American Dark Humor and Abortion's Collective Consequences: Dead Baby Jokes

Anthropologist Alan Dundes wrote in 1987's "Cracking Jokes: Sick Humor Cycles" that the most obvious explanation of the dead baby joke cycle was as a "protest against babies in general" resulting from legalized abortion, which coincided with the rise of dead baby jokes in the 1960s. Dundes also points out that even though Planned Parenthood tries to separate sexuality from maternity, dead baby jokes is better at severing the natural link between a parent and child by dehumanizing the unborn.

Legalized abortion in America has taken almost 55 million young people since 1973, primarily from the current generation. Estimates suggest at least one in four young people are missing, lost to surgical abortions. Estimates of the number of chemical abortions and abortifacient unborn deaths are even higher, ranging up to 277 million.

In that environment, then, dead baby jokes are the collective mental distancing, coping and psychological side-effects of a culture confronting the slaughter of 55-277 million of its children. As a form of 'gallows humor', young people who witness the empty playgrounds resort to ridiculing the dead in order to face the anxiety of being a survivor. Dehumanization is the only available recourse to a society subconsciously ashamed of itself.

We have to make villains out of the defenseless, strip the unborn of their dignity in order to rationalize what has happened. In order to confront this horror, and also explain the many social consequences such as a bankrupt social security system, an economy dependent on immigrant labor in lieu of cheap young natives, elderly people lonely from having so few extended relatives, the young resort to obscene humor.

Humor is often edgy, confronting anxieties, and often sexual. It is also often inherently political or discussing current social themes. One comic writer said that all humor is inconsistency, showing unexpected results. As political decisions increasingly affect the population, no political decision in modern America has had more real, immediate and direct consequences than legalizing abortion through judicial dictate in all 50 states in all months of the pregnancy in 1973. Nothing is more inconsistent than an expectant mother who aborts her own child.

As abortion "rights" movements were percolating throughout the states, and abortion became increasingly common in the 1960s, the first "dead baby jokes" started to appear. Partially as a way to dehumanize the child, the jokes coexist as a form of therapy for those complicit in abortion.

In January 1987 a Pennsylvania state official, Budd Dwyer, called a press conference and committed suicide on live television. Since it was during the day, and there had been a heavy snowfall, many children in central Pennsylvania were home to witness Dwyer's suicide on live television.

Many later challenged the media's decision to air the footage. One interesting side effect, however, was the development of dark humor surrounding Dwyer in the region where children saw the live footage. In Midwestern Folklore, folklorist Simon Bronner wrote an article in 1988 that discussed and speculated on the development of Budd Dwyer jokes.

Bronner found that the jokes were prevalent only among the students who had witnessed the event. He noticed other patterns, namely that many of the jokes were based on a sort of a basic inconsistency, a play on words or an irrational comparison. The jokes had what he called an "abstract formulation" which was its "base meaning" that was always in opposition to reason, a tension between the joke's thought and reason. The joke exists by reconciling apparent inconsistencies.

A joke has half of its statement true and obvious, and then the other half twisted, demented and depraved reflecting the horrors of what they have seen. The joke becomes reflective of the society it exists in, a mirror image of the trauma collectively experienced. As a way to help cope with anxieties and the horror, people tell these jokes as a way to share the painful experiences and force others to confront the horrors they have seen.

Children who witnessed the Dwyer suicide told these jokes to reshare the tragedy, to help themselves detach and remove themselves from the truth of what they were seeing. It was a way to acknowledge what they all experienced, and show collective resolve. Other children in nearby areas, culturally similar, did not dwell on such dark humor nor retell the jokes the same way according to Bronner. It was the collective trauma that led young people to use humor as a coping mechanism, as a way to distance themselves from what they saw, as a way to address the extreme things they witnessed and rationalize them.

In similar ways to the Dwyer suicide, modern American children have all heard about abortion. Many have seen the graphic images. Sadly many have participated in abortions, or are at least completely aware of the fate of many of their brothers and sisters who died silently, by choice, in a clinic often just a few miles away. They live daily with the inconsistency that their parents can be jailed for mistreating them, but were able to kill them without consequence.

Dehumanization is the natural tactic, then. For the child, delegitimizing the competing claims to their birthright becomes a necessity. Subconsciously understanding why their parents had enough money to finance material concerns, every child can compare their grandparents to their parents and see that family size is the most visible external mark of change.

Their luxuries depend on fewer mouths to feed. The child's material wealth came from a reduction in the siblings sharing in those resources.

Instead of vibrant families, Generation X had vibrant careers. In lieu of large Thanksgiving dinners, the new American family has dinner for three at a nice restaurant on that day of union.

Instead of the station wagon they drive an Escalade with empty seats. Instead of large families, now there are digital friends a thousand miles away. And instead of a normal base of humor touching on the typical trivialities of the day, an entire subculture of humor has evolved to cope with the tragedy of abortion by dehumanizing the unborn, sharing their tragedy through dead baby jokes. Our changed lifestyle tries to hide the abortions, to hide the people void around us.

Trauma creates a joke cycle as a coping mechanism among the affected population. The prevalence, then, of the dead baby joke cycle and its continuance represents an ongoing tragedy and psychological disturbance within society. Said another way, abortion has been so traumatic to our society that it is even affecting our sense of humor.

Folklorist Elliott Oring wrote an essay, "Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster" and quoted several psychologists as saying that such humor allows people to cope with anxieties and "coping with the horror" that they witnessed through the media. Oring also noted that "If jokes seem cruel or horrible, then the people telling them are either cruel or they are simply coping with a horrible situation."

As one builds a culture of life, one must be aware of the many healings necessary. Society's sense of humor needs a change of heart. And motivated pro-life activists should be on guard for any attempt, as Obamacare continues, of social attempts to similarly dehumanize the elderly and those needing end-of-life care.