Why Authentic Abortion Stories in TV and Film Are a Sign of the Times in the Post-Roe Era | CBC News

In 2004, a Canadian TV show made headlines for a controversial episode in which a pregnant teenage girl decides to have an abortion, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend. Her mother drives her to the clinic.

Yes, it was Degrassi: The next generation — and the infamous episode titled Accidents will happenwas delayed for American viewers after a US cable channel decided to withdraw it before it could air.

Experts note that the episode was filmed in the mid-20th century, at a time when screen depictions of abortions and discussions of the procedure on film and television were becoming more common and complex to reflect public opinion about the procedure.

“There were really a lot of rich narratives told, a lot of interesting themes to pursue, especially as they relate to the politics of what was going on at the time,” said Stephanie Herold, a researcher at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), which studies how abortion is portrayed in film and television.

With abortion bans in about half of US states following the overturn of the landmark Roe v. Wade is expected in June — and some Canadian advocates are concerned about the fate of the procedure here — scientists and filmmakers say abortion needs to evolve to accurately reflect real-world experiences.

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A “disturbing departure” from reality

Although the storylines have improved since the early cases of on-screen abortions in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t a perfect development, according to Herold.

The Abortion Onscreen project, to which Herold contributes, began when UCSF sociologist Gretchen Sisson began researching the history of abortion in Hollywood.

The two have since compiled a massive database of on-screen abortions, researching the race, age, socioeconomic circumstances and health outcomes of characters who receive the procedure in film and television.

Herold and Sisson have noted that there is a significant gap between fictional and real stories. For example, according to a 2014 study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, less than 1 percent of abortions result in a major complication — but on-screen, that number jumps to 18 percent, more than 70 times the actual number complication rate, Herold says.

“The majority of the characters who have abortions on TV and film are white, wealthy, don’t have children at the time of their abortion, which is really a disturbing departure from the reality of who has abortions,” she added.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research firm that advocates for abortion rights, 59 percent of abortion patients in the US already have children; 49 percent live below the poverty line (75 percent are poor or low-income); and the majority are racist, with Black and Hispanic patients accounting for 28 percent and 25 percent of patients, respectively.

“Characters face almost none of the logistical, financial, and legal hurdles that real-world abortion patients face,” Herold said, which — particularly in the U.S. — can include traveling abroad, finding childcare, and out-of-pocket expenses.

She pointed to an episode of the CBC show Working Moms as one who faithfully portrays the challenges of accessing abortion in Canada’s health care system: Anne (Dani Kind) is frustrated to discover there is a considerable wait before she can have an abortion.

TV shows like scandal, aka Grace, Shrill, Wynonna Earp and glow have aired various abortion stories in recent years. in the ShrillAnnie (Aidy Bryant) visits an abortion clinic when she learns that the morning-after pill isn’t as effective in plus-size women.

movies like obvious child and never seldom sometimes always have explored the emotional and logistical challenges of abortion. In the latter, a 17-year-old girl from Pennsylvania arrives New York City with her cousin to get the procedure, desperate to scrape together the funds to afford it.

“It is not our job to make decisions for young people”

“What I would like to say is that it is our job not to over-sensitize these issues.” Degrassi Co-creator Linda Schuyler told CBC News in a 2020 interview discussing the pulled episode.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about abortion or gay rights or whatever we’re talking about. It is not our job to make decisions for young people. It’s giving them information so they can make their own decisions,” she said.

Samantha Loney, a Métis screenwriter in Barrie, Ontario, is currently working on two original films featuring an abortion story. One is a short film called Expected in which a woman and her boyfriend discuss an abortion. The ending is left intentionally ambiguous.

“I always like to leave things open to my audience when I’m doing projects because I never want to express my views – that’s not my job as a filmmaker,” Loney said. “My job as a filmmaker is to bring my own life experiences into my work.”

“It’s up to viewers to have these discussions and collectively change people’s minds, right? I think that’s the beauty of art, it can change people’s lives when they see a movie.”

Toronto actress and filmmaker Emily Schooley’s first feature film, titled A Queer Horror Romance bloodlines, features a character named Laura contemplating an abortion. Schooley herself underwent an abortion when she was much younger, she said.

“The way I approach the discussion of abortion isn’t so much what’s happening in the room as what the aftermath is and what goes into the difficult decisions many women have to make,” she said.

The future of abortion storytelling

TV and film abortions are often what Herold calls “self-motivated”: driven by a desire to pursue a career, be independent, or pursue further education. While these are valid reasons for having an abortion, she said, they are not the only reasons.

Women may consider whether they have enough money to support a child, whether they want to focus on children they already have, or whether the person they are dating is not someone they are raising a child with want.

“We rarely see such structural considerations when characters on television have their abortions,” she said.

What might abortion storytelling in TV and film look like in the near future? Herold hopes these accounts will go deeper to address existing barriers to entry and show a variety of backgrounds and experiences.

“We really need performances that bring abortion to life as a theme of race, class, gender or family love stories that really bridge the gap between real-life abortions and on-screen abortions,” she said.

“Which would mean prioritizing the stories of characters of color, of people raising families at the time of their abortion, characters struggling to survive, queer characters, disabled characters, indigenous characters, and characters who live at the intersections of all those identities to concede.”

Just as the topic has been taken up differently since abortion was first shown on TV in 1962 Episode of court drama the defendersPost-Roe abortion stories might take a different approach.

Loney said she’s not sure if the art that emerges from this period will play a role in changing laws or the political landscape – but time will tell how the political climate affects the depiction of abortion in the media and the talks about it.

“Art reflects the times,” she said.