Stephan Pastis steps into abortion issue

Felice Belman of the Concord Monitor notes that Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine touched on the abortion issue in last Saturday’s strip and while not rising to the level of Garry Trudeau’s compulsory sonograms cartoons that spurred nearly 75 papers to temporarily drop the strip, Stephan’s strip did cause a bit of reaction from readers.

The syndicate from which the Monitor buys “Pearls Before Swine” did offer us an alternative comic to run last Saturday, if the pro-life strip made us uncomfortable.

In the end, I heard from only a few readers who found it objectionable. Turns out, most of them aren’t big “Pearls” fans on any day of the week.

I’m not sure of Stephan’s position on this issue, but to me it seems he went for a gag.