This Is How TV Shows Took On A Post-Roe America This Year

Several shows reverted to a trope that was much more common on TV in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to a new report.

By Marina Fang
Dec 19, 2023

2023 was the first full year of living in a post-Roe United States, when many people across the country directly experienced the enormous ramifications of last year’s Supreme Court decision dismantling Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections.

Pop culture can give audiences a window into these kinds of seismic moments, telling stories that help audiences understand and empathize. However, with some noteworthy exceptions, many TV shows in 2023 failed to meet the moment, according to the newest “Abortion Onscreen” report, shared exclusively with HuffPost ahead of its release Tuesday.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-stories-on-tv-2023_n_657bbdb1e4b036ecab446888


Examining how Hollywood portrays abortion access

A researcher from the University of California says that the majority of television characters who obtained abortions faced few barriers

Stephanie Herold, The Conversation
June 18, 2023

Two doctors sit, despondent, on the side of a busy road as they watch an EMT zip up the body of their patient into a body bag. The patient died as a direct result of a fatal ectopic pregnancy, which her OB-GYN refused to treat because of a new anti-abortion law in her home state.

Tears in her eyes, one of the doctors responds to questions from the EMT about the death. Then she shouts: “It’s the lawmakers, they should actually be made to come out here … look at the carnage they’ve caused. I mean, how are we supposed to be doctors? Women’s lives are on the line, and our hands that are trained to help them, our hands are tied.”

Continued: https://www.longmontleader.com/beyond-local/beyond-local-examining-how-hollywood-portrays-abortion-access-7140325


Planned Parenthood Goes to Hollywood

Planned Parenthood Goes to Hollywood
The group is winning in L.A., even as it’s losing in D.C. Can entertainment ultimately make a difference in the abortion wars?

Story by Nora Caplan-Bricker
September 23, 2019

It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday at Planned Parenthood’s New York headquarters, and I’m watching TV. Specifically, I’m watching a series of scenes clipped from movies and TV shows, all of which have two things in common: The woman beside me, Caren Spruch, had a hand in them, and each one features an abortion.

Spruch and I began our viewing session with her most recent such project, the Hulu series “Shrill.” Now, seated at a table in a white-walled conference room, we’re watching the first movie she worked on, 2014’s “Obvious Child.” Spruch is petite and animated, with a long face and dark bangs, like a more pixie-ish Anjelica Huston. She calls “Obvious Child” — a romantic comedy about an unemployed 20-something who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand — “the one that changed the world,” setting a new standard for stories about abortion. She has seen it, she estimates, more than 25 times.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/09/23/feature/planned-parenthoods-woman-in-hollywood/


USA – TV Has Shifted Our Cultural Perception of Who Has Abortions

TV Has Shifted Our Cultural Perception of Who Has Abortions

by Rachel Charlene Lewis
Published on July 2, 2019

Television has often afforded abortion a nuance that politicians miss, allowing viewers to better understand the procedure and empathize with characters who terminate their pregnancies. In 2015, the Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH)’s Abortion Onscreen Project found 78 storylines on American TV between 2005 and 2014 where a character considered having an abortion. (Fifty-one percent of those characters decided to have an abortion.) While an increase in abortion storylines might feel like a positive shift, ANSIRH also found that 87 percent of onscreen characters who get abortions were white compared to 36 percent in real life.

“The majority of people who have abortions are people of color,” Renee Bracey Sherman, founder of We Testify, a National Network of Abortion Funds’ program for people who’ve had abortions, tells Bitch. “So when television and film aren’t representing us, not only is it inaccurate, but it’s also showing us that our stories don’t matter and aren’t the norm.”

Continued: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/abortion-characters-of-color-on-television?fbclid=IwAR0Ftb4ArOwwUphatQwDM9xJT3FPKiSfeHkFoNStI4Xyyr7nlh0FDkJ5dqE