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From the very beginning, Dead Ringers makes an unmistakable case: Women’s reproductive care is a gory disaster. Doctors dismiss a Black pregnant woman’s complaints about pain, and she dies hemorrhaging as she gives birth. Another woman shows up at the hospital having been in labor for three days. She resisted coming earlier because she’s afraid of hospitals, but the delay costs her baby’s life. She gives birth to a stillborn.
Twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both played with monstrous gusto by Rachel Weisz) witness these horrors and more in their everyday work, and they want to make it better. Over the course of the Peabody-winning series, a modern twist on David Cronenberg’s 1988 film, they work to get funding for a women’s birthing center that will do things right. But make no mistake; this is not a sunny story about do-gooders. The twins are foul-mouthed, dark, and twisty to an extreme. Elliot does coke at work, has sex with strangers in bathrooms, and offers to seduce a patient for Beverly, the more introverted twin. Beverly, meanwhile, goes to a grief support group where she says her twin is dead. Their potential funders are more villains than heroes, with shades of the Sackler family. There’s kinky sex, high camp, darkness, and gore.
Women’s health, Dead Ringers is telling us, is perversely messed up.
And it’s true: Women’s reproductive care has reached a crisis point in the United States. Though a quarter of American women will end a pregnancy at some point in their lives, 14 states have banned abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade. And as more states severely restrict abortion rights, it has become more difficult for women to get other reproductive health services like screenings and birth control as well. Meanwhile, the U.S. maternal mortality rate continues to be one of the highest among wealthy countries: 24 in 100,000, more than three times that of comparable nations. Black women are hit the worst, dying from pregnancy-related causes almost three times as often as white women.
You can watch Dead Ringers on Amazon Prime, then learn more about the state of reproductive health in America from these Peabody-recognized works:
A Moment From ‘Dead Ringers’
In this episode of USA Today‘s States of America, Tennessean journalist Danielle Dreilinger shows how Mississippi’s abortion restrictions are further taxing an already strained maternal healthcare system in the state as more babies are born. Dreilinger spotlights the poverty-stricken Mississippi Delta region, documenting the difficult work of one of two remaining obstetricians in the area, profiling a woman who had to travel out of state for a medically necessary abortion, and interviewing a local minister who opposes all abortions. The result is a thorough and thoughtful portrait of the real lives affected by abortion bans.
Where to Watch: YouTube
‘On the Brink’
ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott delve into the implications of abortion restrictions across the nation, showing the pressure that doctors face as well as the delays and barriers that threaten pregnant women’s lives. Through interviews with 18 different women, they reveal the heartbreaking consequences of these laws as patients facing medical emergencies find themselves unable to get help and are treated abhorrently in a time of dire need.
Where to Watch: ABC.com
This podcast from Serial Productions and The New York Times investigates how a nurse at Yale Fertility Center gave patients saline instead of painkilling solution, leading them to suffer excruciating pain during egg retrieval procedures. The incident demonstrates the ways institutions routinely ignore women’s accounts of their own pain and choose protecting their own reputation over helping patients. Host Susan Burton illuminates larger themes, too, like the ways that idealized motherhood gets in the way of genuine maternal care.
Where to Listen: New York Times
Pamela Adlon Presents the Peabody to ‘Dead Ringers’
“I imagine the creator thinking, What can I make a TV show about? I don’t want to work too hard. What would be a piece of cake to sell? What subject? Yeah! Women’s sexual and reproductive health!”
Where to Watch: PeabodyAwards.com