My Body, Writer's Choice
My Body, Writer’s Choice
Written by Ella mordarski
art by Ella mordarski
Put yourself in a television writer's shoes. You are developing the upcoming season of your critically acclaimed show and need to add a little drama to the plot. You already have a sexually active female character and want a plot point that will cause shock, confusion, and controversy. So, you write in a pregnancy storyline. But wait… she can’t actually have a baby, that would cause way too many shifts in the plot. As the saying goes, “a baby changes everything.” So, she’ll get an abortion. Simple, right?
They were never pregnant. They have a miscarrige. They back out at the last minute. They become ill and die. They are forced to continue. They decide adoption would be a better fit.
Television will do anything and everything to avoid actually depicting a character actively getting an abortion. Walking right up to the line, or rather the clinic door, before turning around and never discussing it again.
This issue is particularly prevalent in what I like to refer to as, the “How to Be a 20-Year-Old” genre of television. These shows focus on a group of friends, usually women, who live in a major city experiencing all the ups and downs of being in their 20s. From sexual missteps and baby showers, to weird first dates, and every embarrassing experience in between. In some rare instances these characters creep into their 30s, but there is always a hyper focus on the fading of post-college youth. Examples of this self-appointed genre include Girls, Sex and the City, The Bold Type, and Broad City.
Why are these shows so popular? Well, there are two main reasons people watch television: for an escape from reality, and to see themselves in characters. The “How to Be a 20-Year-Old” genre may fall under both categories for some, but prevalently they showcase characters real-life people can see in themselves. Hence why you hear viewers identify as a “Hannah” or “Jessa” to friends. This is why shows like Girls and Sex and The City are such incredible vessels for social change. Change as small as a new shoe trend to as critical as abortion rights.
However, even shows that have been praised for their modern, unfiltered portrayal of women shy away from an abortion storyline. In the first season of HBO’s Girls, which premiered in 2012, one of the protagonists, Jessa, finds herself pregnant, wanting an abortion. Her friends, Hannah, Marnie, and Shoshanna, support her in this, joining her at the clinic office. But before even arriving for the appointment, she begins bleeding, supposedly getting her period or losing the pregnancy. In the same vein, during Sex and The City’s run, Miranda finds herself accidentally pregnant by a post-testicular cancer Steve. She makes an appointment, but decides to keep the baby, leaving a fertility-struggling Charlotte in tears. While both of these storylines created an open dialogue, with other characters like Carrie discussing their own experience, we as an audience still never actually see a character get an abortion.
Behind the closed exam room, bathroom, and bedroom doors are where the stigma of abortions primarily lies. It is an unknown front lacking education, visibility, and acceptance in popular media. Television writers tend to address the before and after of an abortion, but not the during. Many women in their 20s don’t even know the difference between medicinal and surgical abortions or why a D&E might be necessary. Today, it is arguably more important than ever for television shows to showcase in-depth abortion storylines, with Roe v. Wade having been overturned in 2022 and states condeifying abortion bans at frightfully rapid rates.
What if Miranda had gone through with the abortion? If the writer’s of Sex and the City had shown her having the procedure and recovering? Well, then maybe a viewer would have seen herself in Miranda. Someone who has a successful career, owns an apartment, and is unsure what they want in a romantic relationship, but has friends that would never judge her choices.