Abortion Returns to Television

Thirty-nine years ago, a network television sitcom got more real than any reality show has ever dared: Maude got an abortion.

That was 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade, but the fact of abortion - then and now the most common surgical procedure in the country - was so well-known that even painfully conservative television executives accepted it.

It's been downhill ever since.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

I thought this was worth highlighting, because I can't even remember the last time someone I knew had an abortion. I live in a working-class neighborhood with lots of problems, and so many of the young women I've met have given birth out of wedlock. They come from homes with alcoholic parents and lack of education, and they have boyfriends with heroin habits and prison records. They tell me their problems, and I ask them: Why didn't they consider having an abortion?

"Only bad people do that," one girl told me. "Right?"

And where do they find reinforcement for that idea? Television. Whether it's a soap opera or prime time, young women invariably turn their backs on their own plans and decide to have and keep their babies, no matter how daunting the circumstances. (And being TV, of course it all works out.)

I had a relative who, many years ago, was in a home for unwed mothers and planned to give her child up for adoption. So did most of the girls with whom she lived -- until the soap opera they all followed religiously featured a young pregnant girl who changed her mind and announces she could "never give up my own flesh and blood." So they all decided to keep their babies, too.

TV does influence people, so I was happy to see this presented as an option. I just hope the next time it isn't a high-powered surgeon, but an unformed teenager who wants to make something of herself. From New York magazine:

Last night on Grey's Anatomy, Cristina Yang, the driven, ambitious surgeon who had gotten pregnant at the end of last season, went ahead and had an abortion. That's right! Someone actually had an abortion — not a miscarriage, not an ectopic pregnancy, not a last-minute change of heart — on national television. The lengths TV shows will go to avoid having characters go through with abortions have become something of a running, not that funny joke, for all the obvious political reasons.

Everyone from Julia Salinger on Party of Five to Cristina Yang herself, back in Grey's second season, have talked about wanting to have one, only to have some less controversial pregnancy-ending plot twist intervene. But not last night! Grey's Anatomy may have brought us ghost sex, ill-advised musical episodes, and endless bed swapping, but it was brave enough to do what almost no other series will: show this one particular, totally legal medical procedure on TV.

At the end of last season, Cristina told her husband Owen that she wanted to have an abortion. Cristina more than loves her job as a surgeon, it's who she is, how she defines herself, and what she wants to dedicate her life to: A child would make that impossible. Owen wants to have the baby, and at the beginning of last night's episodes, they're estranged. Cristina had made, and bailed, on a number of doctor's appointments, psychologically unable to go through with it without his okay. But over the course of last night's two hours, in a rare reversal, Owen changed his mind, and Cristina didn't.

First, Cristina gave Meredith a long speech about how she needs someone, anyone, to see her side and accept that she really, truly does not want to have a baby. This is already pretty radical: It's common TV wisdom that whatever your reservations, once you see your child, you'll not only love it, you'll never regret having it. Cristina disagrees.

Then, Meredith gave Owen a talking-to, pointing out that Cristina is only being true to herself — she's never said she wanted kids — and he should stop trying to make her into someone else. Meredith even went a step further, saying that as the daughter of a woman who didn't love her, she knows just how awful it can be — and that Owen shouldn't put his wife or his child through that.

Meredith's speech seemed to get through to Owen, and after a number of crazy surgeries and a baby-napping (this is Grey's, after all), Owen goes to Cristina, asks her when the appointment is and ... goes with her to the doctor. During the appointment, the doctor ponderously says, "I'm going to ask you one more time, are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?" (Showing an abortion is one thing; making it guilt free, that would be a whole other.) Cristina says yes. And then, instead of the usual last-minute flip flop, the abortion actually happens.

As much as I hate to admit it, a lot of things in this country aren't real until they happen on television. Three cheers for abortion's return to television. May we see many more.