Our analysis of more recent television plotlines found that depictions are improving when it comes to safety, yet characters onscreen are still much more likely to have a major complication as a result of an abortion than a real-life abortion patient.Īnother issue is demographics. My colleagues found that on American television from 2005 to 2016, a character having an abortion had a 5 percent chance of dying from the procedure - which is more than 10,000 times the documented rate for legal abortions.
Onscreen depictions of abortion often significantly exaggerate the medical risk associated with it, overemphasizing serious complications that are extremely rare or nonexistent in real life, like infertility, mental illness and death. And that has the potential to influence viewer knowledge, beliefs and voting behaviors around abortion. When audiences see abortion depicted onscreen, some will incorporate what they see into their general understanding of abortion - who has abortions, how easy or challenging it is to access an abortion and how safe (or not) abortion is. As is so often the case with problems of Hollywood representation, this can have wide-ranging implications. Over the past decade, as abortion restrictions have proliferated around the country, the number of abortion stories onscreen has increased dramatically as well: In 2012, we documented just 15 abortion plotlines, and in 2021, we found 47.īut rather than normalize abortion, the increased visibility of abortion on television and in film has in many cases contributed to stigma and misinformation. My colleagues and I at the Abortion Onscreen program have tracked over 500 abortion plotlines across genres, such as historical fiction, medical dramas, science fiction and even buddy comedies. My contribution has been thinking about TV and movies.Ībortion has been represented on television and in film going back to the silent films of the early 20th century. Wade, people have supported abortion access and rights in many ways, including spreading information about abortion pills and defending brave doctors.
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