Fashion magazine Marie Claire wants to see more parents getting abortions on network television and in films.
Using the popular left-wing obsession of “representation,” the 84-year-old women’s publication ran an article on July 16 worrying that if more women who are already mothers don’t see characters like themselves killing their unborn children, they might not choose to do so as well.
Author Danielle Campoamor, who has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair, promoted her piece on Twitter, saying, “Parents are the most common abortion patients. It’s time we see ourselves having abortions onscreen.”
In the story, she argues, “Countless studies have highlighted the importance of representation in the media, be it race, gender, relationships, body size and shape, mental health, or disability status. The same is true of abortion … But accurate depictions of the most common abortion patients, parents, is still severely lacking.”
Campoamor goes on to lament a drop in abortion depictions on TV, pointing out, “In 2019, 43 television shows featured an abortion storyline. In 2020, only 31 shows featured a character who underwent the procedure.” In contrast, she quotes a woman named Erika Christensen who says she finds it “meaningful” and “ordinary” to see moms having abortions on film because she decided to have an abortion in her third trimester — a gestational stage when most babies are able to survive outside the womb.
Later, Campoamor highlights a TV showrunner who says part of the problem is that television and film writers don’t make abortions look interesting enough: “[‘Orange is the New Black’ writer Merritt] Tierce says it’s difficult to successfully include an abortion storyline in a show or film, especially in a way that is authentic, because most abortions are, for lack of a better word, boring.”
Another problem, Campoamor claims, is that fictional storylines often imply that women wrestle emotionally over whether or not to end a child’s life when in reality the decision is usually easy: “Even if a showrunner, creator, or writer is successful in placing an abortion within a storyline or plot, it can actually cause more harm than good,” she says, “depicting a wrought decision could be misleading when studies have shown most people are certain of their choice, and five years after their abortions 95 percent of patients say it was the right decision for them.”
Ultimately, Campoamor and the sources she quotes want to see TV series and films showing abortion as just another “parenting decision” and “act of love.”
“I think the most radical reconception that needs to happen with respect to abortion, especially parenting people who have abortions,” Tierce tells Campoamor, “is for people to realize that it can be a serious act of love to have an abortion. And for people who have kids, that is the number one decision-making factor. If they feel like they can’t handle another child, what’s driving that decision is the desire to give the children they already have the best possible life.”