In recent weeks, Texas has swung back and forth between prohibiting abortions after six weeks, then being forced bu judges to allow them, then managing to forbid them once again.
Currently, once the fetal heartbeat is detected, abortions are forbidden in the Lone Star state.
Meanwhile, journalists have gone full court press on the matter. There’s no surprise there. But did anyone strive to talk to women and men on both sides of this hot-button issue? Hold that thought.
Now, I don’t expect Hollywood ever to be balanced on the topic but a recent offering in The Hollywood Reporter on 12 abortion-positive movies was over the top, even for them.
It’s been 49 years since the two-part “Maude’s Dilemma” — written by future Golden Girls and Soap creator Susan Harris — premiered, but the choice faced by Bea Arthur’s title character, finding herself pregnant at 47, and the determination of Norman Lear’s show to discuss that choice in depth, and engage in a nuanced debate, would be provocative in an American broadcast sitcom today.
It’s still incredibly rare to find TV comedies dealing with actual abortions, though shows like Girls and Sex and the City used it as a conversation piece. Frequently, American television falls back on abortion being a thing characters talk about on-camera, do off-camera and then never speak of again..
Then comes the list:
“Dirty Dancing” a clear and unapologetic argument for reproductive choice.” “Grandma,” which is “abortion as a regrettable but necessary option in many young women’s lives.” Or “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” about “a candid and clear-eyed contemplation of abortion as a choice arrived at not with hand-wringing but with sobering pragmatism.” Or “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” about “love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness no less than healthy anger over injustice.”
You get the picture.
