Abortion access is limited. Is Hollywood to blame?

I think there's something to the fact that Hollywood has really contributed to the the stigmatization of abortion and a lot of public perception that abortion is not normal when, you know, in fact, we know it's very common or the public perception that abortion causes medical problems when we also know that's not the case. So I think, you know, obviously Hollywood isn't responsible, but I think it's helped contribute to a lot of the the public misperceptions that there are about abortion. Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR. A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Since the 1970s abortion in America has appeared in countless television shows and films, but how it's portrayed, sometimes as an dangerous decision, sometimes as a medical necessity, has shifted along with the politics of the time. Some storylines dealt in reality, while others dramatized it beyond recognition. To understand how Hollywood has depicted abortion throughout the years, we're chatting with Janet Goldwater, director of the documentary, Hollywood does abortion, and Steph Harold, researcher at Advancing New Standards and Reproductive Health. Janet, Steph, welcome to it's been a minute. Thanks for having us. I'm really excited to be here, Brittany. So happy to have you both. Okay, to start off, what was the first abortion storyline that you ever saw on screen? Janet, we can start with you. So it turns out that the first abortion storyline that I saw was dirty dancing. And I have to admit that years later when I watched it for the second time was when it sunk into me that abortion was central to this story, because at the time that I watched dirty dancing, when it first came out, I was totally fixated on the dance. Yeah, and you know, so it was really later, I had an abortion. I started becoming an abortion activist, and you know, and then I realized like, wow, that that movie, you know, was there in my consciousness. And what about you Steph? You know, I always think about it as dirty dancing, but I think that's not true. I think for me, it was actually sex in the city was on while I was in high school. And I kind of like snuck around to watch it. And I think it was Miranda's not abortion. That was my first kind of exposure to abortion on TV. It could seem, I always identified with her like super feminists, very ambitious, and then to see her not have an abortion was a click moment for me where I was like, what's going on here? That doesn't make sense for the show that talks about the character and the show talks about everything else, you know, like so bluntly. I think that was really the moment for me. Interesting. I think for me, it was Manny Santos, this character on "Degrasse of the Next Generation." This is actually like a Canadian teen soap. And Manny was this like, Filipina Canadian character, she was 14 years old, and she got pregnant, and then like by some guy that she was, you know, dating her, hanging out with her, whatever. And she decided to get an abortion with the support of her mom. Like she felt like having a kid was just not going to work for her plans for the future, and so she decided to do it. Her mom supported her. I want to talk about your documentary, "Hollywood Does Abortion." It's an exploration of Hollywood's fraught relationship to the truth when it comes to depicting abortion. Which makes me wonder, what was the first abortion storyline that made you go, wait, what? Because it was so inaccurate. Yeah. So in "Hollywood Does Abortion," we actually, we start the movie with an episode of "Mod" that was aired in 1972. And in this, you know, a grandmother discovers, you know, right on the verge of menopause discovers that she's pregnant. And, you know, and no surprise, you know, she and her husband have a good talk and, you know, decide that, no, this is not a good time to have a baby 20 years after, you know. So there's this very normal, you know, sort of abortion. And then we fast forward to the movie that, you know, that I remember being shocked by, which was Juno, or a couple decades later, where, yeah, abortions now been legal for quite a while, and it's very normalized. And then Juno, this, you know, this funny hip teenager, suburban teenager, goes, you know, gets pregnant with, you know, from, you know, a slightly random hook-up, nice guy. And she decides not to have the abortion because somebody tells her the baby has fingernails, you know. And so that was like the shocking moment. This was a, you know, a very smart team of writers and directors that were making this movie. It was a wonderful movie. And yet we know intuitively, I think that, you know, that that teenager, you know, wouldn't just decide on a whim that it would be fun to have a baby. Yeah, yeah. And also like, relinquish it for adoption, like in a very casual way that the film sort of handles. I understand narratively what they were going for. But that's a really good point. That's a really good point. What about you, Steph? What was like the first abortion storyline that you saw that you were like, hold on. This is not lining up with, really. Yes, I think kind of similarly for me, it was knocked up, watching that movie and watching the Catherine Heigel character really settle for this Seth Rogan kind of like, I think I say in the documentary, this kind of like schmuck and I stand by that. She can do better. Like we all know she can do better. I mean, the film, the film agrees, I think, for most of the movie, she can do better. Yeah, but I think the way that the movie talks about abortion, or you know, that's the movie where they have this like, "Schmischmorschen joke," like the joke that they can't even say the word abortion, right? But that the baby becomes kind of the redemptive arc for the Seth Rogan character. It just felt to me like all of a sudden this story that was supposed to be, or could have been really about her, and made him the hero in this way, and she was just kind of sacrificed. It just felt so gross. Like I just didn't like it. Don't go anywhere. It's really complicated and I think a lot of it has to do with who has power in Hollywood, and who has the power to shape these stories. We've got more coming up after the break. I mean, when you sort of bring up these films that are really popular and really well regarded that are funny. And funny, genuinely funny, but are also kind of like exploring these themes in a way that could feel kind of retrograde, despite the fact that abortion had been legal for a very long time at that point. I know Janet, you brought up mod. I love that the film basically starts with that mod episode from 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade, the conversation, the way that it's talked about feels in some ways more modern and fresher than the way that abortion is discussed often on TV today. I mean, you point out specifically in the film how abortion and how it's depicted on TV, is not just a reflection of sort of like the moors of the time, but also of power in Hollywood, like how someone can be able to tell a certain story, is a reflection on how much power they have or do not have in that moment. From Norman Lear in the '70s and '80s to Shonda Rhymes in the 2000s to now, literally, I was in high school when Grey's Anatomy came on TV and I'm almost 40. Grey's Anatomy still on TV. They are two creators specifically, basically two, like King and Queen of Television, not just for their respective periods, but kind of all time. They both push for these topics to be discussed, but in different ways. I wonder what are their differing approaches say to you about power, but also our changing attitudes about abortion over the years? Well, you brought up Shonda Rhymes and I think, you know, she's just a, oh, as you say, she's the queen, she's the current reigning queen of television. You know, a great example that we use in the movie is how when she was still doing network TV and she pushed for an abortion plotline with Christina. You know, she plans to get an abortion. She just wants to be a surgeon. She doesn't want to have children and she and the network forces Shonda Rhymes to have her have a miscarriage. So she doesn't actually have a and and that is not, you know, speculating that's that's what everybody who worked on the show said was that she wanted to do an abortion and they were like, no, she can and this is what's so interesting is how, you know, how how power works that they, you know, it's like it's it's okay to be in favor of abortion, but it's not actually okay to have one. And that was sort of what was happening in politics at the time. You had candidates, you know, running for president saying, yeah, these are the Democratic candidates saying, yeah, I approve of abortion, but, you know, but I'm personally against it, you know, no one in my family would ever have one. So you sort of have this double standard and it plays out. Shonda Rhymes then has enough power that when she, you know, amasses all these shows and goes to streaming, then, you know, the same character still wants to just be a surgeon, you know, and she gets pregnant again. And she actually goes through with her abortion. And yet Shonda Rhymes had to like be exceptional in the world of television history to be able to depict something like that on TV. And I say this as a person, I mean, I'm not on my moral soap box. Okay. I'm not a moral paragon over here of like what people should and should not be watching on television. Like, I mean, I watch Love Island every day. But I don't know, it just seems so, it seems so weird that like a very common medical procedure that many people have. That is somehow more salacious than like any of the sort of violence. Like even I can, I can say, I watch a lot of trashy TV, but I can't even watch a show like cold case where they're like, I'm like we're showing a few too many cold dead women's bodies that are barely dressed for my taste. But that was something that happened on television every single week. You can watch people getting sexually assaulted, stories that depict sexual assault, you know, domestic violence, murder, all those sorts of things can come on TV all of the time. And yet this like medical procedure that's really common, that's salacious. And that's something that, you know, as we're discussing, you have to amass a certain level of power like a Norman Lear or a Shonda Rhymes in order to sort of influence what we can see. That's pretty deep. But what do you think about all this stuff? Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that it's actually a bigger structural problem, which is what you were hinting at. Like I think that there are a lot of writers who want to tell these amazing, unique, different, interesting stories about abortion. And have written lots of amazing screenplays or TV episodes, TV series, but face a lot of pushback from networks or from executives because there's an assumption that audiences don't want to watch shows about abortion or won't love a character when they have an abortion. And we know that that's just not true. From research that we've done that shows that audiences actually, you know, because they have these personal experiences, they've had abortions themselves, they know people who've had abortions. They want to see that reflected on screen. They want to see the, you know, complex, you know, gender, work, power, sex, dynamic that makes for such good television. And that includes abortion. It's just part of life. But I think networks can be really afraid of pushback and afraid of being boycotted or being called out or, you know, the people just won't tune in. So I think it's hard to counter a lot of that. Yeah, I mean, you point out in the film and this is just true in general of what you can see on television versus what you could see in a movie. Like, at the end of the day, television shows, especially traditional, so primetime sitcoms or dramas, they have these sponsors that are showing throughout the show to sell their products. You know, they want to be able to have more freedom creatively, but it's like, oh, well, quest toothpaste or tide laundry detergent doesn't want to be associated with, you know, I don't know, a discussion of whatever. You know, I'm glad you brought up Shonda Rhymes and specifically scandal and showing an abortion on scandal and even showing like Olivia Pope, the main character, like laying on a table like in an operating room, like, not actually going into the room with her. She was one of the first black women to have an abortion on screen. She's the lead character in scandal, Olivia Pope. Like, Olivia Pope, like, as in Olivia Pope, the Olivia Pope, the lead character from scandal, scandal, which began started airing in 2012. This episode came out in 2015. I mean, it's just wild to me. Like, I watched Manny Santos get an abortion when she was 14 when I was also a teenager in the 2000s on Canadian TV. And in hindsight, I'm like, yeah, it probably was really, it probably was notable on some level that, like, for me, maybe even subliminally, that this character was not white. But I just, I really didn't realize it had taken that long. I, you know, I think in terms of the, the, the other kinds of things that have been missing from TV. I mean, not seeing, not seeing a, a black face, you know, going into an abortion clinic until that, that late. And then, and then to boot, she's, she's abhorting a pregnancy with the president, you know, the chief conceived with the president. So, Shannon writes this one thing. She knows drama, maybe. Yeah. But yeah, but why, why, why did that take so long? And why did it, the other things that we don't see are the, I mean, we know that, that the majority of, of people in our country for lots of systemic reasons that have abortions, you know, are people of color. So that we're not, you know, we're clearly not seeing that represented. We know that most people that, that choose to, to end a pregnancy already have kids. Yeah. And that's something that got left out of mainstream film and TV for a long time. It wasn't until quite recently that crazy ex-girlfriend decided that it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be the main character, the Rachel Bloom character, who has the abortion, but her older friend Paula, who already has a teenage son. And she wants to go, she's just about to go to law school. Well, I think I would jump in to say that, you know, Olivia Pope is the first black character that we see actually have her abortion on screen. There were black characters before that who had abortions. We just see it. Yeah, we didn't actually see it happen. Right. So like in the 80s, there was a show 21 Jump Street, like it's often a past abortion that came up comes up. Right. It's not, but we don't get to see, you know, the way that we do with Olivia Pope, we're like you said, right, she's at the clinic. We see the provider. Well, it's explicit. It's like it's saying the quiet thing or the totally unsaid thing like loud. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And at the same time, right, Olivia never really talks about the abortion again. So I love that, you know, Shonda Rhymes was so, you know, explicit in making sure that that abortion was portrayed in the way that it was. And she said in interviews that even though she was so successful at that point, she really had to push the network to let her do that. At the same time, we almost never hear Olivia talk about the abortion again. That is very different than how abortion is often treated on a TV or even the question of abortion is often treated on TV, even still like as recently as a couple of years ago on a show like in just like that. There was a character. I believe her name is Lisa, who gets pregnant like in her late 40s. And like, you know, to your point, she is a woman who is married. She already has children. She, there's a whole question, the whole episode or a couple of episodes where she's like, Oh, what should I do? Should I have the baby? Should I not? Should I have? What should I do? I don't even know if she even, I can't even remember whether or not she even questions having an abortion. I just remember she seems really wrong by this question. So her husband brings it up. Her husband says, you know, he's like, should we, he don't won't say the word abortion, but he says, should we talk about the other option, the obvious option. And she's like, Oh, no, no, no, I'm glad that. Right. It's like these, but no way. Which I'm like thinking, I'm like, okay, I live in New York. I'm like in my late 30s. If I think about, you know, someone I know who's like that, who's in their late 40s, great career, like cooking with gas, got two kids. I just don't think that this woman like that or her husband would be afraid of an hope. Your husband also, someone that you already have been in a relationship with for a very long time already have two other children, you know, assuming you've seen each other through tons of other ups and downs, the fact that you can't even say the word abortion to each other on a sex in the city spin off, right? And then she ends up miscarrying. There's this, you know, the magical miscarriage trope that you discuss in the film. You're related to that character so much because she had actually one of the reasons she was upset about being pregnant was that she had just received a huge amount of fun to make a documentary. And she was like, oh my god, you got the money. It's like so hard to get money to make documentary. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so it just felt like it was, it felt like something that wasn't true to the character. It felt like it wasn't true to the show. It felt like actually like we were turning back the clock from even the discussion they had had on sex in the city 20, 25, 30 years before with Miranda's character. What's interesting though is that that is so not like in line with the actual statistics that you share in the film. Something like Only 6% of women or people who didn't tend to get an abortion don't do it and if you watch TV it feels like it's a lot more people like like it just I don't know it's totally out of the way that that that abortion is depicted or how people whether or not they decide to because the magical miscarriage trope whether or not they have complications another trope that you all pointed out in the film is like you know there are like on like you know the percentage of depictions of abortions on screen that result in complications 37.5%. But in real life only 2.1% of people who get abortions experience complications from that's a huge I mean that's a huge disparity I mean and sometimes you'll see people on TV who are die who die from having abortions legal abortions when in actuality childbirth is 14 times more likely to result in death than legal abortion according to your film and your research. Why do you think there is this huge disparity between negative outcomes we see on screen from abortion and the negative outcomes we see in real life from abortion. Yeah I think it's really complicated and I think a lot of it has to do with who has power in Hollywood and who has the power to shape these stories. And I think you know we've started to see a lot more depictions of abortion on screen in the last decade or so because we've had more women more people of color in the writers rooms in the executive chairs being able to green light these kinds of shows. And I think in the past we didn't have that so really you had kind of these wealthy white men shaping what we saw on TV. At the same time you know there's still a lot of wealthy white men at the top I'm thinking like of Margot's got money troubles right. Oh yeah and there's another show rooster that I just started watching with Steve. Oh yeah and there was another show that I watched was a British show Alison Steve. I mean I've seen everything that you're talking about and it is the exact same thing. There's like a smart young woman who is like in the college or about right who like finishing a pH or something. Yeah like in a really crucial point in her life and then gets pregnant by like not just just get pregnant by someone who like maybe they really like or they're in a relationship with her they have some sort of like deep tie to like they get pregnant by like a person who is completely wrong for them who they do not maybe even want to remain in a relationship. But like these are all young women living in the 2020s it's very weird. Yes and also the show Dr. Odyssey that was really popular that I was a similar character who was just about to go to medical school and she gets pregnant. And for her that character she like doesn't know who the father is both of them are committed to supporting her. She decides to care the pregnancy to term and like oh and then what do you know it turns out she's not pregnant after all. And then these other shows right just like you said these really smart you know competitive women kind of about to embark on their lives all of a sudden kind of decide without a lot of there isn't a lot of space given to talking about abortion but somehow they know that the quote unquote right decision is to have the abortion and you have the kind of like callous characters around them being like what do you mean you should have had the abortion. Yeah and it's it reminds me of so much of knocked up where that you have like the only character who talks about abortion is kind of direct ways Catherine Hygels I don't remember if it's her mom or step mom. I think it might have been her mom yeah she says like your sister just took care of it you should do that to and it comes with the character to care of it. Yes whoever took care of it and now she's got a real baby like she says it's a careless way that's like well yeah right no that's not right and like of course we want to see. Depictions of people who make the right pregnancy decision for themselves right it's not like we don't want anybody to have babies on TV when you start to see abortion being depicted as the wrong choice or not even a choice over and over and over and over again. You have to stop to wonder like what's good something's going on here like why is it that none of these characters are even considering abortion in a serious way. Don't go anywhere what I love about on screen representation is that it can show people what's possible not just what is we've got more coming up after the break. Watching your film had made me realize that I had absorbed a lot of inaccurate messaging about abortion you know through you know all these different movies and TV shows that I loved and and some of them I still love I would have thought many more people have experiences where they go into abortion clinics and you know walk out because that is something that we've seen on television so much like even myself who is raised with a lot of factual information. And with the attitude that this is something that's a health care option I still was absorbing a lot of this messaging I wonder like what makes these stories so powerful and in some ways even stickier than facts. I was just thinking about this recent study that my team did where we asked a small group of people who've had abortions to walk a couple of different abortion plot lines and tell us their thoughts about them. And what really stood out to me was that you know no one commented on the demographic accuracy or the medical accuracy what they what they care the most about was the emotional resonance of the shows. And that shouldn't have surprised me but I think because I've focused for so much of my career on these kind of moments of accuracy or an accuracy but hearing people say like it was so powerful to see the mom support her daughter through an abortion. I wish I had had that during my abortion or it was so powerful to see you know the boyfriend support his girlfriend you don't go into the clinic with her reading a book about the about medication abortion before she has it. Oh my god for station 19 that you won't exactly yes yes like people really it appreciated seeing those things that it made them feel good about their own past abortion so I think there's this. But I would I love about on screen representation is that it can show people what's possible not just what is. So I think that's important to think about too right it's not just the accuracy or an accuracy although it's obviously you know important to say like yes lawn order you should not be showing people leading out on the street after taking abortion pills like that is that's not good we don't want that we don't want that. At the same time like Janet was saying we don't need you to have a checklist of all you know the exact statistics to show you don't need to create this perfect amalgamation of an abortion patient or provider but you it would be lovely to see people was really supported during their abortions and find ways to make that really good TV it doesn't have to be boring TV it can be very compelling. Well I think about like the like I think the first season of the pit on HBO there was a teen girl who was seeking abortion like I think her aunt was bringing her and it was a drama because the mom shows up at the hospital and also like one of the doctors sort of fudged where she like how far along she was so that she could be able to obtain a medication abortion at that hospital. And like I think at least for me the like you know all of that all the sort of plot points are helpful sort of scaffolding but for me with that whole storyline I was really affected by. This young woman talking about how this is the choice that she wanted to make with her body like to your point that was the thing that I really responded to was seeing her like I guess through the eyes of an adult because I haven't watched that episode to grassy and a million years right. But seeing through the eyes of an adult like oh this is what it looks like for a young woman to have agency and and using it in a doctor's office that is something that I there are times in doctors offices where I wish that I would have exerted more agency and seeing someone so young do that. Yeah those things are still extremely powerful I guess you know there's still regardless of I guess the point I'm trying to make is like you know the emotional residents of these kinds of representation. It's powerful I think even if it doesn't necessarily directly relate to your exact lived experience I want to kind of turn toward the real world out here. I wonder how do you think Hollywood's handling abortion contributed to getting us to the point that we're at right now with reproductive rights in America because right right now right as we're talking. We just passed the four year mark since the overturn of Roe v Wade which is something like I said it was the law of the land before I was born and I hadn't really for most of my young life imagined a future where that wouldn't be the case and yet it is the case now and it has been so for four years. I wonder how do you think hollywood's depiction of abortion contributed possibly if it did to getting us to that moment yeah I think it certainly contributed I mean it's absolutely not the only factor the power that the right has really been able to. To capitalize on and maintain you know over the how much they've used they used Roe was kind of an organizing tactic for 40 years but I think there there's something to the fact that Hollywood has really contributed to the the stigmatization of abortion and a lot of public perception that abortion. abortion is not normal when, you know, in fact, we know it's very common, or the public perception that abortion causes medical problems when we also know that's not the case. You know, the public perception that abortion and religion are diametrically opposed to each other. And when we know that most abortion patients have some kind of religious affiliation, right? And that they feel very supported by that and making their decision to have an abortion. You know, that Hollywood has really helped separate abortion from parenting, right? That there's-- it has helped create this myth that there are mothers and then that there are people who have abortions when we know that the majority of people who have abortions are raising kids. So I think, you know, obviously Hollywood isn't responsible, but I think it's helped contribute to a lot of the public misperceptions that there are about abortion. And I think you could also say that they've contributed by their lack of pushback. Hollywood and creators have somehow perpetuated this sort of fear that this is a divisive issue and we don't want to alienate our viewers by, you know, upsetting them about this divisive issue. And in fact, it's, you know, it's-- it's-- it's only divisive because we keep being told that it's divisive. I wonder, as we sort of like turn toward the future, what might a way forward look like in terms of how abortion is depicted on television and in films? I think that there's like the wishful and then the realistic, so it depends on-- It depends on-- I mean, there are a couple of writers in the documentary, especially thinking of Merit Tears, you know, who talks about, you know, she's written this abortion office comedy. Like, I'm dying to see, you know, the work comedy, if it around an abortion clinic, like especially as someone who's worked in a clinic and who knows, you know, like the hijinks that can ensue, I would love to see, you know, more-- more depictions of characters self-managing their abortion. So, you know, being able to order abortion pills online and have, like, a slumber party with their friends who they're there to support them having an abortion, really to see, like, how abortion happens in real life today portrayed on screen, to see people or characters were really dealing with the colossal barriers to care that people experience now. It's not just, you know, having to drive one state away, but having to drive across the country, having to figure out, you know, how are you going to pay thousands of dollars for the abortion? Like, we still don't see a lot of that on TV. I think there's TV really contributes to this misperception that once you want an abortion, that the hardest thing is making the decision. When in reality, like, the easiest part is often making the decision, the hard part is actually getting the abortion, getting to the clinic, getting the money together. So, I would love to see more of that, so audiences get a sense of how challenging the abortion axis landscape is. But I don't know. And if there's any chance that, you know, like our supposedly liberal Hollywood will actually take up that challenge and responsibility. What do you think, Janet? Like, what do you think the way forward looks like? I think it's really important that drama includes the, as she mentioned, the drama of overcoming these barriers. And, for me, the gold standard so far has been the Grey's Anatomy show, which came out right after Dobbs. I mean, they just hit the ground running as soon as the Supreme Court dismantled abortion. And they did a show called When I Get to the Border, which showed the damage that, you know, doctors in a state where someone with an ex-hoppic pregnancy couldn't get a procedure had to be shipped to another state, and she dies at the border of that state. And that show was watched by, you know, in real time, by three million people. So, I mean, that's a national discussion that you're like showing immediately the results of the Supreme Court decision. And I just, I think, you know, we need to keep reminding people that there's real life consequences to these big policy, policy decisions. And that you do, you see a more accurate representation of the demographics. You see more people of color, you see more people who are parents, you're seeing, so there's, so there is, there is the desire, the appetite by creators to make these shows. And we just have to hope that that doesn't get shut down by the sort of consolidation of media that we're seeing. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I learned so much from your film. Staff, Janet, thank you both so much. Thanks for having us, Brittany. It's great chatting with you. Thank you very much, Brittany. That was Janet Goldwater, director of the documentary, Hollywood does abortion, and Steph Herald, researcher, advancing new standards and reproductive health. And to all of you watching, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Be sure to come back to this feed every Tuesday for a fresh video episode. You can watch these episodes exclusively on Spotify, YouTube, and the NPRF.