Why authentic abortion stories in TV and film are a sign of the times in post-Roe era

In 2004, a Canadian TV show made headlines for a controversial episode in which a pregnant teenage girl decides, much to her boyfriend's distress, to get an abortion. Her mother drives her to the clinic. 

Yes, it was Degrassi: The Next Generation — and the infamous episode, entitled Accidents Will Happen, was postponed for American viewers after a U.S. cable channel decided to pull it before it could air. 

Experts note the mid-aughts episode was made during a period when onscreen depictions of abortion, and discussion of the procedure in film and TV, were growing more frequent and complex, to reflect public sentiment about the procedure. 

"There's really a lot of rich narratives that have been told, lots of interesting themes to trace, especially as they relate back 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 depicted in film and TV. 

With abortion bans expected in roughly half of the U.S. states after the overturn of landmark ruling Roe v. Wade in June — and some Canadian advocates worried about the procedure's destiny here — scholars and filmmakers say that abortion must evolve to accurately reflect real-life experiences.

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While storylines have improved since early instances of onscreen abortion in the 1960s and 1970s, it hasn't been a perfect evolution, according to Herold. 

The project to which Herold contributes, Abortion Onscreen, began when UCSF sociologist Gretchen Sisson began looking into the history of abortion in Hollywood. 

The two have since compiled a massive database of onscreen abortions, studying the race, age, socioeconomic circumstances and health outcomes of characters who receive the procedure in film and TV. 

Herold and Sisson have found that there is a significant gulf between fictional and real-life stories. For example, less than one per cent of abortions result in a major complication, according to a 2014 study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology — but onscreen, that figure rises to 18 per cent, over 70 times the actual complication rate, Herold says. 

"The majority of characters who have abortions on TV and film are white, are wealthy, have no children at the time of their abortions, which is really a troubling departure from the reality of who has abortions," she added.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research firm that supports abortion rights, 59 per cent of abortion patients in the U.S. already have children; 49 per cent live below the poverty line (75 per cent are poor or low-income); and the majority are racialized, with Black and Hispanic patients making up 28 per cent and 25 per cent of patients, respectively.

"Characters face almost none of the logistical, financial, legal hurdles that real abortion patients face," Herold said, which — especially in the U.S. — can include out-of-state travel, finding childcare, and out-of-pocket costs. 

She pointed to an episode of CBC show Workin' Moms as one that faithfully depicts the challenges of abortion access in Canada's health-care system: Anne (Dani Kind) is frustrated when she finds out there is a significant waiting period before she can have an abortion.