To quote Gloria Feldt, “Media portrayals, real or fictional, don’t merely inform us — they form us.” In this series, I will be examining five films – classic, mainstream, independent, foreign, and pre-Roe – and five television shows – daytime soap, pre-Roe, drama, critically lauded, and teen-oriented – that address unexpected pregnancy, to examine how past portrayals can influence and reflect society’s view of abortion.
Some television shows will come right up to the edge of abortion, then back away with the Conveniently Timed Miscarriage. My favorite example of this phenomena occurred on the mid-1990s TV show Party of Five, the occasionally-overwrought drama about five siblings orphaned after their parents were killed in a car crash. Residing in a ridiculously pretty house in San Francisco, the Salinger kids – headed by a scruffy Matthew Fox rocking a semi-mullet – dealt with dead parents, alcoholism, infidelity, cancer, business woes, and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
