Amid State-Level Wars On Abortion, Hollywood Cuts The Melodrama In Favor Of More Straight-Forward Depictions
It used to be in popular culture that abortion was always portrayed as an agonizing decision that led to serious mental health complications for the women if they opted for the procedure. Now, even as the abortion wars heat up in state Legislatures, on the screen, it's being toned down. “You’re definitely seeing more of the matter-of-fact ‘I am pregnant, I don’t want to be, I’m going to have an abortion,’” said Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at University of California, San Francisco.
The New York Times:
As America Debates Abortion, Hollywood Seeks The Realities
At a recent conference outside Los Angeles, a national women’s rights lawyer stood before a select group of Hollywood heavyweights to issue a demand and a plea. With a woman’s right to choose in jeopardy, the lawyer, Fatima Goss Graves, said, more abortions should be portrayed in narratives onscreen. “The stories on abortion do not match our reality,” she said. The attendees — agents, celebrities and producers at an invitation-only diversity summit held by the talent agency CAA — took Goss Graves’s message in stride. As it turns out, the industry has already begun shedding one of its longest-held taboos. In recent years, abortions are taking place or being talked about on television at record levels, often on shows created or written by women. (Buckley, 7/18)
In other news —
Reuters:
Illinois To Defy Trump Administration's Abortion Referral 'Gag Rule'
Illinois will defy enforcement of the Trump administration's rule barring federally subsidized family planning clinics from making abortion referrals, the governor said on Thursday, vowing the state would step in to fund most of those clinics itself. Illinois' action comes a week after a federal appeals court cleared the way for the administration to cut off Title X grants for reproductive healthcare and family planning for low-income women at clinics that refer patients to abortion providers. (7/18)
