Abortion Gang

In its second episode that aired last Sunday night, Hannah, Marnie and Shoshanna meet at the clinic where their friend Jessa is scheduled to have an abortion. Jessa is late to the appointment (“These things never start on time,” she says to the bartender, needing a drink before she heads to the clinic), leaving Marnie, who scheduled the appointment to get angry. “You’re a really good friend,” Hannah mollifies Marnie,  “… and you’ve thrown a really lovely abortion.” Earlier in the episode, Hannah’s sorta-boyfriend Adam registers his disapproval that she’s accompanying a friend to an abortion, or at least what he perceives as her nonchalance about the abortion. Hannah’s response? “Uh, what was she supposed to do? Have a baby and then take it to her baby-sitting job?” Adam is appropriately chastened.

Take, for example, Fox’s New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel. New Girl is actually something of a network television sibling of Girls. Both were created by screenwriting wunderkinds (Elizabeth Meriwether of New Girl, Lena Dunham of Girls) and both premiered to huge hype that highlighted their hip, young sensibilities. And on a recent episode of New Girl, a character was also forced to contemplate a possible unplanned pregnancy. The main character’s best friend CeCe thought she might be pregnant from her casual, no-strings-attached relationship with Schmidt. Obviously, I don’t expect network television shows to included honest discussions of abortion; I do expect half-hearted lip service, payed mostly via euphemisms.New Girl couldn’t even do that. In the course of the episode, before it was revealed that the character wasn’t actually pregnant, the only choices discussed were baby names, whether Schmidt would propose to a woman he’d never been on an actual date with and who’d be godfather.

No one would ever accuse New Girl of being grounded in realism; most of my criticisms of the show in general stem from its insistence on making Jess a child-like cartoon. An earlier episode centered around her inability to say the word ‘penis,’ and no functioning adult believes that unironically shouting “Hey, Sailor,” in a bar will get you laid. From what we can tell of Girls (again, only two episodes in) the show’s decision to treat adult women as, well, adults is paying dividends with stories like Jessa’s aborted abortion.

However, New Girl’s obfuscation may indicate a new normal, where not only is saying the word abortion is off the table, but even implying it is. That makes Girls, miscarriage copout and all, that much bolder. I think pro-choice audiences are allowed to have high standards when it comes to the pop culture they consume. In recent years, several TV shows have demonstrated it is possible to portray abortion in a nuanced light (Friday Night Lights and Grey’s Anatomy have both done this well). We should continue to demand stories that honestly portray the experiences of women across the spectrum of reproductive choice. But I think we should be appreciative when a show (even a flawed one) demonstrates an honesty we’d otherwise go without.

 Sarah lives in Boston and volunteers with Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund. You can follow her on twitter @SBHudson108.

I have had a love-hate relationship with 30 Rock almost since the show’s inception. I love it purely because it is smart and hilarious, and the Liz Lemon character is such an unabashed loser that it’s hard sometimes to remember how conventionally attractive she actually is. There are so many things about it that I like, in fact, that it took me a lot longer than it usually does to start getting annoyed with its faults.

It was an episode a couple seasons ago that did it for me; you might remember it. In the first five minutes, a man beats up and decapitates a cardboard display of Liz, and Jenna gets a book thrown at her face. Then there is a truly disgusting “joke” involving Pete raping his wife in her sleep, which gets not one, but two visual depictions. All played for laughs. Because of various elements of my privilege I was able to shrug off some of the vile sexist and transphobic “humour” of the show, but that episode really crossed a line for me.

I keep watching it, and I’m glad I do, because on Thursday night while waiting for the (in my opinion) much funnier, smarter, and warmer Parks and Recreation to start, I tuned in to 30 Rock and caught an episode that not only depicted a smart, friendly and funny little feminist child, but also involved some nuanced commentary on the American economy. But best of all was a scene in which Liz Lemon told Jack, “You are being so transvaginal right now!”.

Immediately my Twitter feed repeated the quote back to me via about six or seven different people, not all of whom are reproductive rights activists. This is the true joy of 30 Rock for me – they manage to sneak in the kind of jokes that tell you that someone is paying attention, even if it is just Tina Fey or a bunch of nerdy TV writers. Sometimes as an activist you get so wrapped up in a particular issue, you start to lose the ability to tell how much the general public actually knows about it. Is it common knowledge that these horrible transvaginal ultrasound requirements (and other ridiculous abortion restrictions) are sweeping across the US, or is this just something that abortion geeks like us pay attention to?

Not that 30 Rock making a joke about something means it is common knowledge – obviously there is an intellectual elitism that is almost essential to fully appreciating this show (another thing that bothers me about it…but also makes me feel smart when I get all the jokes). But Liz Lemon calling a controlling, patronizing, uber-privileged man “transvaginal” – it’s so, so important that she uses it in the context of calling Jack out for being intrusive – is important. It means that if this isn’t something we’re talking about, it should be. Because a lot of people are being really transvaginal right now about our wombs and lives. Liz Lemon’s got our back.

In the introduction to MOMENTUM, Dr. Joycelyn Elders declares that “the best contraceptive in the world is a good education.” MOMENTUM provides more of an open discussion and dialogue than an entirely accurate or comprehensive sexual education, but it lays much-need groundwork for these necessary conversations, it’s enjoyable to read, and it ends with a gorgeous poem. In these senses and more, it’s the best sex-ed book they never gave you in high school.

The anthology comes out of a conference I have never attended and now very much want to, MOMENTUM, an open space that strives to “embrace all elements of sexuality” and “create a safe space where respect and a willingness, not to always agree, but to listen with an open heart and open mind” where attendees could get their sex geek on and, at the same time, feel a tremendous sense of acceptance and camaraderie.” These attitudes from the co-organizers and no co-editors, Tess Danesi (I’m referencing her words from the introduction), Dee Dennis and Inara de Luna run throughout the book as themes.

Rebecca Chalker goes beyond the “sexual revolution” to identify work in what she terms the “pleasure revolution,” the “liberation” of the clitoris and of female pleasure from the “murky swamps” of male-dominated psychoanalytic culture (Freud was not kind to our lady-parts. I read him so you wouldn’t have to.) Ned Mayhem gives a similar, completely fascinating overview of the history of sexual science, complete with an extensive works cited. Also, his name is Ned Mayhem, which is just phenomenal, and it was very cool to see someone self-identify in their bio as a queer scientist who runs a couples’ porn site. For a queer academic with a fluctuating relationship to the gender binary, this sort of gem makes the book utterly worth reading. Likewise, there is something adorable about Bill Taverner’s detailed advice – complete with exclamation points! – for those seeking work in the field of sexology. Work like this creates space for a new kind of normal, for a world on which queer scientists can “Become a Presenter!” and “Get Yourself Published!” in the field of sexology and be concerned only with the quality of their work, rather than whether the work is necessary, or welcome, as those are merely givens in the utopic space MOMENTUM creates.

(more…)

I do not enjoy “Communications” as a field. I think, honestly, it’s manipulative. The whole point of communications is to frame your issue in such a way that an audience sees it the way you want them to. Communications, PR, advertising, marketing and branding are all – no matter what anyone says to the contrary – intimately entwined. These fields are getting it on, if you know what I mean, and they’re reproducing, and who knows what they will spawn next? Facebook timeline. I rest my case.

Despite having no interest in communications, I stumbled into a job at a communications firm when I graduated college, and I have been trying, without much success, to stumble my way back out again for years. Working in communications has taught me two important things. One, communications is critical, absolutely critical, to getting anything done in any other movement or field. Two, I do not like it.

I guess the third would be: Three, most people and movements really suck at it.

To generalize in a pretty extreme way, there are two schools of thought in communications. The first school of thought is the “Product” school of thought, and it involves thinking. What is my product, brand, or message? What kinds of people am I targeting with it? How will those people react? What reaction and audience do I want? How do I achieve that? The “Product” school of thought involves building an entire communications plan with multiple, interrelated aspects. It requires your team to establish and stick with a tone and core messaging. That tone and core messaging needs to extend from traditional media placements like op-eds and press releases through social media such as Twitter posts. This kind of communications plan is meant to build and keep an audience or membership over time. In the tortoise vs. the hare, the “Product” school of thought is the tortoise school of thought. Confession: this is absolutely the school of thought to which I subscribe.

The second school of thought is the “Get it Get it” school of thought. In that school of thought, all press is good press. All attention is good attention. While the “Product” school of thought thinks, “Hey, a thing has happened, in the media! It is related to things we do. It makes sense for us to comment. People should listen to us. We know about these things,” the “Get it Get it” school of thought thinks, “A THING HAS HAPPENED. WE CAN DIMLY RELATE IT TO US, PROBABLY THROUGH OUTRAGE. COMMENT OH MY GOD COMMENT NOW RIDE THAT WAVE.” This school of thought will have big surges of attention, followed by almost no attention, because jumping up and down demanding to be heard is only interesting in the short term. This type of communications strategy will attract a large audience at times, but that audience is fickle and unreliable, with very little loyalty. This kind of strategy does not attract a dedicated membership that will be their for your company, organization, or brand through good times and bad, because your company, organization, or brand does not offer consistency. And if you are not consistent, your membership won’t be.

Having spent the last year actually working in the reproductive justice/prochoice movement, I have seen organizations employ both of these strategies. I have recently seen an upswing in long since established organizations, with dedicated followings of millions of hard-working members, alienate people across that membership by chasing the dragon of BIGGER NUMBERS and MORE ATTENTION. Here is what I say to younger people in the prochoice and reproductive justice movements:

Do not do this.

Do not do this, and what’s more, fight back when other people do it.

When you decide to work for an organization and you will be in any way part of their comm team – even if you simply contribute research that the comm team uses – look at their communications strategy. Listen to what they talk about. Do they know their audience, their membership? Do they understand how to talk to them? Are they willing to tell them things they don’t want to hear, because they can rely on their loyalty? Do they want to expand beyond that audience and continue to grow and reach out to other people? The answer to all of these things should be yes. If you and your friends are starting your own movement, group, or organization, ask yourselves these questions, and make sure the answers are all “yes.”

It can be hard when someone comes in with big ideas and changes the messaging in a way that makes you uncomfortable, because odds are, those changes will, in the short term, yield some big numbers. Suddenly, your organization may be receiving attention it didn’t get before. It’s hard to caution against that, because everyone likes attention. Here’s the thing: fight back any way. Recognize that sudden surges of attention based on drastic changes in messaging hit like bouts of hysteria, or like a night of heavy drinking. You’re in for manic highs in which everything seems so amazing you could shit rainbows followed by a terrible low alone at the police station waiting for your folks to pick you up and you don’t know where your friends are.

If you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at the Susan G. Komen debacle trajectory. It’s not a perfect example, because they weren’t looking for attention – in fact, they hoped no one would notice – and it wasn’t exactly a communications shift, although shifting communications was part of what happened. But the basic outline was familiar. A company that does one thing very well, with a wide membership base and lots of support, decides to make a drastic change to the way they do business. Many people within the company object and try to reason with them; those people are ignored. The Big Move is carried out anyway. Exeunt ship – sinking.

Communications are key to your piece of the movement you believe in, however tiny you may feel that piece to be. Commit to slow and steady growth to win the race. If your voice is young and spontaneous, don’t confuse that with erratic. If your voice is mature, don’t confuse that with immobile. Stick to a few key messages and talking points, and comment on current events where appropriate. I would love to see complementary pieces of the reproductive justice and prochoice movements working in beautiful tandem, where everyone feels they can find a place for themselves and their work. And we bring that about by communicating effectively what groups and organizations believe, in an honest and accessible way, and letting audiences and memberships find the place where they feel most comfortable.

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.