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

19.12.2023

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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

18.06.2023

USA – ‘Love Is Blind,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and more: How abortion’s portrayal on TV is changing

A researcher found more plotlines around and more mentions of abortion on TV this year — though wealthy White characters are still overrepresented.

Jennifer Gerson
December 15, 2022

For the past five years, researcher Steph Herold has studied portrayals of abortion in television and film as part of the Abortion Onscreen initiative.

The latest study by Herold, a research analyst at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California-San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health spans this year. It found 60 abortion plotlines or mentions from 52 distinct television shows, well outnumbering the 47 abortion plotlines in 42 shows seen in 2021.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/12/abortion-portrayal-television-movies-after-dobbs/

15.12.2022

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

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United States

Why Hollywood keeps getting abortion wrong

This researcher interviewed dozens of writers, creators, and showrunners about onscreen abortion. Here’s what she learned.

By Alissa Wilkinson
Aug 9, 2022

We’re a screen-soaked culture, and that means that what we see on TV and in movies often serves as a framework to look at the world around us. That’s certainly true for abortion. It’s still rare to see an abortion depicted, and even more rare to see it in a situation that matches the circumstances of most abortions in America; research has found that the most common abortion patient is a low-income, unmarried young mother, without a college degree, who is seeking her first abortion. The majority of abortion patients in America are non-white.

Yet that’s not the average depiction. And this affects not just what people think about abortion, but how viewers treat people who seek abortions, as well as how they think about public policy.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/culture/23298225/hollywood-abortion-tv-portrayal

09.08.2022

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

Steph Herold

United States

How abortion storylines in film and TV have evolved in recent years

by Scottie Andrew, CNN
Thu June 2, 2022

(CNN) During the making of "Obvious Child," director/screenwriter Gillian Robespierre had a few balls in the air.

Would Jenny Slate's Donna, a fledgling stand-up comedian with a penchant for potty humor, end up with Jake Lacy's buttoned-up Max? And would Robespierre find investors who'd trust her to make the movie she wanted as a first-time filmmaker?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/entertainment/abortion-film-tv-representation-cec/index.html

02.06.2022

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USA – Medication Abortion Is the Future, so Why Don’t TV Shows Depict It More?

"This year, what's happening politically right now is just so divorced from the representations of abortion that we're seeing on TV."

Dec 14, 2021
Caroline Reilly, Rewire News

Abortion is normal and common, but you wouldn’t know it from watching television. Just ask Steph Herold, a research analyst with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) who studies onscreen abortion narratives and how they impact viewers’ understanding of abortion care.

The results are mixed. In 2021, Herold and her colleagues at ANSIRH’s Abortion Onscreen project found 47 abortion plotlines on 42 television shows, from The Handmaid’s Tale to This Is Us.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/12/14/medication-abortion-is-the-future-so-why-dont-tv-shows-depict-it-more/

Getting An Abortion Doesn’t Have To Be So Heavy

Sometimes being able to laugh during or after this common medical procedure is a radical act of defiant, unwavering self-love

By Danielle Campoamor
Oct 15, 2021

Elaine Saenz, 26, found out she was pregnant just a few weeks before her high school graduation in June of 2013. Her parents had made it clear that if she ever got pregnant, she would be kicked out of the house. So she called a friend in San Antonio, about three hours from where she lived, to tell her that she wanted an abortion. She scheduled an appointment at a Planned Parenthood for a medication abortion, so she could induce a miscarriage from the comfort of her friend’s home.

Her friend accompanied her to the appointment, supporting her as she waited for a nurse to pull her in and give her the pills that would end her unwanted pregnancy. And that’s when it happened — a moment of levity that left everyone laughing.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/getting-an-abortion-doesnt-have-to-be-so-heavy-1847873233

15.10.2021

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USA – Abortion storytellers and the harassment they face

Abortion storytellers and the harassment they face

By Steph Herold, opinion contributor
02/18/20

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in June Medical Services v. Gee, the first major abortion-related case to come before the Court since Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment to the bench. The case largely focuses on a Louisiana law designed to close abortion clinics by imposing the exact requirements that the Court declared unconstitutional in the 2016 case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

Yet this time around, abortion opponents are arguing that only patients, not abortion providers (such as Whole Woman’s Health or June Medical Services), should be able to bring these cases and that nothing prevents patients from doing so. This raises an unusual and pertinent question: is it reasonable to expect people seeking time-sensitive, stigmatized health care to drop everything and sue their state?

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/483433-abortion-storytellers-and-the-harassment-they-face

Need an Abortion? There’s an App for That

Need an Abortion? There’s an App for That

by Steph Herold
Published on January 22, 2020

If you needed accurate, evidence-based information about abortion, would you know how or where to find it? Most people have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction when it comes to abortion, and you really can’t blame them: Anti-abortion misinformation is everywhere, from fake pregnancy centers to racist, shaming billboards to your state legislature. And now there’s an even more intimate way to access abortion information that can be truthful and reliable or wildly misleading—an app on your smartphone.

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/abortion-apps-spreading-misinformation

USA – 2019 Was a Terrible Year for Abortion Rights. TV Did Better – Kind Of

2019 Was a Terrible Year for Abortion Rights. TV Did Better – Kind Of
Hollywood has a long way to go in terms of depicting women of color and mothers getting abortions

By EJ Dickson
Dec 20, 2019

2019 was a mixed bag when it comes to reproductive rights. While the year saw draconian abortion legislation introduced in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio, the nationwide backlash arguably lent greater momentum to the abortion rights movement, catapulting it to the center of cultural conversation.

As a result, the once-taboo topic of abortion has become increasingly commonplace in popular culture, per an annual Abortion Onscreen Report released by ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health). Released yesterday, the report found a record number of TV shows in 2019 featured a discussion of or plot-line centering on abortion, thanks to shows like The Bold Type, Shrill, Orange Is the New Black, and Happy.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/abortion-rights-heartbeat-bill-georgia-2019-929386/