I know this has been blogged about on feministing and other sites in the past, but I have to give my two cents.
The 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade gave women the right to have an abortion. Our right(italics). Whether people agree on the decision should not take away the value of this right because, although the ruling could be overturned in the future, legally one cannot deny that we have a right to obtain an abortion.
So my question is: why does television and the media treat this subject as something that is still up in the air and therefore the only safe plot is for every pregnant tv character to "choose" life?
What motivated me to write this post was a recent episode of the one of my favorite shows, "Army Wives" in which one of the characters, Joan, is faced with an unwanted pregnancy and must decide what she wants to do. Only, she doesn't decide for herself, she ends up letting everyone else, particularly the men, decide for her. Now it is clear from the start that she does not want to go through with the pregnancy. She is a high-ranking military commander and her job is very important to her. She finally tells her husband and her commanding officer (is that the correct terminology?) that she is going to terminate the pregnancy and tries to ignore their over-dramatic looks of disapointment, the way a father would look at his daughter for breaking the rules. In the final scenes we see that she had gotten as far as laying on the exam table as the doctor prepped her for the abortion, but ultimately decided not to go through with it. Her reason? She tells her husband, Roland, that she realized he would "make a great father." Now I realize that choosing also includes the option of keeping the baby and I totally support that, but Joan wanted the abortion and simply caved under pressure. It was as if the writers had to some how tweak the logical storyline so that she would "choose" to go through with the pregnancy. The message that I was left with at the end of that episode was "Well you can consider (italics) abortion and you can even get really close to getting one because it is your choice, just as long as you don't go through with it because, hey, you have to draw the line somewhere." Joan surpasses her own judgement and does what is portrayed as the "right thing." As if that was the only way there could be a happy ending.
Unfortunately, it seems like more and more shows are doing this with their characters. In the new Abc Family show, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," the main character, you guessed it - a teenager, becomes pregnant after a one-night stand. The subject of abortion is mentioned for a whole 5 seconds and then completely ignored. While we still do not know what she is going to do with her pregnancy, I am willing to bet money that she will keep it. Some might argue that writers do this because it gives the show a plot, but why must every plot involving a pregnant woman end the same? Is it really because it makes it more interesting or because, despite having the right to an abortion, it is still not really the "okay" thing to do?
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It's rather one-sided, isn't it?
This entry made me think of a storyline on General Hospital when Lulu (I believe she was 17 or 18 at the time) did get an abortion. I remember how happy I was that the writers actually went through with it. Unfortunately, she was pregnant because she lied to her friend's husband (her stepbrother) to get him into bed (appropriately soapy, no?), so it wasn't exactly a flattering view of pro-choice. But it was a step nonetheless.
Okay so one of my less feminist addictions is soap operas I love them...the over drama, the hotties, the ridiculous stories, I love them despite myself. (prepares to duck)
But that same issue you are talking about it everywhere on Soaps...everyone always knows that pregnancies and who's the father stories go hand in hand with soap operas. What I cannot handle is the way they have the female characters are written to consider abortion, but (with the exception of one character that I know of) any woman who decides that abortion is what she wants then she can no longer have children due to some infection or mess up. (there by punishing any woman selfish enough to actually choose what she wants and needs, and warning those watching that abortion is wrong and evil and you will be punished much like the old movies where if you had sex you were either hit by a car i.e. Where the Boys Are or other such punishments)
The ones that decide against abortion which is honestly the majority (and honestly that is part of choice) they never really consider abortion in a real way it's always a word dropped and boom that is all the consideration it has. Or the woman decides to have an abortion, but at the last minute changes her mind and then miscarries. It is frustrating.
Abortion is a woman's right if she chooses it; it is an important choice that woman should know about. It deserves some respect considering how few women there are in the world that have the choice and considering how many people want to take it away from us.
If abortion is not an option for a story or a character than do not even bring it up. I hate that it is used as a plot point or as some sort of "I was made to this" way. I know that stories are written, but if for once they could give some woman really considering her options all of them, and then making a decision.
Like Joan if she wanted an abortion then she should have had one, but if it was never really a consideration having that storyline was just cheap and almost offensive to women.
There has only been one story IMO to really give choice real consideration and that was about 2 years ago on General Hospital. The story has been the only thing I've seen on TV that really gives the issue of choice its due in any way. And even that was less than perfect, the most realisticly story about this issue I've seen played on television. If anyone is interested in how this story played out you can find most of it on youtube with "lulu's pregnancy".
I've watched quite a bit of TV over my life, and the only time I've ever seen a character get an abortion was on Third Watch: A female cop who already had two children with her husband had an unplanned pregnancy. Her husband found out when she didn't want him to, and throughout the day she dicussed it with her partner. She wanted an abortion because she was done with having kids, and wanted to be able to provide a better life for the kids she already had - computers, college, etc. Because her husband wouldn't want her to have the abortion, she had it done after some kind of incident - maybe a gunshot, taking a hit from a bad guy? - and told her husband that she had miscarried from that.
manny on degrassi:tng had an abortion, she was slut shamed alot but she never expressed any regret about the abortion as far as i recall.
Interesting post and comments - the treatment of abortion on TV often makes me angry too. Not sure I agree with Megs, though, on this one point: "If abortion is not an option for a story or a character than do not even bring it up." I do agree it's often handled very badly. But not mentioning it at all, I think, is just as bad - it gives the impression that it's beyond the pale. For instance, when Gabrielle got pregnant on Desperate Housewives because her husband had replaced her birth control with placebos... she was understandably incredibly angry, having been absolutely, one hundred percent certain she didn't want to have children. Yet nowhere at any point do I recall anybody mentioning abortion as a possibility. It bugged me particularly in this case because there was an easy way out; since Gabrielle's Catholic, she could have said she wouldn't have an abortion for religious reasons. No need for a big storyline; just for someone at some point to make what I thought was a pretty obvious suggestion for that particular scenario. But the way it played out was as if abortion was non-existent.
I'm in the UK - it's not so bad here, but there definitely is an over-representation of "was going to have abortion but changed mind at last minute, how happy I am", where all the problems that made the abortion seem like a good idea in the first place suddenly go away. Or else "I was coerced into having an abortion and now it's screwed up my relationship".
Great post.
This was exactly what happened in Sex and the City, too. Miranda got pregnant, even went so far as to make the appointment, but in the end, couldn't go through with it. However, it was interesting that they brought up that Samantha (slutty, slutty Samantha) had had two abortions and that Carrie had had one. While Samantha's abortions weren't really news, I think it took some courage to make the lead character, the one you need the audiences to like, have a history with abortion that she didn't regret.
I also remember the show Party of Five where the sister Sydney(? Neve Campbell in any case) got pregnant and wanted an abortion. However, it seemed as though the writers couldn't handle her having one, so she miscarried on the way to the abortion.
The only show I've seen where a woman has had an abortion was Six Feet Under when Claire got pregnant. It was handled well at first. She was a little sad, but didn't regret it. Then, later in the series she's having a dream or something where she sees her dead loved ones and she sees a former boyfriend carrying a baby: the "child" she had aborted. Blech.
As someone who occasionally writes fiction, I can see that pregnancy is rife with options to explore characters' lives and personalities. However, I think the option to maintain most pregnancies is a decision to keep a character "likable" rather than follow though with proper characterization.
I think the last character I saw get an abortion on TV . . . was Kyle on South Park in the episode "Woodland Critter Christmas." Don't ask, but the abortion actually saved the world from Satan. Then there was the short-lived WB show "Jack and Bobby," where a girl got an abortion and had no regrets, then promptly died in a car accident in the next episode.
The reason writers get squeamish about having characters (at least the ones who are supposed to by sympathetic) have abortions is purely economic. Assuming it's a show with a relatively large audience, they calculate (probably correctly for better or worse) that they're going to piss off more of their audience by having a character get an abortion and be okay with it than they are by having a character acknowledge the choice and make the one that's considered to be less morally controversial. Not making any judgements about whether or not that's a legitimate calculation to make, but like it or not there are lots of people in the country who have moral difficulties with abortion, and from a writers' perspective, their job is to get as wide an audience as possible for their show, so they tend to go the "safe" route. Someone brought up Degrassi, and that's a perfect example. Popular attitudes about abortion are different in Canada. Again, not defending it, but it's a logical outcome given how our television market is structured.
Jessicalikewhoa,
Yeah I heard about that degrassi episode, but have yet to see it (I'm a huge degrassi fan). My friend said that episode was banned in the US?? I will do some research on this (and maybe even do a follow up post).
manny on degrassi:tng had an abortion, she was slut shamed alot but she never expressed any regret about the abortion as far as i recall.
I was going to say this; unfortunately, though, the episode didn't even air in the US when it came out, they completely skipped it over. I like how the show presented it though. Even though she was shamed by some of her peers, the people important to her ultimately stood by her. I don't think I've ever seen another character in a television soap get an abortion.
The only time I can think of a female character honestly taking charge of her body on a teevee show was when Margaret Houlahan on M*A*S*H (yeah, I watched all those M*A*S*H reruns that everyone else hated) thought that she was pregnant and had to ask Hawkeye to secretly do a pregnancy test because if she had been pregnant she would have been, basically, kicked out of the military. Because this show was produced in the 80s (and set in the late 50s, during the Korean War -- even though it was really about Vietnam) and abortions weren't quite as... mainstream, she ended up not being pregnant and the abortion question was left unaddressed, but Margaret's sovereignty over her body was pretty evident in the way it was written (both the show and this episode in particular).
Teen novels still have a lot to answer for. 'Megan' is perhaps the worst offender. In that story, Megan half-heartedly considers abortion but decides against it and ends up not even having to experience the pain of childbirth because she has a c-section and is asleep the whole time. It's like all the complications are skated over.
But here I MUST talk about 'The opposite of chocolate' by Julie Bertagna. It not only portrays the concept and fact of abortion realistically, but in a surprsingly beautiful way, too. It follows several people, all of which are asking what their own lives are worth and explores what the 'value of life' is really defined as. And apparently, it is the ONLY teenage novel published in the UK in which the protagonist decides to have an abortion. One of my favourite novels ever. And a beautiful title!
For anyone who is interested I am posting a link to an interesting article about an episode of the Canadian tv show Degrassi, that a few of the previous posters mentioned, where one of the characters gets an abortion and how it was banned from the United States for nearly 3 years.
Here's the link: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/18/002705.php
great post!
The most recent abortion comment on TV that pissed me off was on Grey's Anatomy toward the end of the season. A woman who has HIV finds out that she is pregnant and wants an abortion, even though her husband doesn't want her to. Izzy's character feels that she has to do everything possible to stop her from having one and at one point (this is what really set me off) she tells the woman, "Look, if you want to have an abortion, that's between you and whatever God you believe in, but there is another way."
Not only did she imply that the woman was religious, but she reminded her that she would be going against "her God" if she went through with it. Needless to say, she didn't have the abortion and had the baby.
I remember the original Degrassi High series which was aired over and over in the 90's here in Canada. One of the characters decided to get an abortion. They dealt a lot with the emotional aspects of abortion and the stigma attached to it, as well as showing other characters support for the decision. That's the TV series that I felt has most wholly, and unbiasedly, depicted abortion that I have seen, and I find that to be a sad picture of our media. I have not seen the Next Generation Degrassi episode, however.
Good post!
The only show I've seen where a woman has had an abortion was Six Feet Under when Claire got pregnant. It was handled well at first. She was a little sad, but didn't regret it. Then, later in the series she's having a dream or something where she sees her dead loved ones and she sees a former boyfriend carrying a baby: the "child" she had aborted. Blech.
Don't forget ellestar that the writers also balanced this out by having Nate dream about all the possible babies from various girlfriend's abortions (can't remember the exact episode but it was when he and Lisa were arguing about her pregnancy and she pointed out that he'd asked/forced her to get an abortion the first time and she wasn't going to do it again).
As someone who works in Hollywood there are various reasons for not having women go through with abortions, one of which is that the writers believe it'll give the female characters something to do (you'll notice this a lot as series go on for years, female characters will end up pregnant) and yes, Hollywood fears the reaction from the "fly-over states", that there will be letters of protests to the advertisers, and right now we live in an environment where right wing ideologues are getting the upper hand.
It is sad that even in 2008 we can't address abortion as something that is common among women, and if a woman chooses it then it almost always has to be this BIG THING, where she regrets it or is punished for the attempt (a la the Christina Character in Grey's Anatomy who had scheduled an abortion but miscarried during a surgery).
I can only remember once seeing abortion on a prime time tv Drama. In either the first or second season of Everwood, a girl the main character takes piano with gets pregnant (by the piano teacher) no less. She goes to get an abortion, the whole episode revolves around this. She doesn't allow for the possibility of keeping the child, she says she's too young and she has no intention of raising a baby with her piano teacher of all things. There occurs a fairly frank discussion between the two doctors about the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSGzACkUGSY
It's one of the few times I've seen it handled so humanely.
*waves hand frantically* OH! OOOOH!
I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner but Battlestar Galactica actually had a really good episode in season two dealing with abortion. A young woman from another ship had been smuggled onto the Galactica so the ships doctor could perform an abortion for her because her parents were super religious and had forbidden it. The president was caught in the middle because it became an issue within the fleet (this is after humanity had almost been totally wiped out FYI) about repopulating the human race. To settle the dispute the president, believing that it was imperative to reproduce, outlawed abortion from then on out but allowed the young woman her abortion and refuge aboard the Galactica.
Of course back in 1972, 'Maude' had tv's first abortion. Netflix that show if you haven't seen it,read about Maude's abortion here:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,308622,00.html
and here:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/26860/maude-the-complete-first-season/
Englishteacher brought up Faith Yokas' abortion on the show Third Watch. I do seem to recall that a season or two after that, they gave the character (the most unrealistically depicted) breast cancer (ever). I always wondered if that wasn't a sop to the well maligned assertion that there is some causal connection between the two.
Ha. Battlestar galactica. I love it.