A Washington Post columnist lamented that there are too few abortions depicted on television shows.
“Dammit! I was hoping that the young, professional woman, upon learning she was pregnant right after her jerky boyfriend left her, might decide to have an abortion. Instead, it turns out, she doesn’t even consider it,” columnist Kate Cohen wrote in a Washington Post an opinion piece titled, “On TV, abortion is the road less traveled. Life’s not like that.”
Cohen was referring to a plot line in the Netflix show Atypical, which she said her daughter recommended to her. Once she finished episode six of the show, she “stormed” into her daughter’s room and said, “Please tell me the therapist is not going to have that baby.”
“Sorry, Mom,” her daughter responded.
WaPo columnist frustrated by lack of fictional abortions pic.twitter.com/EOgUSEwHTS
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Cohen goes on in her piece to say she’s “so tired of” TV shows that don’t show women getting abortions.
“Over and over again in TV shows and movies, female characters discover they are unintentionally pregnant and then make the choice that most women in that situation don’t make. Or worse: They don’t seem to remember that they even have a choice,” she wrote.
“These on-screen pregnancies are not ‘unintended’ in the sense of, ‘I wasn’t planning on a baby now, but close enough.’ They are unwanted pregnancies, disruptive pregnancies, take-a-dozen-tests-hoping-one-is-negative pregnancies.”
Cohen argues that abortion is “not just a legal choice in America, it’s a legitimate one,” as well as common.
She added that the “Supreme Court threatens to overturn or undermine the case that protects abortion as a constitutional right” and lamented the Hyde Amendment.
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“If that’s what you believe — that getting an abortion is wrong — then, by all means, continue to concoct plots in which women decide to have the babies they didn’t want. But if it’s not, please tell us different stories. Stories in which characters are happy with their decision to end a pregnancy, as most women who choose to do so are in real life,” she wrote.
The opinion piece was hit with negative reactions from some on social media, who called it “disgusting,” with others wondering, “what is wrong with these people?”
