Are Rape Jokes Funny? Abortion was still illegal in 1970. At the time, as both an underground abortion referral service and a stand-up satirist, I faced an undefined paradox. I wouldn’t allow victims to become the target of my humor, yet there was one particular routine I did that called for a “rape-in” of legislators’ wives in order to impregnate them so that they would then convince their husbands to decriminalize abortion. When abortion was against the law, I thought it would never be legalized in my lifetime. But then, after Roe vs Wade, I thought abortion would never be illegal again. So now, in 2012, it's been disheartening to see the right-wing religious conservative movement that supposedly wants to keep government out of our lives, while simultaneously promulgating compulsory transvaginal ultrasound probes, in the process of trying to re-criminalize reproduction rights in my lifetime. Things seem to be going backward. The Dinosaur Follies--better known as the Republican presidential primaries—were bizarre and surrealistic. Most despicable was the way they all pandered to their fanatical anti-choice constituents. My unofficial Campaign Pandering Award went to the Champiom of Anti-Choice, Mitt Romney. He wanted to destroy Planned Parenthood and to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But, returning to my rape-in concept, feminist friends objected. I resisted at first, because it was such a well-intentioned joke. And then I reconsidered. Even in a joke, why should women be assaulted because men made the laws? Legislators' wives were the victims in that joke, but the legislators themselves were the oppressors, and their hypocrisy was really my target. But for me to stop doing that bit of comedy wasn't chickenshit censorship, it was empathetic editing. * * * Now, in July 2012, more than four decades later, rape-joking triggered a widespread controversy when a woman who prefers to remain anonymous went to a comedy club, expecting to be entertained. She chose the Laugh Factory in Hollywood because Dane Cook was on the bill, but he was followed by Daniel Tosh, and she had never heard of him.