Abortion cartoons: Where is the woman’s voice?

Sociological Images has a post up pointing out something I have actually never noticed: how women are almost always depicted as voiceless or faceless in editorial cartoons about abortion. This isn’t solely the province of anti-choice cartoons, either. Some examples:

What these (and most) editorial cartoons are doing is channeling and distilling the political debate. It’s telling how, even in the pro-choice cartoon in the center above, the woman is just a stand in for “women’s rights” — a broad issue, not an individual woman making a choice. This is reflective of how we talk about “contentious” abortion issue — and it’s pretty striking to see all these cartoons lined up. (More here.)

And if you aren’t already reading Sociological Images on the regular, I highly recommend it.