In recent weeks, Texas has swung back and forth between prohibiting abortions after six weeks, then being forced bu judges to allow them, then managing to forbid them once again.
Currently, once the fetal heartbeat is detected, abortions are forbidden in the Lone Star state.
Meanwhile, journalists have gone full court press on the matter. There’s no surprise there. But did anyone strive to talk to women and men on both sides of this hot-button issue? Hold that thought.
Now, I don’t expect Hollywood ever to be balanced on the topic but a recent offering in The Hollywood Reporter on 12 abortion-positive movies was over the top, even for them.
It’s been 49 years since the two-part “Maude’s Dilemma” — written by future Golden Girls and Soap creator Susan Harris — premiered, but the choice faced by Bea Arthur’s title character, finding herself pregnant at 47, and the determination of Norman Lear’s show to discuss that choice in depth, and engage in a nuanced debate, would be provocative in an American broadcast sitcom today.
It’s still incredibly rare to find TV comedies dealing with actual abortions, though shows like Girls and Sex and the City used it as a conversation piece. Frequently, American television falls back on abortion being a thing characters talk about on-camera, do off-camera and then never speak of again..
Then comes the list:
“Dirty Dancing” a clear and unapologetic argument for reproductive choice.” “Grandma,” which is “abortion as a regrettable but necessary option in many young women’s lives.” Or “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” about “a candid and clear-eyed contemplation of abortion as a choice arrived at not with hand-wringing but with sobering pragmatism.” Or “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” about “love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness no less than healthy anger over injustice.”
You get the picture.
Left unmentioned are films about people who wanted to abort, but didn’t, i.e. “Juno” or “Bella;” abortion survivors, such as “October Baby,” or “Unplanned,” about a former Planned Parenthood director (in Texas, no less). Yes, The Hollywood Reporter did run some articles on “Gosnell,” the 2018 film about Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell who was convicted of several murders and using gruesome abortion techniques.
But nothing that declared it was anything like must-see for the other side of the debate.
The story about Texas’ efforts to rewrite abortion jurisprudence keeps changing. Last week, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, a federal judge, granted the Justice Department’s request to halt the Texas law, aka Senate Bill 8.
On Friday, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it.
So how are we doing on the let’s-give-each-side-a-fair-hearing question?
Well, the portion of NBC that is not Rachel Maddow (who has called the Texas prohibition a ‘sneak attack’ on abortion rights), did run the video atop this post, quoted three women: Two pro-choice and one pro-life. Given that
Pro-life women aren’t quoted much at all in the MSM, so I guess that talking to one woman on that side of the debate was an improvement. NBC gave the anti-abortion-rights folks a shout-out in this broadcast as well.
I can’t say other media have exactly extended themselves getting anything more than the obligatory response quote to bottom-line their articles about what they believe is the greatest threat to women’s rights since Adam blamed Eve.
Speaking of which, where is Abby Johnson in all this? You know, the ex-director of a Planned Parenthood clinic near College Station (central Texas, y’all) who’s come out as pro-life? Wouldn’t she be a natural to talk about this, assuming that you’re an outlet wanting articulate people on both sides of the aisle?
Newsweek did a story on her recently but I’m not seeing anything else out there.
Looking for something that was more balanced, I ran across what The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan came up with when she conducted interviews in Dallas, which she accurately judged would be more balanced than Austin. Here is some of what she wrote:
To learn what people in the state think of the new abortion restrictions, I spoke with two dozen Texans between the ages of 18 and 29 — statistically, the people who are most likely to get an abortion, in many cases because they are in college or are not financially ready for parenthood. … About half were people of color, and a handful were men. …
The impression I got is that abortion, per se, is not very popular. Many women said they would not have one if they got pregnant right now. An 18-year-old shoe-store employee named Renne said, “I don’t think it’s the baby’s fault. It shouldn’t get killed for choices that grown-ups made.” Her friend, 19-year-old Yasmine, chimed in that she wants to have a baby.
Still, not a single person I interviewed liked the new law.
Her thesis is that going conservative on abortion is even going to alienate, well, conservatives.
Several people who volunteered that they are Christians, or even pro-life, said that in cases of rape or incest, pregnant women should have a choice. Yasmine warned that rape victims forced to carry a pregnancy to term can develop “hatred for the baby.”
These sentiments jibe with national polling, which suggests that many Americans inhabit an ambiguous middle ground regarding abortion: They don’t love the practice, but don’t want it forbidden either.
The exception? In the minds of her interviewees: Rape. Sixty percent of pro-lifers say abortion should be allowed for women whose pregnancy has been forced upon them.
Not all young people are moderate on abortion. Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, applauded Texas for its “novel” and “innovative” approach to curbing abortion rights. “We have a history of citizen’s arrest in our country,” she told me. However, she favors the total illegality of all abortions. Rape, to her, is not a legitimate reason to seek an abortion. “The circumstances of your conception do not change your value and the dignity that you as a human being possess,” she said, referring to the fetuses of rape victims.
She was quoting this Kaiser Family Foundation poll by the way. Some pro-life groups (National Right to Life and Students for Life) find KFF data skewed in favor of abortion.
The article concludes:
“Based on past polling, this [law] is too extreme for most Texans,” says Mark Jones, a political-science professor at Rice University, in Houston. The median Texas voter, he told me, is probably closer to restricting abortions at 20 weeks than at six.
This means Texas Republicans are playing a dangerous political game, potentially moving moderate Texans closer to the pro-abortion-rights camp and the Democrats.
We’ll see. I appreciate reporting of this ilk, that at least tries to get at the ambiguity of the beliefs held by women and men on the street.
Leather-shoe reporting, we used to call it. Isn’t that what good journalism is all about?
FIRST IMAGE: Graphic of Texas S.B. 8 is from the Guttmacher Institute website.