4
Thursday, May 30, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
ERIN WHITE
Editorial Page Editor
Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White
Ashley Zhang
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
CASSANDRA MANSUETTI
Editor in Chief
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
M
y first exposure to abortion
was the ’80s movie “Dirty
Dancing” — not a health
class or a Sunday in church, but a
movie. If you’ve seen it you know the
scene. If not, one of the characters finds
out she’s pregnant. A few scenes and
exchanges of cash later, she is found sick
in her bed from some sort of infection
from a “back-alley doctor.” The word
“abortion” is never stated; it is simply
implied. I didn’t even fully grasp what
had happened to the girl until I watched
it years later as a teen who could finally
put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Dirty Dancing” is set in 1963 — 10
years before the landmark Supreme
Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized
abortion — when back-alley abortions
like this were the norm in states
where the procedure was illegal. Fast
forward to 2019, nearly 50 years after
Roe v. Wade: Conservative states have
launched an orchestrated attack on
abortion, making it a felony, banning
it after a fetal heartbeat is detected
(usually around six weeks, before most
women even know they’re pregnant)
and even leaving out exceptions for rape
or incest.
With a conservative lean on the
Supreme Court, these restrictive laws
are looking to put Roe v. Wade back on
the table and ultimately overturn it. I’m
not writing to explain why overturning
the legalization of abortion would be
disastrous for anyone with a uterus —
bodily autonomy and freedom from
government-mandated
pregnancies
should not even be a question. Yet
here we are, on the brink of a return
to coat hanger abortions and telling
51 percent of the U.S. population that
their choice doesn’t matter. But I
want to talk about pop culture.
Pop culture is often an individual’s
first exposure to varying ideas.
Whether it’s a song, show, movie or
play, pop culture allows someone to
look outside the bubble they live in and
into a world they have not yet seen.
Prior to and following “Dirty Dancing,”
abortion has been a plot line or topic
addressed in a multitude of movies and
TV shows alike. Despite this exposure,
abortion is still a taboo word, inciting
heated debate wherever it is brought
up. Yet, dancing around the concept of
abortion — why people choose it, how it
makes them feel, who gets them — does
no good for the discussion of it. Abortion
is treated like a dirty word, not a medical
procedure that about one quarter of
women will undergo. To improve the
conversation about abortion, we must
normalize it to show, through widely
consumed media, that abortion is not
just its myths and falsifications.
Perhaps the first radical portrayal
of abortion was broadcasted in 1972
on the CBS show “Maude” starring
Bea Arthur (“Golden Girls”). After
discovering she’s pregnant, Maude
talks with her husband and they decide
they do not want to raise a child at
their age. In New York where Maude
lives, abortion is legal, so she gets the
procedure; thus inciting over 7,000
letters of protest to CBS. For its time
period, the way abortion was depicted
in “Maude” was revolutionary. It
features an honest discussion with a
partner and reasoning for the choice,
all done a year before abortion was
nationally legal. More modern media
like “Juno” and “Knocked Up,” show
abortion as the option only “bad people”
choose.
Obviously, I cannot force all media
creators to cast abortion in a pro-choice
light, but for those who have or want
to — like the makers of “Scandal,”
“Girls,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “Jane
the Virgin” and others — they should
at least do it right. And that’s not to say
those shows haven’t. They’ve shown
abortion casually, as a difficult choice,
surgically, medically, as a single woman,
as a married woman and more. This is
what abortion is, in reality, and that
can be expanded. Some of the most
popular shows in America are medical
and family shows; shows that have the
potential to actually make an impact
and start a conversation.
And they can do even more. They
can show more low-income women
getting abortions, as this is the main
demographic; or show a devoutly
religious person getting an abortion —
as many do — and highlight that religion
should not inhibit choice; or don’t make
abortion into such a tragedy, because
taking control of your body is not tragic
and most women feel relief after an
abortion; or show how men benefit
from abortion, because that seems to be
necessary when trying to get people
to care about something; or even
better, maybe the people of the United
States can create comprehensive sex
education for students to prevent
these unwanted pregnancies and
talk about abortion loudly instead of
in hushed whispers. It shouldn’t be
up to “Dirty Dancing” to teach kids
about abortion, and it shouldn’t be
up to the government to decide if you
can get one.
SAMANTHA DELLA FERA | COLUMN
Samantha Della Fera can be
reached at samdf@umich.edu.
Abortion will never go away, so let’s talk about it
EMILY CONSIDINE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT EMCONSID@UMICH.EDU
Environmental oversight
APPLY TO BE PART OF OPINION
Undergraduate students are encouraged
to apply for an Opinion column for
Spring and Summer term. Email
the Summer Editorial Page Editor
(ekwhite@umich.edu) for more
information about writing.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE
CONVERSATION
Readers are encouraged to submit letters
to the editor and op-eds. Letters should
be fewer than 300 words while op-
eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send
the writer’s full name and University
affiliation to
tothedaily@michigandaily.com.