Abortion on TV and at the movies, part II
Just going over how I feel about how some particular TV shows and movies have handled abortion.
Many years ago, I happened to see two TV shows, at nearly the same time, which both contained a similar abortion story – staunchly pro-life family member has to come to terms which another family member’s decision to have an abortion. One of the TV shows worked a lot better for me than the other.
The one which didn’t work for me: This one was set in a high school. Two sisters were in the same grade. One was pro-life; the other was pregnant. Pregnant teen wanted pro-life teen to walk with her to the abortion clinic, past the crowd of protesters there. I remember the whole thing as unfolding in one show. I remember the crowd of protesters as being obviously obnoxious, and the only pro-life people visible other than pro-life teen. I remember a conversation with the one teen mother on the show, where she helped talk pro-life teen around. And I remember pro-life teen finally coming around, and deciding, after all, you are my sister, and even though I don’t believe in abortion personally, I’ll go with you to the clinic. And all of this wound up feeling, to me, preachy and abortion-as-issue, and, like a lot of stuff by adults for teens (from whatever set of adult values) heavy-handed in its moralizing.
The other show: East Enders. This one actually, during the time I watched it, covered three abortions, by three different women, for three different reasons. The one which most closely parallelled the high school story involved a married woman who becomes accidentally pregnant late in life. She has three children already; the youngest twins are teenagers. She’s enjoying the greater freedom she has now that her children are older, and is expected a promotion at work. One of her children has sickle cell anemia. When she learns that she is pregnant again, before she tells her husband (who she knows is pro-life) about the pregnancy, she gets prenatally tested to see whether the child has sickle cell (presumably this must be chorionic villus sampling – CVS – since you can’t really hide a pregnancy until you can get an amniocentesis). When the test comes back positive for sickle cell, she decides that starting again at this point in her life with yet another child with sickle cell will be too much for her, gets an abortion, and then informs her staunchly pro-life husband. What he needs to decide is whether he’ll stay in the marriage after this revelation. Twenty-five years of marriage, three kids, a wife he loves, and a decision which he never thought he’d see her make. He decides to stay with her. This story unfolded over the course of several shows, with various characters getting to weigh in, on both sides, on the abortion. Perhaps because it was, after all, a show aimed at adults, rather than a show made by adults for teenagers, it came off, for me anyway, more slice of life, and less preachy. So, while the set up was much more unusual than in the high school show (and requires believing that the wife can conceal her pregnancy for rather a long while, even for CVS), it was easier for me to buy the story.
The other two abortions on East Enders were: One very religious older woman turned out to have had an abortion in the distant past. It had been strongly urged on her by her husband, against her own wishes, and she very much regretted it. And one young woman had become a single mother as a teenager, later married a man she didn’t really love, was having second thoughts about the marriage. She found out she was pregnant, and got an abortion. Basically her whole family – soon to be ex-husband, parents – was furious with her, but she went on with her life and never appeared to regret the abortion.
Abortion at the movies: I’ll cover one abortion that wasn’t, and three movies where the abortion actually happened.
On not getting an abortion: In The Opposite of Sex, the whole plot revolves around a pregnant teenager, who is doing some wild things in an attempt to provide for her baby. At one point, an older woman, Lucia, confronts the teenager (who I think was named DeeDee), about how she should be reasonable and get an abortion. The teen refuses. Later she makes some snotty remark to Lucia (on being admonished for smoking) about why does Lucia care, since she wanted to kill the baby anyway. Still later, Lucia herself has an unplanned, and out of wedlock, pregnancy, and decides to keep her baby.
Why does Lucia keep her baby without a thought, when she considered abortion such an obvious choice for DeeDee? This one’s fairly easy; it’s been clearly established already in the movie both that Lucia, cynical though she is, is someone who wants to be taking care of someone (it’s how she winds up in the crew chasing after DeeDee in the first place). And it’s also been clearly established that she’s not hurting for money. Why wouldn’t she keep the baby (especially with a fine father to be that she just hasn’t gotten as far as marrying yet), and why wouldn’t she think DeeDee, the reckless teenager, is much less ready than her to be a mother.
What’s harder to explain is why DeeDee doesn’t get the abortion. She’s dubious enough about her own child’s father that she goes out of her way to steal her gay brother’s boy friend and trick him into thinking he is the father. Nothing in her character makes you think she actually believes the pro-life words she spouts to annoy Lucia. And she is, she insists at the movie’s end, “not the mommy type.” I think it still works. You first see DeeDee at a grave. She’s lost both parents, and the brother whose boy friend she’s stolen (and whom she despises for being gay) is her only family. She doesn’t have much in the way of friends. For all her words about not being the mommy type, I could believe she’d be more invested in that baby than she wants to let on. This movie worked for me.
Movies where the abortion did happen will follow in part III, maybe in a couple of days, since I don’t have time to write them up now.
January 11th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Six Feet Under has had several plotlines with abortions that did happen, ones that did not, and a miscarriage as well. I remember you saying a while ago that you haven’t seen all of it, so I don’t want to “spoil” you with what happens in the last season, but throughout several seasons abortion was handled in several different ways that I found compelling.