Abortion Gang

How do you write about a topic that is both the third rail of US politics and also one of the most common medical procedures in America? There are many things to be mindful of when writing about abortion. This is the first installment of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation about writing about abortion with integrity. Let’s dive right in.

Language matters.
Are you using the words “pro-choice” and “pro-life”? Typically, the pro-choice movement prefers “anti-choice” to “pro-life,” since the latter implies that the pro-choice movement is “anti-life,” which is preposterous (not to mention false).  Another alternative to “pro-life” is “anti-abortion rights.” And what about using terms like reproductive justice and pro-voice? If you’re writing about women’s personal abortion stories, you may want to investigate exactly what pro-voice means, and if you’re looking at abortion from an intersectional lens, reproductive justice is your best bet.

Science matters.
Who can you trust to tell you if a certain piece of legislation is based in medical evidence or ideological bullshit? Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, for one (full disclosure: I used to work there and can say with confidence that the doctors affiliated with PRCH are fantastic). Other potential sources of medical information include the clinician/s or medical director at your local clinic and the National Abortion Federation. The best reason to ask clinicians if a piece of legislation is medically necessary or makes scientific sense? Most legislators aren’t doctors.

Planned Parenthood is not the only abortion provider in the United States.
While they’re certainly the most high profile abortion provider, they are far from the only ones. In fact, there are entire organizations composed of independent abortion providers, such as the Abortion Care Network and the Feminist Abortion Network. In covering only Planned Parenthood, you’re getting a small piece of America’s abortion story. Most abortions are done at free-standing (non-Planned Parenthood) clinics. Independent providers have a long and proud history of providing women with compassionate care–why not call them in addition to your local Planned Parenthood?

Be wary of abortion stigma
No one could argue that there isn’t a stigma associated with abortion, whether it’s with the women who have them, the clinicians who perform them, or anyone remotely associated with the topic. The last thing you want to do is perpetuate the notion that abortion is a gruesome procedure performed by badly trained doctors that only sluttly, selfish women have (see what I mean by stigma?). Many people perpetuate stigma without even realizing it. How?

• “Only 3% of our services are abortion!” Planned Parenthood pulls out this statistic every time they get attacked by a politician. They do so to try and emphasize the fact that they are primarily family planning providers, not abortion providers. By doing this, however, they distance themselves from abortion, as if abortion is shameful, as if abortion is something that should only be 3% of their services. Are they proud to provide abortion services? Of course. But you wouldn’t know it with this talking point.
• Talking about rape, incest, and life threat situations as acceptable instances of when a woman can have an abortion. What woman deserves to have access to abortion care? A woman who was raped? A woman with a fetal anomaly? A woman who can’t afford to have another child? A woman who didn’t use birth control? A woman who’s had an abortion already? Every woman, no matter her circumstance, deserves to have access to abortion care. We stigmatize abortion when deem certain abortions as moral or some women as deserving to have abortions, while others are “bad” or unworthy of legal medical care.
• Later abortions: Define your terms. When you say “later abortion,” what do you mean? In research land, it usually means abortion after 24 weeks. Some people use the medically innocuous “late term abortion” to signify anything from an abortion in the second trimester to an abortion into the third trimester. Make sure you know which one you’re talking about. Read the literature on second trimester and later abortions. Accept the fact that there is nothing inherently, morally wrong with later abortions. Learn about why women need them, that there’s no medical consensus on viability, and no agreement on “fetal pain.” Check your language–are you somehow implying that later abortions are morally wrong, or that a woman should’ve just hurried up and made a decision earlier? That’s stigma in action.
• For more on abortion stigma, see ANSIRH’s research.

One woman’s abortion story isn’t every woman’s abortion story.
One in three US women will have an abortion by the age of 45. It follows, then, that one in three US women will not have the the same reasons for having an abortion, or the same reaction afterwards. Who has an abortion? Every type of woman, it turns out: women of every class, race, ethnicity, and education level.  We also know that women seek abortion care for every possible reason: they can’t afford another child, a birth control mess up, a health condition, or simply not wanting to be a mother (whether for the first or sixth time) at that point in her life. Whatever the woman’s reason for an abortion, it’s a valid one, and not your job to make a judgement call on it. Similarly, many women feel relieved after their abortions, some women feel regret or sadness, others feel a mix or something completely different. If you’re writing about women’s reactions to having abortions, make sure you talk to a variety of people who can give you multiple perspective on the experience. If you need to talk about abortion stories in broader strokes, talk to organizations like Exhale and Backline that support women before and after their abortions.

There’s a lot to think about when covering abortion. As much as we want it to be, abortion isn’t just a medical procedure; it’s tied up in political and cultural battlegrounds that demand thorough exploration. You need to make deliberate decisions to seek out medically and scientifically accurate information if you want your article to reflect the reality of abortion in the US.

Guest post by Abortion on Demand.

Is there an advocacy organization more ham-handed about talking about young supporters than NARAL Pro-Choice America? I opened the Washington Post Outlook section on Sunday and found yet another bunch of completely stupid quotes coming from both NARAL’s President Nancy Keenan and Communications Director Ted Miller. To wit:

• “These are people that we haven’t quite crossed their radar screen,” NARAL President Nancy Keenan explained in a recent interview. “They share our values, they’re pro-choice, but the question is: How do we talk to them?”
• For many women who have grown up in an era of legal abortion, that mentality has persisted. NARAL’s Keenan often refers to the graying heads of the major women’s groups as the “menopausal militia.”
• NARAL has begun dividing its e-mail list between its younger and older supporters, testing different messages on about 10 percent of its subscribers. The group saw response rates double when younger people received a message from a NARAL staff member their own age, rather than one from the group’s president.
• “Much of our list consists of people who are baby boomers,” says NARAL communication director Ted Miller. “With Millennials, we’re trying to be more strategic and communicate in a different way.”

Dear Keenan and Miller, guess what great communications strategy is for either selling widgets or organizing people: NOT TALKING ABOUT YOUR TARGETS IN THE THIRD PERSON. Also maybe not talking about HOW you are going to SELL TO THEM. Cause everyone loves to know how they are marketed to, like they are a piece of meat.

You want to talk amongst organizations about successful campaigns that seemed to resonate amongst college-age kids? Great. Do it privately. You gain NO BENEFIT TALKING TO A WASHINGTON POST REPORTER ABOUT THIS.

And please stop, stop, STOP publicly talking about the “intensity gap.” (That 2010 study you commissioned should have NEVER been a document you shared with the press).

The “intensity gap” absolutely exists amongst non-activists. Let’s get something straight, voter does not equal activist. Voter just means you go out and vote. Activist means you do something (anything) other than voting on Election Day. But what you’re voting on Election Day is often determined by what activists were doing leading up to Election Day.

Of course there are lots of under 30 activists in the pro-choice movement. Some of them write for this blog even. But here’s my message to NARAL. Shut up about the intensity gap. First of all you don’t know about the “intensity diminishment” as all those young supporters you see bused to Washington, DC by their parents on Roe Day grow up. Guess what? A lot of them will end up drifting away from their church and their anti-choice positions. Not all of them, of course, but usually what you feel at 12 you don’t feel quite as intently about in your 20s or 30s or I would still get up early on Saturday mornings to watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

(And here’s the chance to quote my favorite FUCKING STUPID QUOTE NANCY KEENAN EVER SAID TO REPORTER SARAH KLIFF.)

“I just thought, my gosh, they are so young,” Keenan recalled. “There are so many of them, and they are so young.” March for Life estimates it drew 400,000 activists to the Capitol this year. An anti-Stupak rally two months earlier had about 1,300 attendees.

You want to garner more teenagers and 20-somethings Keenan, then why not just do it and stop telling the press HOW you’re going to do it. Stop talking about the fact you don’t have as many “youth supporters” as you’d like (all it’s going to do is piss off everyone who is a young supporter of Choice).

Maybe another piece of advice is Keenan (and Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards who’s a tad better at talking about what they do) need to just stop spilling their guts to reporter Sarah Kliff. Not because Kliff is misquoting them. Because the first rule of communications strategy is that if you don’t have a good message when talking to the press THEN DON’T DO IT.

And doubters in the pro-choice movement should never again be given airtime or column space to say that online organizing isn’t real organizing or that young people aren’t invested in the movement. We just united – younger and older, online and offline – to play offense and we just won.

In response to this awful piece erasing young feminists and claiming that feminism is “over the hill,” Shelby and I wrote to USA Today and asked them to get the real story. A bit of our letter to the editor:

Contrary to the article’s claims, we know our movement’s history, and we are carrying it into the future. We don’t just identify with feminism; we live it day to day. We fight for reproductive, economic, racial and social justice online, in the streets, and side by side with our friends and family members. We’re questioning, bending and breaking down social norms, including sexuality, gender, age, class and race. We are abortion clinic escorts, online organizers, rape crisis center volunteers, radical journalists and sometimes even presidents of NOW chapters.

Read the rest for yourself.

Trigger warning: descriptions of violence against women, graphic content.

Every TV season there’s a show that looks to have so much potential that the buzz starts to gather around it before the show even airs. This season, that show is FX ‘s new late night horror-drama, “American Horror Story.” The pilot had promise, with scream-inducing, jump-out-of-your-seats scary moments. And I have to admit, I was hooked. Just a few days later, I watched the first episode and was indeed horrified, but not for the reasons you might think.

This isn’t a show about scary monsters, although there are monsters that jump out from dark corners. This isn’t a show about murdered couples in a scary, vintage home, although there’s plenty of murder and gore. It’s an abortion horror story, a drama on a popular network aimed at young adult viewers that blames the years and years of horror occurring in a scary house on a 1920′s drug-addicted doctor who performed late term, unsafe abortions in his basement.

Here’s how this abomination of a television show goes: man, wife, and daughter move from the East coast to a haunted California house to flee their troubled marriage. The wife suffered a still birth and afterward, her husband cheated on her with his college student. Typical, I know. It gets better, though: the wife sleeps with a masked ghost thinking its her husband – see, women are so slutty! get it!- and in episode two, reveals that she is expecting. Meanwhile, the husband is suffering from hallucinations and an alluring house maid -damn the sexy women always trying to seduce well-meaning men!- and then in a random fit, he goes back to the East coast to deal with a “problem.”

What’s the problem? His mistress is pregnant and she needs support as she has chosen to have an abortion. I guess young women that choose to abort can’t make the choice without a man there by their side, holding their hand through the process. Of course, the support of a partner is cool, but the show presents the young mistress as a needy, mentally unhinged basket case that couldn’t go through with the abortion, but I ‘ll get to that part later. While the young mistress wails and begs the man to rekindle their romance, he stoically resists her advances (pesky seductress!) and takes her to the abortion clinic. The clinic is a dark, dingy, very unsanitary looking place; a nurse wheels around a decrepit female patient with blood all over her and the man tries to support his sobbing woman mistress.

Back in LA, wife and daughter are assaulted by some visitors that want to reenact a murder that purportedly happened in that house thirty or so years ago. Although the wife and daughter survive, they are so traumatized that wife decides to sell the house. And that brings us to tonight’s episode, the most heinously anti-choice propaganda I have ever seen. Period. When I say that, I include the anti-abortion signs protestors hold up at anti-choice rallies and in front of abortion clinics.

Last night, the true horror of the house is revealed; the reason for the haunting becomes apparent. Back in the 1920′s, an East coast socialite became enraged when her doctor husband didn’t bring home enough money, so the devious-she-devil (we’ve seen this before, evil woman , it’s all her fault!) informs the doctor husband that she’s found a woman in a “bad situation,” that has sixty dollars and is willing to pay for the problem to be “taken care of.” Because apparently, abortion doctors are greedy, evil monsters that prey on young girls in desperate situations.

Cut to the next scene where the door bell rings and a young, blond, almost angelic looking woman enters. She’s crying, softly, as the she-devil-wife leads her into the bathroom where she helps her dress in a white gown. There, the wife forces the young girl to drink a substance that makes the girl act completely drugged and incoherent, but not before the wife collects the girl’s money. Apparently, young women don’t make the choice to abort willingly, they’re totally drugged and forced to go through with the procedure. The wife then leads the girl into the basement where the doctor performs the abortion. An announcer cuts in saying, “the souls of 12 babies are said to haunt the house to this day.” Because that’s how many women were “lured” into that evil doctor’s basement. Suddenly, the opening credits clips make sense because they’re images of dead fetus parts kept in jars in the dingy basement. Message: not only are doctors that perform abortions evil, money-grubbing, exploitative human beings, they’re totally fucking crazy.

And folks, this isn’t all, remember when the man’s mistress had an abortion in an earlier episode? Oh, she didn’t, instead she’s going to keep the “baby” and make him pay for it. Yep, that’s right, in one swoop of the screen writer’s pen, the woman goes from lunatic abortion-needing mistress, to vindictive mistress that wants to ruin a man’s life. As the show goes on, the young woman becomes more and more incoherent, until finally, a creepy neighbor attacks the mistress with a shovel and kills her. The husband then feels that his problem is solved and buries the girl in the backyard and builds a gazebo on top of the spot where her body is buried. It’s like the poor woman and her fetus were really just a “problem” that needed disposing of.

To top it all off, the last scene of tonight’s episode is of the man and his wife happily drinking iced tea in the gazebo. Sick.

How messed up is this? Violence against women, check. Reification of she-devil, seductress stereotypes, check. Abortion shaming, huge. fucking. check. There’s a way to may a show scary and it doesn’t have to include “babies haunting a mansion for almost 100 years.” Because if that isn’t straight out of the radical anti-choice playbook, I don’t know what is. And I’m still astounded the plot of this show was green lighted. I get that this is cable, that the rules aren’t as stringent, that FX is probably trying to “push the boundaries,” but the only boundary FX is pushing is the one between really bad and really disturbing.

Beyonce announced her pregnancy just a month or two ago, and there was just a flutter of excitement for the first big-time Hip-Hop baby. And, then, yesterday, Beyonce’s prosthetic baby bump collapsed on HD TV and everyone is questioning her, and her fertility. People are making allegations that she is faking her pregnancy, that she is having a surrogate mother carry a child that she will then “pretend” to be hers. Most of all people are calling for an explanation and “proof” that she is pregnant: one celebrity columnist said, “She better pull a Demi or Britney and show off her bump on a magazine cover!”

First, NO. Beyonce does not have to prove anything about her sexuality, her fertility, or her reproductive choices to absolutely anyone. She can represent and do whatever she wants with her body, which includes her uterus and her baby bump. Second, this shouty response to Beyonce having a prosthetic baby bump illustrates the extreme pressure valuing fertility puts on us. We often talk about the social pressures and stigma of not carrying a pregnancy to term here, and this instance illustrates another example of one of the reason why that stigma exists: America is fertility obsessed, and we have high standards for what ‘good’ fertility looks like.

Pregnancy can be vomitey, swollen, uncomfortable and hard. Birth is bloody, smelly and awesome in all of its meanings. But connecting uncomfortable, bloody imagery with highly valued soft little babies and their beautiful Mamas horrifies people; so, we demand that pregnant women (especially ones in the spot light) clean up, and be perfect. Most likely Beyonce’s bump is smaller or of a different shape or position than the image society has of a perfectly protruding oval, and the bump is there because she feels like she has to be perfectly pregnant. If that is not reason, I can assure you that, beyond being none of our business, whatever the reason is for her prosthetic baby bump (miscarriage, surrogacy, infertility etc.) it is high social pressures on fertility that is causing her to wear it.

I am choosing to BELIEVE HER that she is pregnant because I TRUST WOMEN, but I also check myself because I know I project my own values of pregnancy-image and fertility onto her. Do you want to be a true Beyonce fan too? Yes? Then:

• Do not judge her for what is happening–respect her and her reproductive and parenting choices.
• Repeat: I will love her equally with or without children
• Repeat: I will love her and her adopted, surrogate, invitro child the same amount that I would love her and her child that is a product of a “naturally” fertilized and implanted egg.
• Repeat: I will love her if she has a miscarage or an abortion.
• Repeat: I will love her and her if her baby is in anyway malformed.

Check yourself when you are disappointed that she is not being your ideal super-star, super-feminist, super-mom–she’s human.

Confession: I watch 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom like it’s my job (because it kind of is).  I pay careful attention to how teen pregnancy and young parenthood are portrayed in the media, because I think it’s incredibly important how we think about these young women and their families; their portrayals provide insight into how we, as a society, think about teens and sex, relationships, reproductive choice, and public support for families in need.

Two years ago, I had Glee on that list of must-watch shows because Quinn Fabray, perfect-cheerleader-turned-Glee clubber was pregnant.  Despite the convoluted conception story and contrived “Who’s the father?” subplot, I actually liked the way Glee handled Quinn’s pregnancy.  Her friends at Glee club came together and supported her, and those that rejected Quinn (her own mother, the cheerleaders) were the bad guys.   At the end of the season, Quinn placed the baby, Beth, for adoption – without a lot of clear development about why she made that choice – and then no more.

Last season, Quinn wasn’t 16 and pregnant.  She was a birthmother.  And the adoption was hardly ever mentioned.  Quinn walked away from the adoption, didn’t look back, didn’t grieve, didn’t communicate with her daughter’s adoptive mother.  Instead, she recreated her former golden-ponytailed self with Cheerio tenacity.  To be frank, I stopped watching the show for a while because I was so frustrated they’d turned Quinn into a Juno.

That’s right, a Juno.  In my analyses of how birthmothers (and sometimes birthfathers) are portrayed, I’ve come up with four clichéd, awful stereotypes, which are not mutually exclusive.

1. The Juno, brought to you by the blockbuster movie that shaped a generation’s opinion of birthmothers as people who make an adoption plan, walk away, don’t look back, and conclude “I think he was always hers.”  While there are some women who might choose closed adoption and move on quickly with their lives, I’ve spoken with a lot of birthmothers, and I’ve never found them.  (This doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  I’m sure they do.  But I think they are a minority.)  In fact, the walk-away-and-forget myth is a dangerous one for women that was used to justify coerced adoptions during the Baby Scoop era before Roe v. Wade.

2. The Crackwhore, brought to you by American conservatives.  Most usually, the crackwhore (and I cringe to write that word, believe me) stereotype is used not in voluntary adoption placements, but in instances where social services intervene and place children in foster care or public adoptions.  Despite this difference, the stereotype is used to portray birthmothers as epitome of the bad mother, incapable of caring for and wholly unworthy of raising her children.

3. The Birthmartyr, brought to you by Dr. Drew and the folks at 16 and Pregnant.  When Dr. Drew says the young women who choose adoption are “so incredibly mature” and “selfless” and turns to the birthmother dealing with post-adoption grief and tells her to “move on for the good of her child”, that’s the birthmartyr trope in action.  On 16 and Pregnant, the young women who chose adoption are self-sacrificing heroes, while the young women who chose to parent are (according to Dr. Drew) immature and poor decision-makers.

4. The Baby Stealer, brought to you by Loosing Isaiah and every adoptive parent’s worst nightmare.  As open adoption (where birth and adoptive families have ongoing post-adoption contact) becomes more and more common and society continues to not understand that relationship, the continuing presence of the birthparent is seen as a threat – either metaphorical or literal – to the bond between adoptive parent and child. Indeed, open adoption should (and often does) foster a relationship of mutual trust and respect between all the child’s parents that alleviates any such worries, yet we still represent birthparents as constantly scheming to regain custody of their child.

On last night’s episode, Shelby, Quinn’s daughter’s adoptive mother returns and invites Quinn and Puck (the baby’s father) into Beth’s life.  Early in the episode, I was pleased: Open adoption! An adoptive parent recognizing that contact with birthparents will benefit her daughter in the long run!  But things were messier than that, as they usually are in adoption.

Did Quinn and Puck want contact?  Because actual adoption was glossed over so quickly, it’s hard to know what the terms of their agreement were.  In my research, I’ve found that most birthparents do want contact, but they also deserve some degree of control of that contact.  Being blindsided by an adoptive mother showing up at their school, expecting them to be grateful for a brief glimpse of an iPhone photo, does not represent a mutually respectful arrangement.  Furthermore, for most birthparents, the first few years after the adoption are often the hardest.  Perhaps they needed time to process their decision more before contact was made.

Does Shelby have the right to put stipulations on Quinn and Puck’s contact with Beth? Yes, she does.  She is Beth’s adoptive mother, and she has an obligation to protect that child.  If Quinn represented a threat, or even a very bad influence, perhaps Shelby would be justified in setting limits, but she seems to be rejecting Quinn because she has pink instead of blonde hair and a snazzy fake nose ring.  If, as an adoptive parent, you want your child’s birthparents involved in their life (and research shows you probably should, to some extent), you need to accept them as a complex person with flaws and phases, as someone who is living a life different than your own.  And you need to be accepting of a young high school girl acting out by dying her hair and wearing grunge clothing – especially when, as Shelby (and all the other characters) did, you believe the behavior changes are, for the time being, her way of processing the adoption.

Of course, by the end of the episode, we realize that Quinn isn’t a Juno.  She’s a baby stealer.  She tells Puck, “I have to get her back… We’re gonna get full custody.”  Not only is this a legal impossibility, Glee has swapped one damaging stereotype for another.

Most people don’t know (or don’t know that they know) any birthparents, so they really rely on these TV and movie representations to help understand who places children for adoption. If we don’t actually know what birthparents look like, we don’t really know what adoption looks like and don’t really understand it as the complex, loving, messy, sad, and beautiful lifelong process that it is truly is.

And if we don’t understand adoption, we can’t protect it as an important reproductive choice that all women should have access to, without judgment, without stereotype, and with a clear understanding of the long-term commitment and consequences involved.

A guest post from  Jane Cawthorne.

Cristina Yang had an abortion. In Prime Time. Yes, it’s true.

The Grey’s Anatomy character, super whiz-kid, tough-as-nails with a hidden heart-of-gold cardiac surgeon-in-training, got pregnant, and told her husband, Owen, she wanted an abortion. They had a big fight. Owen wanted to have a baby (or more correctly, wanted Cristina to have a baby), got all “lifey” on her (Cristina’s word) and threw her out. Then Cristina stayed over at Meredith’s house and helped Meredith with her new baby, the one she was adopting from Malawi with McDreamy, demonstrating that she, indeed, could (if she wanted to) look after a baby and even smile at it and kiss it on the cheek, all the while affirming her desire to have an abortion. Cristina convinces Meredith that she really really really doesn’t want to have a baby and that she wants to concentrate on being a surgeon. She says she needs Meredith to be supportive because Meredith is her “person” which is “Grey’s-speak” for bigger than best friends or kind of soul-mates without sex. Meredith in turn convinces Owen that indeed, Cristina does not want a baby and says he should not pressure her. She boosts Cristina’s case by adding that she, Meredith, knows what it’s like to be the child of a woman who didn’t want you. And anyway, Owen knew who Cristina was when they married, and shouldn’t expect her to change her stripes or something like that.

In the end, Owen goes with her to the appointment and Cristina actually has the abortion, but not before the doctor performing the procedure says very sternly, “I’m going to ask you one more time, are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?” It is. She does. Surprisingly, the writers didn’t get out of the story line by making her have a miscarriage, a change of heart or an ectopic pregnancy like she did in an earlier season. Let the chips fall where they may. There has been a Prime Time abortion.

Wow.

What will happen to Cristina now? This is the most interesting question in TV, as far as I’m concerned. Will she just move on with her life guilt free, possibly expressing feelings of relief as most women do who have abortions? Or, will she be made to suffer? Well, it is Grey’s Anatomy, so we can assume there will be some suffering, but will the cause of it be the abortion?

This is what should happen. Cristina goes on to have the life she is planning and has worked so hard to get. She feels relief. She finishes all of her training and becomes a world renowned cardiac surgeon, unencumbered by offspring she did not want. She has a good marriage with Owen, with no more than the normal ups and downs that any relationship faces. She is a fun Aunt to Meredith’s new baby, assuming social services does not take that baby away, which is currently a possibility.

In a future episode, Cristina considers what birth control is best for her. Meredith and Cristina have a long discussion about the relative merits of everything from birth control pills to IUDs. Cristina, never one to do anything in half measures, decides to have a tubal ligation. Meredith is aghast and says, “Seriously?” She tries to talk her out of it, saying there are effective non-surgical options to control fertility. But Cristina says, “Mer, I’m some kind of pregnancy magnet. Please, respect my decision.” Then Owen dramatically intervenes just as the nurses are prepping her for surgery and announces that, out of love for his wife and his new understanding that she will never want children, he will have a vasectomy. America is informed about this safe and viable option. Owen gets snipped and goes back to work the next day.

A further series of episodes involves Cristina and Owen creating an abortion clinic when they realize a lot of women have trouble accessing services.

Episodes that we should not see include Cristina being plagued by guilt, Owen resenting her, Cristina second guessing her decision the next time she sees a chubby-cheeked newborn, Cristina getting hit by a car, Cristina losing her job or suffering in some way that might be construed as punishment, Cristina being left behind in the Rapture. She lives, as much as anyone can on Grey’s Anatomy, happily ever after.

Recently I watched “The Fly” (the 1986 version) for the first time. I have had this film on my shelf for almost two years now; my reason for avoiding it was that I am obsessed with Jeff Goldblum and I was afraid that seeing him all gross and decomposing would make me love him less. I know how ridiculous that sounds.

The thing about being completely in love with Jeff Goldblum is that, unlike many other stars to whom I am attracted, he tends to, in general, make pretty good movies. I think this must be difficult as an unconventionally attractive person, particularly one with a very distinctive cadence, so it is all the more admirable that the Goldblum ouevre has very few misses. So I was fairly confident that “The Fly” would be good.

For those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it – but I also recommend staying away from this post until you have seen it; I know it’s ridiculous to post spoiler warnings for a 25-year-old film, but I do plan to discuss a plot point that I did not know about before watching and I just want to make sure you’re prepared. Also I find it tiresome to do plot summaries so if you haven’t seen it and want to keep reading, better start googling.

“The Fly” has been understood in some circles as a cinematic metaphor for AIDS, although David Cronenburg was reportedly surprised by this interpretation as he had intended the film to be about disease, aging and death in general. In the cultural context of the 1980s, though, even an unintentional reference to AIDS makes a lot of sense and the interpretation has stuck – even I thought that was what it was about, going in. What I didn’t know was that this film deals unflinchingly with the abortion issue and more generally with bodily autonomy.

What I loved about the abortion theme was that there was no hemming and hawing over the politics of it; it was simply a choice that Veronica needed to make, and once she made it even the slimeball ex-boyfriend was fully ready to help her out. If this film was made today I am certain that either the pregnancy storyline would have been cut altogether, or there would have had to have been some obligatory consideration of the “pro-life” viewpoint before she could ultimately go ahead with it. How dreary it is that we have regressed so much.

There are moments in the film that were so real, I felt as if Cronenburg (and Geena Davis) must have spent some time hanging out in the counselling offices of abortion clinics. When Veronica sees Seth in the last stages of deterioration and decides she needs to go ahead with the abortion immediately, Stathis reminds her that it is the middle of the night. “I need it out of me! Now!” she screams. What clinic staffer hasn’t seen that level of desperation before? I know this is Goldblum’s star-making role but I think Davis was note-perfect. Her whole story is a woman who falls in love with someone who changes, and becomes something different than she thought – whether from disease, or obsession – and when she finds herself pregnant, she has to decide how much of that man she wants in her life through the potential child. Also it might end up being a giant maggot. We’ve all been there. And Seth’s fear that the child might be all that is left of the pre-disease him…I have a friend whose partner died, and at the funeral his mother said to her (my friend) that she had hoped she might be pregnant, that her son might have left her with a part of him to carry on. This is a real thing in the world.

I was thrilled to find this plot in “The Fly” – it’s not unlike going back to rewatch “Dirty Dancing” and finding the abortion part, that I didn’t understand as a child, is actually amazing and realistic and integral to the story and themes. It’s not so much about films showing abortion as it is about them portraying it realistically. Everything about “The Fly” is a total mind fuck (this is Cronenburg after all), so finding this ridiculously straightforward, unquestioned abortion plot is such an unexpected gem.

Of course, after Veronica decides to have the abortion, Seth kidnaps her from the operating table and brings her back to the lab, where he wants to fuse himself to her and the baby, creating “the perfect family”. Holy social commentary, batman! At this point I may have been reading too much into it but I really think there is a lot going on here regarding not just Veronica’s immediate physical safety and that aspect of bodily autonomy, but also the idea of the nuclear family and gross antichoice dudes who won’t “let” their girlfriends have abortions. And the idea of marriage as a solution for unintended pregnancies. It’s 1986. There is a lot going on, friends.

Obviously there are a lot of themes interwoven throughout “The Fly” and it is not just a straight up horror movie, but I think bodily autonomy is one of the main ones and it manages to deal with a lot of complex issues around that, possible because it buries them in horror. It’s like Frankenstein! Or more contemporarily, it reminded me a lot of “District 9” (upon which it was clearly a huge influence). But it really can be viewed as a complex narrative of the abortion decision: the feeling of violation, the uncertainty about who the baby might be if it is born, the complicated emotions of the men involved, the urgency – it was all there.

Nothing delights me more than when I consume some pop culture that is unexpectedly feminist. And best of all, the makeup effects were so good I could barely even tell it was Jeff Goldblum under there, so my undying love emerges undamaged. Good movie night.

I’ve already admitted on this blog that I occasionally read romance novels, so longtime Abortion Gang readers might not be surprised to find out that my other secret “unwind time” activity is watching soap operas.  After a day spent in a high pressure environment, crunching numbers and doing other tax accountant activities, I find it relaxing to watch the day’s episode of “One Life To Live” which I record each day on my DVR.  For forty-five minutes every evening I get to enjoy a little escapism from my life.  The storylines, ranging from switched babies to outlandish revenge plots, are wildly imaginative to put it mildly, which, to me, is part of what makes it so entertaining.

I was worried that I might have to give up my vice, though, when one of the teenage girl characters on the show, Destiny, began to show the tell tale entertainment signs of teenage pregnancy.  You know, the ignorance of any and all birth control options, remarks about such things being her boyfriend’s responsibility and the inevitable weight gain and perennial nausea, that could not, alas, be explained away by a fondness for burritos.  I started watching afterwards, though, so it was with no small amount of trepidation that I began watching the last few episodes on my DVR.  Destiny finally saw a doctor who who confirmed what she had been busy denying: a teen pregnancy.  The good doctor laid out her options to her as her brother blustered his way into the exam room filled with guilt and intent on protecting his baby sister.

Despite that, teenage Destiny still took the decision of whether to become a parent, to have a baby and give it up for adoption or to have an abortion into her own hands.  Though the decision making dialog between Destiny and her best friend, Dani, was painful as Destiny made remarks like “It would be easier to have a baby than to go through the trouble of an abortion or adoption,” the show writers effectively pointed out the very obvious flaws of pursuing the fantasy of motherhood as a teenager.  Issues like being able to go to college or supporting herself and her potential child.

After a much needed reality check, Destiny, to both my surprise, announced that she wanted to have an abortion.  Because the show takes place in Pennsylvania, though, the OB/GYN tells her that she must wait 24 hours.  Then, she throws up another state sponsored hurdle: Destiny is under 18, and in this anti-choice state, that means that if you do not have a parent’s permission to have an abortion, you must get permission from a judge.   According to the Guttmacher Institute, even if Destiny were over 18, she would still have to endure what they describe as “state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided.”

I don’t know where the show is going to go with this storyline, but I am impressed that ABC, a major network, and “One Life To Live,” chose to ruthlessly tear apart both the delusional myths of teenage motherhood, perpetuated by the likes of Bristol Palin, MTV’s unreality tripe “Teen Mom,” and ABC’s “Secret Life Of The American Teenager,” and the laws in states like Pennsylvania which only serve to hurt the citizens whose welfare they are supposed to be protecting.