" comic strips.

People who read our comics pages may not only be young children, but also unaware adults who might be offended by some of the panels in this week's "Doonesbury." The syndicate we purchase "Doonesbury" from supplied us with alternate strips for this week that we will publish in the print edition.

We are publishing the controversial strips online under our "Talkers" banner at the top right hand side of our web page.

Many other newspapers made the same decision, including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Des Moines Register.

As Free Press readers know, we moved both Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore off the opinion page and into the comics section several months ago. We did this partly to free up more space on the opinion page for letters and other columns.

We made room on the comics page by moving the horoscopes to the classified section.

We may not have moved "Doonsebury" if it were still on the opinion page, the thought being not a lot of young children are reading that page.

Anyway, I personally believe the controversial strips are worth reading. As usual, "Doonesbury" author Garry Trudeau raises important issues and offers a new, though graphic, way to look at how we are coming to deal with abortion in the country through policy and courts.