In 2004, a Canadian television program made headlines about an episode in which a pregnant teenage girl decided to have an abortion, causing great distress to her boyfriend. Her mother takes her to her clinic.
Yes, it was Degrassi: The Next Generation — and Accidents Will HappenThe infamous episode titled American Views after the US cable channel decided to pull it out before it aired.
Experts said the mid-twenties episode was made because of the portrayal of abortion on screen and the discussion of the procedure in He points out that it was done at a time when it was more frequent and complex to reflect the views of impression of the procedure.
"So many rich stories have been told. There are so many interesting themes to follow, especially as they relate to the politics of what was going on at the time." said Stephanie Herold. A researcher at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who studies how abortion is portrayed in film and television.
About half of US states expect abortion bans after June's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling is overturned — and Some Canadian advocates worryabout the fate of the procedure here – academics and filmmakers say abortion must evolve to accurately reflect the real-life experience. I'm saying.
See | Why Abortion Focus Shifted to Pills:
Kate Kelly of advocacy group Shout Your Abortion says groups in the United States are working to educate people about abortion. Roe v. Availability of abortion pills after overturn of Wade.
"Awkward Departure" from Reality
Storyline improved from early instances of on-screen abortion in the 1960s and 1970s But it wasn't a perfect evolution. According to Herold.
Herold's contributing project, Abortion Onscreen, began when her Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UCSF, began investigating the history of abortion in Hollywood.
The two then studied the race, age, socioeconomic status, and health outcomes of characters undergoing surgery in film and television, and used a vast database of on-screen abortions to edited.
Herold and Sisson discovered a large gap between fictional and real stories. For example, according to her 2014 study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology ,less than 1% of abortions cause serious complications, actual complications More than 70 times the rate, Herold says.
"The majority of abortion characters on television and in movies are white, wealthy, and childless at the time of the abortion. It's a deviation," she added.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research firm that supports abortion rights, 59 percent of abortion patients in the United States already have children. 49% live below the poverty line (75% are poor or low-income). And the majority is racialized, with Black and Hispanic patients accounting for 28% of patients and 25% of hers, respectively.
"The characters face very few of the logistical, financial, and legal hurdles that real abortion patients face," Herold said, especially in the United States. It may include traveling, looking for childcare, and going out. - Out-of-pocket costs.
She cited an episode of the CBC program Workin' Moms as a faithful depiction of the challenges of access to abortion in the Canadian healthcare system: Ann (Dani Kind) is frustrated when she finds out there will be a considerable waiting period before having an abortion.
Scandal,Alias Grace,Thrill,Wynonna Earp ,Television like Glow The show has aired a variety of abortion stories in recent years. In Shrill, Annie (Aidy Bryant) visits an abortion clinic
Movies like Obvious Child and Never Rarely Some Always has explored the logistical challenges of abortion. In the latter, a 17-year-old girl travels with her cousin from Pennsylvania to New York City, desperate to raise money for surgery.
"Our job is not to make choices for young people."Degrassi co-creator Linda Schuyler spoke about the plucked episode in a 2020 interview with CBC News.
"It doesn't matter if we're talking about abortion or gay rights or what. Our work is about giving young people choices. It's not to force them, it's to inform them to choose, it's their own choice," she said.
Métis screenwriter Samantha Rony, who lives in Barry, Ontario, is currently working on her two original abortion-themed films. One is Expecting, a short film about a woman and her boyfriend discussing abortion. The ending is intentionally left ambiguous.
``I don't like to give my opinion, so whenever I make a project, I like to keep it open to the audience. No," she says Loney. "My job as a filmmaker is to reflect my life experiences in my work."
"It's up to the audience to make these discussions and change people's minds together. I think that's the beauty of art." See the movie."
In the queer horror romance Bloodlines, Toronto actor and filmmaker Emily Schooley's first feature film, Laura contemplates an abortion. A person will appear. Schooley herself, she said, had an abortion at a much younger age.
"The way I approach the debate over abortion is not so much about what happens indoors, but about what the aftermath is and what the tough decisions many women have to make. Do you want to come in?" she said.
The Future of Abortion Storytelling
Television and film abortion is often what Herold calls "voluntary": Careers Accumulate knowledge, become independent, or continue education. These are valid reasons for abortion, but they are not the only ones, she said.
Women are more concerned about whether they have enough money to support children, whether they want to focus on the children they already have, and whether they partner with someone they want to raise children with. may be considering.
"You rarely see structural considerations like that when a character has an abortion on television," she said.
What will television and film abortion storytelling look like in the near future? Herold hopes that these depictions will go deeper to address existing barriers to access and show different backgrounds and experiences.
People who had abortions in real life, people who had abortions on screen," she said.
"This includes characters of color, people who provide for their families during abortions, characters who are struggling to make ends meet, queer characters, I mean prioritizing the story of the characters, the indigenous characters, and the characters who live at the intersection of all these identities.”
Courtroom drama The Defendersof 1962 Just as the subject has been broached differently since abortion was first portrayed on television in the 162} episode, narrative abortion since the Raw era may take a different approach. Hmm.
Loney said he was unsure whether art emerging during this period would influence changes in the legal or political climate.
"Art is a reflection of the times," she said.