Apparently, more on-screen women with children should be getting abortions. At least, that’s the argument in a recent Marie Claire piece, which says this lack of “representation” comes at “the detriment of mothers … and the abortion providers who care for them.”
The article is right about a couple of things. First, a majority of on-screen abortion storylines seem to involve the most sympathetic cases possible, teenagers and young women who find themselves with an unplanned, out-of-wedlock pregnancy. This isn’t because this scenario is excessively common: just 12% of abortions happen among mothers 19 years old and younger, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
But many pro-abortion storylines are woven (or shoe-horned) into popular shows, from Jane the Virgin to Grey’s Anatomy to Scandal, to normalize the procedure. These types of storylines, which often present abortion as a difficult but necessary choice for a main character, are celebrated in the media. In fact, some of them are even crafted by Planned Parenthood.
For the pro-abortion lobby, on-screen abortions are meant not only to normalize the practice but also to frame it as a vital tool to save characters from a lifetime of miserable, premature motherhood.
The second thing the Marie Claire piece gets right is that a majority of women who get abortions are already mothers. “Fifty-nine percent of abortions in 2014 were obtained by patients who had had at least one birth,” reports the Guttmacher Institute.
And that’s where the article’s insight ends. It goes on to imply, rather absurdly, that on-screen abortions will make more women feel empowered to get abortions themselves. In fact, one woman quoted in the article calls abortion “a serious act of love.”
“I think the most radical reconception that needs to happen with respect to abortion, especially parenting people who have abortions, is for people to realize that it can be a serious act of love to have an abortion,” TV writer Merritt Tierce says. “And for people who have kids, that is the number one decision-making factor. If they feel like they can’t handle another child, what’s driving that decision is the desire to give the children they already have the best possible life.”
What gets lost in all of this rhetoric is that, despite a fetus’ current residence in his or her mother’s womb, that infant is still a living, human child, one that would certainly be recognized as such if the mother had chosen to keep her baby. When she’s the first or second child, she’s a miracle, she gets a gender reveal, she has presents piled up for her at a baby shower. When she’s the accident that arrives after the parents have decided they’re done having children, she’s just a clump of cells that an abortionist can dispose of in a “safe and quick” procedure.
One TV show that depicts a woman in this scenario is the Netflix show Workin’ Moms. And while the storyline is meant to show how the mother gets rid of her third child to save more time and resources for her first two, it ultimately reveals a pretty depressing and utilitarian view of the family.
Anne is a psychiatrist with an elementary-school-aged daughter and a newborn baby. When she discovers she’s pregnant so quickly after the birth of her second child, she’s horrified. The morning sickness is bad, the doctor-prescribed bed rest is worse, and she can’t stand the idea of her life getting derailed. So she and her husband make a pros and cons list — about ending the life of their baby.
The cons list fills up quickly: “money, time, baby stuff, spit-up, no sleep, crying, outnumbered, college fund x3, car pools, ballet, hair loss, bigger car.” The only pros “T.L.B” (tiny little babies — they’re so cute!) and “Family bond?” The question mark explains a lot.
Anne and her husband, who live in a nice house, both work, and could certainly afford to have another child, have an incredibly impoverished view of human life if they can’t add more than baby cuteness and family unity (?) to the pros of keeping their child. Deciding whether or not to keep a baby who already exists can’t be distilled into a pros and cons list anyway.
Of course, this is the entertainment industry, so Anne goes through with the abortion with her husband’s support, and it all works out perfectly. A later scene shows her finally bonding with her strong-willed daughter and connecting with her husband, the implication being that it worked, freeing her to invest more fully in other parts of her life. We viewers will never know what kind of life Anne could have lived with three children. Perhaps one with more stress, less sleep, and less money for ballet lessons, but also one with so much more love to go around.
That’s a storyline you won’t see much in Hollywood, even though it’s a story worth telling.
