Curious op-ed in @washingtonpost's @KateCohen92 this morning that ignores 10 years of research on abortion on tv. Yes, there are fewer abortions onscreen than in real life. But they're there, increasingly portrayed by characters of color. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
First, to address the obvious, at @ANSIRH, @gesisson & I have documented decades of abortion portrayals on TV and film and put them all in a searchable database. Abortion has been portrayed onscreen for over 100 years. abortiononscreen.org
The more interesting question is *how* is abortion portrayed on tv/film, compared to real life abortion experiences. Just saying, "there are no abortions on tv!" is inaccurate and misleading. There are -- they just don't reflect the reality of most abortion patients in the US.
For ex -- our most recent analysis found that tv is increasingly showing characters of color accessing abortion, but many of these plotlines *still* fail to portray how difficult it is to actually get an abortion. contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-…
The overall demographics of characters who have abortions on tv may be shifting to be slightly more reflective of the fact that the majority of people who have abortions are people of color, there's a lot of work to do to portray the myriad obstacles to abortion access in the US.
The @washingtonpost op-ed doesn't say much of this, though. Instead the author complains about scant abortions on tv/film, and lists shows (mainly with white characters, or characters of color in "colorblind" shows).
(Re: characters of color in "colorblind" shows, we talk about this at length in our most recent paper -- namely that just having a character of color get an abortion doesn't mean the show does justice to portraying the impact of racism on abortion access: tandfonline.com/eprint/Q4WFFAW…)
Largely missing from this op-ed are shows from the last few years -- 2020's @VIDA_STARZ, which had a queer Latina character have an abortion, #IMayDestroyYou's Black protagonist disclosing her abortion, 2019's @MadeInHeavenTv's with an abortion disclosure from an Indian woman.
Also in 2019: @TheBoldTypeTV's two queer Black women characters who share their abortion stories, @shesgottahaveit's Black character who discloses a past abortion, @OITNB's undocumented Latina character who self-manages her abortion.
And on and on. You can read all about these in our year end reports, where @gesisson & I analyze all the abortion depictions of the past year. ansirh.org/research/ongoi…
I hope future op-eds will cite the available research, make less simplistic arguments, and focus on what tv/film can do to improve on portrayals to better reflect reality. Or: watch some TV shows with characters of color and do some googling before writing. The end!
Wow, hello internet! If you’re curious about the history of abortion in tv, @gesisson wrote the most comprehensive paper to date documenting the last 50 years of portrayals: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
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