Here's Why the Abortion Storylines on Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Matter
Olivia, in keeping with Scandal's more dramatic overall tone, has an emotional reaction to her abortion, but she, too, doesn't seem to feel any regret or guilt about her decision. She's a grown woman with a business to run and a life to live. A kid wasn't part of her plan, so she's simply not having it.
It's progress that we're seeing and talking about a more diverse array of abortion stories. It's progress that these women are responsible adults free of guilt. These shows might not revolutionize the pro-choice movement, but maybe they'll spark conversations or reach viewers who are biased in how they see this issue.
What's most exciting to me, though, is the change in how storytellers see pregnancy. Writing craves conflict. Pregnancy, the decision to have an abortion, labor and childbirth, and raising a kid all create conflict. It's so tempting for writers to knock a character up because it immediately creates an arc. This character will struggle with the changes to her body, have a dramatic and/or funny labor, and then she'll be happy. And once she has a baby, there's so much story to mine. All the more exciting if it's unplanned. Think of Rachel on Friends or Mindy on The Mindy Project or Jane on Jane the Virgin or Growing Pains or Family Ties or ER or...you get it. Pregnancy makes good television. Abortion, well, it traditionally does not.
In films, the trend is even more stark. Gal Is Preggo is an entire genre, from the martyred Molly Ringwald in For Keeps to Nine Months to She's Having a Baby. Juno, in a nod to feminism, makes it all the way into the waiting room of an abortion clinic before deciding that the protestor outside had a point. To the movie's credit, she makes the supremely responsible decision to give her baby to Jennifer Garner. Honestly, the world would be a great place if all unwanted children went to Jennifer Garner. And, look, I get it. As Judd Apatow said of his film Knocked Up, if Katherine Heigl's character gets an abortion, "There's no movie." Fair! Then again, Obvious Child, a movie about a woman who gets an abortion, is one of the best indie comedies of the past few years. So.
(Also, can we talk about how dumb it is when a woman fakes a miscarriage because she doesn't want the father of her baby to feel beholden, but he inevitably finds out because duh? Looking at you, Scrubs and The OC.)
This is all to say that any writer who resists the temptation to wring melodrama—whether in the form of a baby or of guilt and indecision—out of an unplanned pregnancy is doing his or her audience a huge service. Having a baby is a big decision; it's not a goddamn plot device.
On a totally unrelated note, here's the link to give money to Planned Parenthood.
