[For decades, dramatized plot lines about unwanted and unexpected
pregnancies helped create our real-world abortion discourse.]
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HOW TV LIED ABOUT ABORTION  
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Tanya Melendez
October 14, 2021
Vox
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_ For decades, dramatized plot lines about unwanted and unexpected
pregnancies helped create our real-world abortion discourse. _

Abortion on television rarely focuses on personal agency. In a 2011
episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” creator Shonda Rhimes dared to take
a step forward. ,

 

In the second season of _Mad Men_, perpetually desperate Harry Crane
needs to prove himself useful to his colleagues at Sterling Cooper.
When he hears the CBS drama _The Defenders_ is losing advertisers
because of an abortion plot line — a 1962 real-world event
[[link removed](1961_TV_series)#Controversial_episodes] —
he tries to convince a lipstick company to buy airtime. The Belle
Jolie executive balks at “entering the debate,” leaving Harry
aghast at the lack of foresight. “Women,” he says incredulously,
“will be watching!”

He was right, but so was the Belle Jolie exec.

For decades, abortion on television was largely depicted as a debate
in narrative form, one that pitted melodramatic anti- and pro-abortion
rights stances against each other through characters audiences knew
and loved. Gretchen Sisson and Katrina Kimport, researchers at the
University of California San Francisco, argued in 2014 that, over
time, these narratives collectively created
[[link removed]] “common
cultural ideas about what pregnancy, abortion, and women seeking
abortion are like.” The result, according to Sisson and Kimport, was
an inaccurate picture of who seeks abortions, and why.

Fictional abortions were also overdramatized. From the origins of
television all the way through the past decade, overwhelmingly male TV
writers created plot lines that framed abortion as a moral issue,
amping up conflict for maximum emotional journeys. It isn’t
hyperbolic to say that television significantly changed the way
America understood abortion and, as a result, deeply influenced public
policy.

Andrea Press, a communications professor who documented this
relationship in a 1991 study
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concluded that “when the moral language adopted by television
differs from that of viewers, television viewing influences viewers to
adopt its terms.” The medium is not a passive bystander in our
social debates; it is an active participant, shaping attitudes and
action.

In other words, the stories we see on TV help create who we are.

SIGN UP FOR THE WEEDS NEWSLETTER [[link removed]]
Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden
administration’s burst of policymaking.

In fact, the beginning of the end of accessible abortion in Texas
began with a story. On May 5, 2021, state Rep. Shelby Slawson
introduced Senate Bill 8, a law that the Supreme Court allowed to go
into effect that bans abortion after six weeks
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by telling her mother’s pregnancy story. Doctors had believed the
fetus was developing abnormally, but Slawson’s mother chose to carry
to term after hearing the fetal heartbeat. Slawson concluded
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“Forty-four years later, that little baby girl is standing in this
chamber.”

Narratives like these are common in hearings happening in the many
state legislatures
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abortion restrictions in 2021. Abortion rights activists have also
embraced the power of storytelling as a strategic tool,
launching hashtags
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accounts
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women to share their abortion stories in the hope of swaying the
public to their side.

Yet for all those thousands of competing real-life tales, none has
been or will be as widely told as the television abortion narrative.
Looking back on how abortion came into our living rooms starting in
the 1960s and persisted into our audience-fragmented streaming era can
teach us how these stories taught, shaped, and contributed to
today’s public discourse about abortion.

Abortion barely appeared on TV before 1980, with one big exception

From the first broadcast in 1928 through 1980, only two abortions seem
to have happened in all of primetime television. _The Defenders_ was
the first series to mention abortion, although the procedure did not
include a main character. Then, in 1972, came _Maude_.

Writers for the Bea Arthur show only included the plot because they
wanted to win a $10,000 contest prize
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storytelling from an organization called Zero Population Growth.
Original drafts focused on vasectomies, but showrunner Norman Lear
wanted his main character to carry the humor, so writers switched to
the now-legendary tale. An estimated 65 million people, or nearly
one-third of the American population at the time, watched as
47-year-old married grandmother Maude discovered she was unexpectedly
expecting and debated whether to keep the pregnancy. In the end, Maude
had an abortion. Off camera, yes. Never mentioned on the show again?
Also yes — but it happened. A main character wouldn’t make that
choice again for a very long time.

The 1980s saw an increase in television that embraced more realistic
storytelling, bolstered by eager audiences and more relaxed social
mores. Issues like breast cancer, domestic violence, single
motherhood, rape, working life, dating, and abortion were all explored
from 8 to 11 pm. But the business of television relied on advertiser
support, and programs couldn’t upset their sponsors or their
conservative viewers any more in 1982 than they could in 1962. After
all, Catholics buy cars, too.

Since narratives are driven by conflict, in an abortion plot line
writers typically used the choice itself to drive the story. This
approach created high-stakes, emotionally driven drama around making
the decision and framed having an abortion as the worst possible
outcome of pregnancy.

It also established an inaccurate profile of a typical abortion seeker
by linking the procedure to a particular archetype: typically young,
white, and middle-class or affluent women who had no other children
and who rarely struggled to find an abortion provider. The real story
is vastly different. Many abortion seekers
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women of color, religiously affiliated, and already have children, and
in recent years most are low-income or below the federal poverty line.

That’s not what we saw on our screens. Instead, for roughly 20 years
— from 1980 to 2000, with a few early-aughts examples joining in —
three major abortion plot lines dominated TV.

The “Whew! That was close!” plot

_Family_ (1980), _Call to Glory_ (1984), _Spenser for
Hire_ (1985), _Webster_ (1985), _MacGruder and
Loud_ (1985), _Dallas _(1985), _21 Jump Street_ (1988), _A
Different World_ (1989), _Melrose
Place_ (1992), _Roseanne_ (1990), _Party of
Five_ (1996), _Grey’s Anatomy_ (2005)

This trope — in which a character considering an abortion avoids the
difficult decision due to either a miscarriage or a false positive —
gestured toward pro-abortion-rights viewpoints while simultaneously
making sure that no main character actually had to go through with the
procedure. _Party of Five_ did a classic version of this plot.

In “Before and After,” which aired in 1996, 16-year-old Julia gets
pregnant with her high school boyfriend. Over the next few days, she
shares scenes with every other character as each gives their opinion
on whether she should have an abortion. Julia’s boyfriend and two
brothers are on board with terminating the pregnancy, but her younger
sister Claudia is angry because their little brother Owen was also a
“mistake.” Julia’s friend Sarah says she can’t support
abortion since she is an adoptee who could have been aborted by her
birth mother.

Throughout the episode, Julia is deeply emotional while weighing her
options but ultimately decides she is too young to become a parent and
sacrifice her college plans. And then, just hours before her
appointment, she miscarries. When her boyfriend expresses “a tiny
bit of relief,” Julia protests. She is relieved, too, but still
feels guilty for wanting the abortion at all.

Co-creator of _Party of Five _Amy Lippman later told New York
magazine
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the episode’s original script included Julia receiving her abortion,
but the show’s network, Fox, vetoed that ending. As Lippman put it,
“That was distressing to us because we thought there was real value
in showing what a character in that family under those circumstances
would do.” Instead, Julia’s story framed a miscarriage or false
positive as a relief because it allowed the woman to avoid making the
choice at all_,_ preserving her innocence and morality.

The “ … and baby makes drama!” plot

_Melrose Place_ (1992), _Murphy Brown_ (1992), _Beverly Hills,
90210_ (1994), _Roseanne _(1994), _Felicity_ (2000), _Sex and
the
City_ (2001), _Scrubs _(2006), _ER _(2006), _Weeds _(2009), _Sons
of Anarchy_ (2010), _Mad Men_ (2010), _True Blood_ (2010)

Characters getting pregnant or having babies can add exciting new
avenues for storytelling, and this was especially true for shows that
centered more complex, nuanced female characters in the 1990s and
early 2000s. Here, TV attempted to have their feminist cake and eat
it, too: Familiar characters were given the space to express and
explore viewpoints that support abortion rights, but by them
eventually relenting to parenthood, showrunners could still have the
comedy of watching Murphy Brown navigate having a baby and doing the
news. In execution, these plots often created an unintentional binary
that sanctified motherhood and villainized abortion.

In “Thanksgiving 1994” and “Maybe Baby,” the ’90s
sitcom _Roseanne_ tackled unexpected pregnancy from a perspective
that in many ways reflected real life. The show’s title character
was a white mother of three from a lower socioeconomic status, and the
Guttmacher Institute confirms
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in 1994 the majority of abortion seekers already had children, worked,
and had not completed college. About half made less than $55,000 per
year in today’s dollars.

THIS APPROACH CREATED HIGH-STAKES, EMOTIONALLY DRIVEN DRAMA AROUND
MAKING THE DECISION AND FRAMED HAVING AN ABORTION AS THE WORST
POSSIBLE OUTCOME OF PREGNANCY

“Thanksgiving 1994” opens with a bit of foreshadowing as Roseanne
establishes her perspective by pranking anti-abortion protesters
outside a clinic. The 40-year-old is there to find out the sex of an
unexpected pregnancy, but the unclear results of the test signal a
potential developmental issue that will need to be confirmed by a
second amniocentesis. While Roseanne and her husband Dan had
previously agreed that they would abort an abnormal fetus, Roseanne
immediately becomes unsure about the decision, telling her sister,
“I heard the heartbeat. I always thought I could have the abortion,
but now I don’t know if I can.”

Roseanne’s ambivalence causes conflict with Dan, but by the end of
“Maybe Baby,” a second test shows a normally developing fetus and
abortion is no longer discussed as an option. Baby Jerry arrives the
following season, during _Roseanne_’s Halloween special.

Communication researcher Celeste Condit emphasizes
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despite such plots articulating positions of choice, most of them
“explicitly highlighted the values of childbearing, family, and
mothering in the face of the potential threat to these values abortion
represents.” The message is that abortion is the enemy of
motherhood, and motherhood is the natural desire of women.

The “both sides” plot

_The Facts of Life_ (1982), _Cagney & Lacey_ (1985), _Hill Street
Blues_ (1985), _St. Elsewhere_ (1986), _21 Jump
Street_ (1988), _China Beach_ (1990), _Beverly Hills,
90210_ (1996)

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, many television shows endorsed a
position on a variety of social issues through their characters,
making it clear they considered one side “right.” Topics such as
race, gender equality, rape, HIV/AIDS, sexuality, addiction, mental
illness, and more were all explored in primetime, typically in
progressive fashion, and eventually, society moved toward those
beliefs.

Whether it was Tom Hanks playing Elyse Keaton’s alcoholic brother
on _Family Ties_, Ellen DeGeneres coming out in “The Puppy
Episode” on her eponymous sitcom, Denzel Washington navigating
racism as a doctor on _St. Elsewhere_, Chad Lowe playing an
HIV-positive character on _Life Goes On, _or the late, great Dixie
Carter’s Julia Sugarbaker delivering a stinging monologue about
workplace sexual harassment on _Designing Women_, shows were not shy
in writing strong, clear messages about where they stood on the
biggest social debates of our time.

Except abortion. Those stories went out of their way to show “both
sides” in the best possible light.

One of the most vivid examples comes courtesy of the CBS crime
procedural _Cagney & Lacey_, in the show’s 1985 episode “The
Clinic.” Detectives Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey — who is
pregnant — are charged with helping a married Latina woman, Mrs.
Herrera, cross a violent picket line at an abortion clinic. Mrs.
Herrera wants an abortion so that she can continue attending business
school and avoid needing to rely on government assistance programs.
The clinic is bombed by a violent anti-abortion protester, killing
another patient. The bomber threatens to kill the two detectives and
herself, but stops when she learns that Lacey is pregnant.

THE RIGHT TO DISAGREE WITH A WOMAN’S CHOICE WAS DEPICTED AS EQUAL IN
VALUE TO THE PURPOSEFUL ATTEMPT TO STOP HER FROM MAKING THAT CHOICE
— A DANGEROUS FALSE EQUIVALENCY

On the side of abortion rights: Mrs. Herrera, obviously, but also a
doctor who argues for victims of rape, incest, and desperate
circumstances. Lacey also firmly supports abortion rights, and is
revealed to have had an abortion in Puerto Rico as a teenager.

On the anti-abortion side: Cagney questions the morality of the
procedure, and her Catholic father is vehemently against it when they
discuss the case. The detectives also meet the leader of an
anti-abortion group, presented as reasonable and nonviolent, who
compares her work to preventing the Holocaust.

After the episode came under fire from some viewers, the
network issued a statement that read in part
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“CBS’s program-practices department has carefully reviewed this
episode and feels it presents a balanced view of the issue.” Indeed
it was! The score was a carefully calibrated 3 to 3, a “both
sides” balancing act. The right to disagree with a woman’s choice
was depicted as equal in value to the purposeful attempt to stop her
from making that choice — a dangerous false equivalency.

TV may finally be rewriting the narrative

These three tropes couched abortion in terms of high moral conflict,
making for good stories but inaccurate portrayals. Abortion was
frequently represented as medically dangerous, as happening much more
rarely than in actuality, and as mostly sought by demographics that
don’t match national trends.

Meanwhile, the complex elements of real public discourse were
oversimplified into a pro/anti debate, where “reasonable” people
on both sides framed the issue in moral terminologies. Abortion was
shown as morally ambiguous, a necessary evil, regrettable, a
consequence, a binary choice against parenthood, and/or reserved for
specific examples of desperate need.

Offscreen, this morality framework helped challenge a pregnant
person’s right to the power of choice, creating a blueprint for how
to take a private medical decision away from individuals and make it
open to debate, because morality can be debated and judged in a way
that medicine and access to medicine cannot. Like we saw on _Party of
Five_, everyone gets a turn to give their opinion. Like we saw
on _Roseanne_, it’s assumed all women are hardwired to want
motherhood. Like we saw on _Cagney & Lacey_, “both sides” get
equal time. These are the stories we’ve seen and heard over and over
again, and now they are canon.

In the early 2000s, some changes did come to abortion storytelling.
Bird on Showtime’s _Soul Food_ (2003) and Claire on HBO’s _Six
Feet Under _(2003) both had abortions that were remarkable for their
straightforwardness and centering of the characters’ desires.
Becky’s abortion on NBC and DirecTV’s _Friday Night
Lights_ (2010) was a refreshingly honest look at a teenager’s
options in a small town and what impact a supportive adult could have
(if only everyone had a Mrs. Coach to guide them!). Notably, however,
almost those examples all aired on cable/satellite. Broadcast would
largely have to wait for the Power of Shonda Rhimes.

In a 2011 episode of Rhimes’s hit ABC medical drama _Grey’s
Anatomy_, Dr. Cristina Yang has to struggle to get her partner Owen to
understand that she does not want children. She spends most of
“Unaccompanied Minor” justifying her position, but by the end, the
abortion happens with her partner at her side. _Grey’s_ provided a
welcome portrayal of personal agency on primetime. But it was
on _Scandal_ that Rhimes radically changed the script.

In the 2015 episode “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” Olivia Pope
discovers she is pregnant. This being _Scandal_, the father is the
current president of the United States. Olivia does not tell anyone,
and we do not see her schedule the procedure. Instead, there is a
one-minute scene where she visits a clean, modern medical facility.
She wears a hospital gown and hair cap. The camera looks down and
focuses on her face as we hear the vacuum aspiration machine work.

The scene is respectful, unapologetic, and medical. Olivia, a Black
woman, does not ask for permission or input from anyone, even when the
father is the most powerful man in the world. Most
critically, _Scandal_ portrayed the procedure and not the
decision-making process. The message is clear: A woman’s autonomy is
sacrosanct.

Soon, other shows like _Girls_ (2015), _Jane the
Virgin_ (2016), _GLOW_ (2017), _Empire _(2018), _Veep_ (2019),
and _Shrill_ (2019) — among many others — also showed abortions
by main characters that did not dramatize the decision-making process
to increase angst or conflict, a fundamental shift. They also
portrayed more realistic abortion seekers — people of color, people
who already had children, who were in the working class. The
television landscape still isn’t perfect, of course. There are still
plenty of shows regurgitating the same tired tropes from the 1980s,
but it is better … at least onscreen.

On December 1, the Supreme Court will consider Mississippi’s
restrictive abortion law in a case
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directly challenges an individual’s right to control their own
reproductive choices. It is not an exaggeration to believe that the
United States could soon become a post-_Roe_ nation.

Television, the most powerful meaning-making medium of the past 60
years, played a role in getting us here. It also has a role to play
moving forward, one that writers and showrunners are increasingly
willing to take on — to shape our national understanding of what
abortion is, why it matters, and how to protect individuals’ access
to reproductive medicine. Because if it is true that stories create
us, then there is a future that is being written right now.

Whatever that future is, women will be watching.

_Tanya Melendez (she/her) is an Illinois distinguished fellow at the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research is centered on
television, rhetoric, and public discourse. Find her on
Twitter @tanyamel [[link removed]]._

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