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Abortion may be the defining issue in the U.S. elections that are about to happen. With the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, public opinion on the issue has gone from a whisper to a scream. Polls show that a majority of Americans are in favor of women’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy for themselves with their doctors, and furthermore, for doctors to treat pregnant women and their health without fear of prosecution. Such opinions have begun to change the ways we talk about abortion publicly, including in scripted stories that we tell in film and television. With that said, television’s relationship with the issue has been particularly fraught.
While movies included abortion stories almost since the beginning of the medium, television, the more regulated because of its “public airwaves,” didn’t address the issue until 1964, when daytime soap Another World featured the character of Pat Matthews being persuaded by her cad of a boyfriend to get an abortion, which was then illegal in the United States. Abortion first appeared in primetime in 1972 in the first season of the CBS sitcom Maude. The famously nuanced and specific episode has the middle-aged Maude (Bea Arthur) deciding to get an abortion even though she is married, wealthy, and already has a child. (For more on that, see below.) It was two months later that the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion access the national right with its Roe v. Wade decision. From there, All My Children, The Facts of Life, Cagney & Lacey, and Hill Street Blues all tiptoed into one-off abortion plotlines in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It was rare to see a main character consider the procedure, or admit to having had one, until the turn of the millennium, with shows like Sex and the City, Grey’s Anatomy, and Degrassi: The Next Generation. Only recently have series become (a little) less apologetic, and, not coincidentally, the trailblazers are often shows created and run by women such as Girls and Better Things. But one study found that abortion storylines, if presented empathetically and accurately, can help people better understand the realities of the procedure. Simply at the level of informed public health, hopefully there will be more such portrayals in years to come.
Here, some key moments in the depiction of abortion on television, and how they reflect their times.
‘Maude’ (1972)
Norman Lear‘s 1970s sitcoms famously tackled every issue of their day—racism, sexism, the economy, the environment, class divides, sexual assault, hate crimes, and more. It follows that his most overtly feminist show, Maude, would be the one to take on abortion in 1972, making it the first primetime network series to do so, two months before Roe v. Wade. Maude presents a situation far from the cliched vision of a young, unmarried woman surprised by a pregnancy. Maude (Bea Arthur) is, in fact, in her 40s, has an adult daughter and a loving husband, and can afford another child—although she’s also already a grandmother. This sets up the central dilemma as a real choice that Maude must make for herself, based solely on what she wants in her life. Nearly half of the country’s viewing audience watched the two-part episode, though it also inspired 7,000 letters of protest from its initial airing. It also made TV history.
Where to Watch: Apple TV+
‘Roseanne’ (1994)
Roseanne represented a return to the Lear-like approach for the ’90s, combining comedy and issues as it centered a working-class, Midwestern family with an outspoken matriarch. The sitcom gave us its distinctive twist on a Thanksgiving episode as a pregnant Roseanne (Roseanne Barr), worried that her amniocentesis test may show birth defects in her unborn child, debates a possible abortion with husband Dan (John Goodman). There’s a great opening gag where Roseanne meets anti-abortion protesters outside the clinic where she’s getting the test and she poses as one of them, then tricks them into protesting at a different location—her uptight mother’s house. During the family holiday dinner, we learn that Roseanne’s grandmother, Nana Mary (Shelley Winters), had two abortions. And the central debate is a meaningful and nuanced one. At one point, Dan admits that he doesn’t think their marriage could survive a special-needs child. This is Roseanne at its absolute best–funny when it can be, deadly serious when it needs to be.
Where to Watch: Peacock
‘Sex and the City’ (2001)
Sex and the City revolutionized TV’s approach to women’s lives—particularly single, professional women’s lives—when it premiered on HBO in 1999. It taught women how to think and talk frankly about their sex lives in wildly freeing ways while glamorizing the single life. But as it progressed, it also got more serious about the complications of such a life, as when Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is shocked to find out she’s pregnant with her kind-of-ex Steve (David Eigenberg). When Miranda tells her friends she’s planning an abortion, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is angry—not at Miranda’s choice, but because she has been struggling to conceive. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), meanwhile, recalls her own abortion in her 20s and struggles with whether to tell boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett) about it. Miranda’s decision to ultimately keep the baby doesn’t feel like a cop-out here. It is, in fact, a huge turning point for the character, and the episode marks a turn toward the more serious for the series as a whole.
Where to Watch: Netflix
‘Degrassi: The Next Generation’ (2004)
The original Degrassi High had been a pioneer in depicting a realistic teen abortion plot in 1989, and its 2000s descendant was just as groundbreaking. In fact, abortion had become so much more politically charged in the 2000s that Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s abortion episode was banned from U.S. airwaves at the heights of the Canadian teen show’s popularity on cable network The N. (It became available in reruns and streaming two years later.) In it, naive romantic Manny (Cassie Steele), who’s been locked in an angsty love triangle with the capricious rocker Craig (Jake Epstein) and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Ashley (Melissa McIntyre), discovers she’s pregnant with Craig’s baby. Craig is surprisingly pleased by the news and tries to talk her out of getting an abortion, but she ultimately stands up to him and decides to end the pregnancy for the sake of her future, rather than pursuing a romantic fantasy.
Where to Watch: Max
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ (2011)
From the outset, Grey’s Anatomy allowed its female characters to be complicated, difficult, conflicted, cold, and, most of all, driven. In this world, they were the ones more likely to have commitment issues, while the gorgeous men surrounding them fell hopelessly in love with them and begged for more stability. It’s a feminist fantasy of sorts, but it’s also a meditation on what it takes to be a top female surgeon. These women came prepared to sacrifice their happily-ever-afters for their ambition, while the men assume they can have it all. One of the show’s prickliest, smartest, most unapologetic characters, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), contemplates abortion for the first time on the series in the first season, though she ultimately loses the baby in an ectopic pregnancy. In season 8, though, she faces the choice again when she gets pregnant with husband and fellow doctor Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) and this time, she goes through with it, a watershed moment for abortion on television. Although Owen wants her to keep the baby, he accompanies her to the doctor. Cristina and Owen’s differences over having children ultimately lead to their breakup, but the image of a man supporting a woman’s right to choose with no caveats remains.
Where to Watch: Netflix
‘Better Things‘ (2022)
Pamela Adlon‘s Peabody-winning masterpiece is known for handling women’s issues in refreshingly frank and emotionally resonant ways. (Please see her menopause episode.) In the final season, daughter Max (Mikey Madison) gets an abortion with the help and support of family friend Rich (Diedrich Bader), deciding at first not to tell her mom, Sam (Adlon). Later, Max asks Rich to tell Sam for her, and Sam is a bit upset—possibly about Max not wanting to come to her, more than the abortion itself. More significantly, Max seems to come out of the experience with a wizened appreciation for her mother after years of heated teen/mom tension. In a beautiful and largely unexplained sequence, Max mourns her unborn child with a Buddhist mizuko kuyo ritual as part of the series’ stunning finale. Better Things gives us the perfect depiction of abortion: not apologetic, not overly dramatized, a significant but not defining feature of a woman’s life.
Where to Watch: Hulu