Abortion and The Onion

I was at Peregrine in Eastern Market the other day avoiding my work with a copy of The Onion. On the front page was an article, "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex." The point of the sarcasm is, I think, that no one really likes abortions (this was the point of last week's Private Practice, too--no one likes abortions, but they are women's right, guaranteed by the Supreme Court, so we'd better make sure that people are around to give them what is their right when they want it). I think that the other point that this article is attempting to make is that abortion is a small part of what Planned Parenthood does (as if the fact that Planned Parenthood does things other than provide abortions impacts the reprehensibility of abortion). Perhaps the article was also making fun of perceived parallels between Nazi death camps and abortion with its blueprint of the "abortionplex," which has "Abortion Suites: Rooms where the actual abortion procedures are performed and where women may enjoy a complimentary pedicure and flute of champagne," as well as "Noiseless, Large-Capacity Incinerator: Apparatus capable of cremating more than 4o tons of fetuses at a time." This makes me ill; I don't remotely understand how it's funny. Clearly, what the Nazis did was different from abortion--they're both horrible things and both things I'm just not comfortable joking about. I think that often what The Onion does is good--it calms the anger of political debates by allowing people to laugh at themselves (30 Rock is very good at this, too--equal opportunity mocking of liberals and conservatives). In this case, however, it's far, far too much--there are still some things that are too serious to laugh at.


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