{"id":249239,"date":"2021-07-17T09:40:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T14:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=249239"},"modified":"2021-07-15T21:34:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T02:34:10","slug":"abortion-industry-abortion-portrayals-tv-movies-dont-want-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-industry-abortion-portrayals-tv-movies-dont-want-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion industry calls for more abortion portrayals in TV and movies… but here’s what they don’t want you to see"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While abortion is increasingly portrayed in American TV shows and movies, some are calling for more minority women in those portrayals, and more abortion in general in media. But if the entertainment industry is to accurately depict abortion in America, greater honesty is needed regarding the abortion industry’s frequent health and safety issues, the lack of accountability and oversight for abortion businesses, and the way the industry manipulates women.<\/p>\n

Since 2012, two researchers with the University of California at San Francisco’s openly pro-abortion Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health<\/a>\u00a0(ANSIRH) program have maintained a database<\/a> of on-screen abortion portrayals. According to ANSIRH, the Abortion Onscreen program\u00a0is “aimed at investigating these stories and analyzing\u00a0their impact on broader social understandings of abortion.” The database is described as “a listing of all film and television depictions available to viewers in the United States in which a character obtains an abortion, or discloses having one in the past.” According to the\u00a0Insider<\/a>, the database records portrayals as far back as 1916.<\/p>\n

Insider noted that the Abortion Onscreen program creators feel “most on-screen abortions don’t accurately portray the average American’s experience because they fail to illustrate the cost, time commitment, access issues abortion seekers, primarily women of color, face.” Co-researchers Steph Herold and Gretchen Sisson believe<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0“Hollywood tends to dramatically exaggerate the medical risks<\/a> associated with abortion\u00a0while\u00a0downplaying real barriers to access<\/a>.” In 2020, Herold and Sisson celebrated that abortion portrayals outweighed portrayals of adoption or parenting, but expressed disappointment that most featured white characters, saying, “abortion patients are most often people of color.” They were also disappointed that shows rarely portrayed mothers with other children choosing abortion, or women “struggling to access” abortion.<\/p>\n

But the co-creators seem more concerned with proper ‘representation’ than with presenting the truth about the abortion industry.<\/p>\n