Original research articleTelling stories about abortion: abortion-related plots in American film and television, 1916–2013☆
Introduction
In the past decade, popular discourse has alternately declared abortion to be “television’s most persistent taboo” [1], “no longer taboo” [2] and “still taboo” [3]. News accounts have asserted that abortion is underrepresented in film and television [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], estimating the quantity of abortion-related plotlines anywhere from “a single instance” [11] to “on average only once every two and a half years since 1972” [12], with the further assertion that narrative devices such as false pregnancies or pregnancy losses are specifically used to avoid abortion-related storylines [4], [7]. The presumption that abortion stories are rare, avoided and enduringly taboo in American popular culture is prevalent. Yet, a comprehensive investigation of the number of abortion stories in film and television and the pregnancy outcomes in such stories has remained absent from the literature, leaving researchers without a clear picture of how popular culture portrays abortion.
Research analyzing specific abortion stories on film and television has found that, like many depictions of medical experiences [13], [14], they are not always representative of the reality of abortion care in the United States [15], [16], [17], [18], inaccurately depicting medical procedures, clinics and who seeks abortions for what reasons. Such inaccuracies in entertainment television typically function in ways that uphold conservative, hegemonic structures [19], though we do not know whether or how this applies to abortion stories. Few scholars have examined fictional depictions of abortion decision making. Condit [20] represents a notable exception, finding that the overall pattern of fictional unintended pregnancies resolution in the 1980s overrelied on the narrative trope of a false pregnancy. Nonetheless, research has not systematically examined the number and overall outcome trends in abortion-related plotlines. The dearth of such an investigation into these trends is problematic, as without one we do not know if and in what ways abortion is represented inaccurately.
This absence is of consequence as research has shown that media portrayals influence viewers through a variety of means. Scholars have shown that news coverage, particularly in the form of in-depth stories about people with whom viewers identify, can sway not only personal opinions but also political priorities [21]. In-depth fictional programming, especially plotlines showcasing characters in whom viewers are invested, functions in a similar way [22], [23]. Scholars have demonstrated that this holds for fictional depictions of pregnancy decision making and abortion. Mulligan and Habel [24] found that after viewing one of two fictional films about pregnancy-decision making — one in which abortion was framed in a favorable light and one in which it was portrayed more negatively — subjects were significantly more likely to support access to legal abortion in a greater range of circumstances after viewing the former film. On an aggregate scale, abortion stories, to the extent that they repeat similar themes, can alter public understanding [25]: the cinematic construction of a poignant ultrasound scene, the rhetorical avoidance of the word “abortion” or the circumstances of a fictional character’s pregnancy all cultivate a common cultural idea about what pregnancy, abortion and women seeking abortion are like [16], [20], [26], [27], [28] and may play a role in the production of social myths about abortion and abortion stigma, with consequences for the lived experience of women seeking abortions [29].
In this paper, we conduct a census of plotlines that engage with abortion in US television and film since the beginning of American cinema. In addition to empirically describing their number, we make an opening contribution to developing a systematic evaluation of abortion decision making, analyzing the plotlines for the pregnancy outcome. This work provides abortion care professionals and women's health advocates with an initial accurate window into the cultural stories being told about abortion.
Section snippets
Methods
To produce a comprehensive list of all film and television representations of abortion, we conducted several online searches. First, we searched the International Movie Database (IMDB.com) for all titles that were tagged with “abortion” as a keyword or contained the word “abortion” in their plot description. As a catalog of 2.5 million titles from 1887 to the present — including films, television series and television episodes — that has been both crowd- and industry-sourced, IMDB represents
Results
The IMDB searches yielded 472 titles, Google search results found an additional 43 titles, and the review of the published literature added 35 more unique titles. Of these 550 titles, 208 were excluded for relevance. The remaining 342 titles represented 385 individual abortion plotlines, which were categorized as follows: 291 plotlines had abortion as a major plot point; 19 plotlines had an abortion provider as a primary character; 7 plotlines solely investigated the death of an abortion
Discussion
This analysis established the volume and distribution over time of abortion-related plotlines in American television and film, offering a useful starting point for considering ways abortion is represented in culture. We found that abortion stories are more common and have always been more frequent than popular discourse suggests [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. We further document a general growth trend in the quantity of abortion-related plotlines over time and,
Acknowledgments
Funding for this analysis was provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (2012-37676).
References (31)
- et al.
Analyzing the impacts of abortion clinic structures and processes: a qualitative analysis of women's negative experiences of abortion clinics
Contraception
(2012) Television's most persistent taboo, in The New York Times
(2004)Abortion no longer taboo topic on prime time television, in Fox News
(2011)40 years after Roe v. Wade, depictions of abortion are still taboo on television, in International Business Times
(2013)I'm rooting for an abortion this Friday night, in RH reality check
(2010)American TV: still not ready for an abortion, in Salon
(2010)A movie breaks the abortion taboo, in The Daily Beast
(2010)No cop-outs: 37 years ago, ‘Maude' got the abortion experience right, in RH reality check
(2009)TV land: a world without choice, in RH reality check
(2009)Accidentally dodging the question?, in RH reality check
(2009)
True reality television: where's abortion?, in RH reality check
Bellafante on Bea Arthur, ‘Maude' and abortion, in The New York Times
What TV teaches us about abortion, in The Gospel Coalition
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation on television
N Engl J Med
Playing doctor: television, storytelling, & medical power. 2nd ed
Cited by (48)
“Technically an abortion”: Understanding perceptions and definitions of abortion in the United States
2023, Social Science and MedicineWomen's emotional accounts of induced abortion
2021, Gaceta SanitariaHangers, Potions, and Pills: Abortion Procedures on American Television, 2008 to 2018
2019, Women's Health IssuesYou’re a murderer: Critical discourse analysis of conversations around abortions in the Russian talk show
2024, Discourse and Society“Domestic Feminism”: The Politics of Reproduction and Motherhood in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale
2024, Television and New Media
- ☆
Disclosures/conflict of interest: none.