Penny Lane, an independent filmmaker who created The Abortion Diaries, has posted a remarkable list of abortion in popular culture. More about that in a couple of paragraphs.
First, a look at the recent films that have included, dismissed, discussed or, more likely, refused to discuss abortion. J. Hoberman did solid multi-film analysis in the Village Voice and blogger Evan Davis did a nice overview, too, in Pregnancy, Abortion and the Movies. The only script in which a woman actually has an abortion is the Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (poster pictured), a gritty and gripping film of an illegal abortion. The documentary Lake of Fire attempts to show "both" sides (as if there are only two) of the abortion "debate," but viewers and some critics justifiably find it a bit slim on women.
And then there are the romantic comedies with pregnant women who didn't mean to be pregnant -- Juno, where a teen considers abortion and makes a choice against it; Knocked Up, where the "A" word is so forbidden that it is called "schmortion"; Waitress, in which abortion is summarily dismissed, and Bella, a favorite of the anti-abortion crowd in which a pregnant girl is saved by a dishwasher and his family.
What Penny Lane has done, however, pre-dates all of this. She has identified 57 popular culture films and tv shows in U.S. and Candian media over an amazing 90 year span from 1916 to 2006 in her Timeline of Abortion Stories in Popular U.S. Media. In an intro, she writes:
Penny lists the year, title and a snappy synopsis of each piece. (She asks that people email her with ones that might be missing -- and I know of one I'll be sending ... Third Watch from October 2000.)This timeline includes short summaries of U.S. TV shows and popular movies which have prominently featured characters with unexpected pregnancies who seriously consider or have an abortion. Here I am only including fictional U.S. and Canadian cable and network TV shows and movies that were released or distributed by major studios. Some of these actually don't quite fit these guidelines but I find them amusing.
I have obsessively collected many of these clips and where possible, the title links to a Quicktime movie of the relevant material.
Here are a couple of samples from Penny:
1964 Another World (Soap Opera, NBC)TV's first abortion story. Pat Matthews is convinced by her playboy boyfriend to get an illegal abortion. She fears it has left her sterile. Upon realizing that he has no intention of marrying her, she murders him in a fit of rage. Ironically, she then marries the lawyer who gets her acquitted and has twins by him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~
1985 Cagney & Lacey (Drama, CBS)Cagney and Lacey escort a poor Latina to an abortion clinic, as she's afraid to run the gauntlet of protestors. When the clinic is firebombed and someone dies, it becomes murder. When the baddy is discovered, Lacey points out that since she's pregnant, attacking her is just like killing a baby. Also, Lacey, talking to her husband in bed, tells of her frightening experience as a teenager seeking an illegal abortion, which led her to fly to Puerto Rico to obtain one legally. This was a controversial episode, not shown by every affiliate.
I can't imagine the hours that Penny put into finding and reviewing these films. Post-2006 and documentaries don't make the list -- including Penny's own and one lesser-known described by Ariel Dougherty on our site. But it's a great resource --Thanks, Penny!
Other writers have offered some cogent analysis on the thinking in the film world, such as Eve Kushner's Go Forth and Multiply: Abortion in Hollywood Movies in the '90s. In fact, the teaser line on the article more or less sums up the state of popular culture: "In spite of what you’ve heard, abortion is not an optionin the past decade’s mainstream Hollywood cinema."
And if you're a Netflix fan, Andrea Lynch lists the top ten movies that, in her opinion, deal with abortion honestly. Go forth and rent.
by Cindy Cooper
Pictured: film poster in Manhattan for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
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