Buffy And Abortion

[Rich Johnston]

USA Today reports that in today's issue of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 from Dark Horse Comics, Buffy shares her newly discovered status as a pregnant woman with her family and friends. She presumes that the vampire on-again-off-again lover Spike is the father, although there's some plot-purposeful indecision about that. And hey, it may just turn out that there's some mystical energy inside her or something. I'm sure there's plenty of supernatural oddness to come.

But more controversially, the comic explores her decision to have an abortion.

The preview that USA Today show isn't that reflective of the whole issue however, the article talks about the decision process. In the comic, we see Buffy talking to her friends, and indeed the child of a previous slayer, and the decisions she makes after talking it through with as many as she can.

Of late, mainstream comic books have become a lot more comfortable with topics including race, gender, homosexuality, drug use and all manner of topics that may once have been problematic. Abortion, however, is not a topic that's come up of late, especially not a protagonist deciding to have one. For all their progressive changes of late, I don't expect, even in their future fantasies, to see Betty or Veronica going to the clinic on the cover of Live With Archie. Today's Wolverine and The X-Men also has a pregnant Kitty Pryde, which is handled in a very different fashion.

But it remains a major debating point in America, And in an Election Year in the USA, it's just the time for abortion to become a hot trigger topic again. And for Buffy The Vampire Slayer to try and at least explore some of the complexities that accompany such a decision when it's away from the media spotlight.



Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 #6 is published today. Comics are courtesy of Orbital Comics in London, UK. They are currently exhibiting the original art of Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot's Dotter Of Her Father's Eyes.



By the way, any Buffy The Foetus Slayer jokes in the comments, and you're barred.

[Stevaux The LEsser]

I haven't bought an issue of Buffy since being appalled real early in Season Eight but these excerpts are so fucking good! I might buy this one off issue just to send support with my dollar for them having the balls to do this story and the talent to do it well. Not that I expect Buffy to actually (Can I THINK slay?) terminate but to be honest, if they're being true to the Buffy I watched all those years, they shouldn't. Abortion is not wrong but I don't feel it's right for this character...

[Michael P]

Invincible's girlfriend Atom Eve had an off-panel abortion last year. The cirumstances were quite different. but I just thought I'd throw that out.

[Knut Robert Knutsen]

The Buffyverse has dealt with "abortion" before, in the context of mystical pregnancies (though the instances I recall were on Angel), and always in a pro-choice context. And on mystical pregnancies the attitude has been "better have an abortion than giving birth to the Anti-Christ". I have not yet read the issue (a few issues behind on Buffy), but from the excerpts above Buffy seems unsure how she got pregnant, and by whom, so I suppose this may be another mystical pregnancy (a point in the pro-termination column, to be sure). In which case it might also, like Darla's pregnancy, be impossible to terminate.

I suppose if this gets picked up by "pro-life" protesters, the question of "If a woman got pregnant and you knew her baby the Anti-Christ, would you still deny her an abortion?" suddenly becomes relevant.

I hope this storyline will be handled thoughtfully, and I have confidence in the creative team that they will do fine.

[Charles Skaggs]

Well, Dark Horse couldn't have timed this storyline better...

[Kinnon]

The subject matter also comes up in this weeks Dicks #1 too, and is handled with the expected sensitivity and care.

[themightylayman]

Abortions should be mandatory.

[Eric!]

Abortions should be mandatory.

...and in your case retroactive.

[thekeith82]

I suppose if this gets picked up by "pro-life" protesters, the question of "If a woman got pregnant and you knew her baby the Anti-Christ, would you still deny her an abortion?" suddenly becomes relevant.

It doesn't become relevant, because it could never happen. Anyone who brings that question up in a real world debate about abortion needs to be quietly escorted away and placed in a padded cell.

[Snowspinner]

It doesn't become relevant, because it could never happen. Anyone who brings that question up in a real world debate about abortion needs to be quietly escorted away and placed in a padded cell.

Given the fact that the anti-abortion side tends base their arguments on religious beliefs I'm not actually sure it's an unreasonable question to ask, albeit as a hypothetical. I mean, the overlap between people who believe that abortion should be made illegal and people who fret seriously about the antichrist... the latter is largely a subset of the former.