“Women's Lives Are on the Line, and Our Hands Are Tied”: How Television Is Reckoning With a Post-Dobbs America

Background

Since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision revoked federal protection for abortion rights, many states have restricted abortion. Although news media covers this shifting landscape through reporting, this article documents how entertainment content is responding to this new reality in its storytelling.

Methods

The sample is from a public database of abortion plotlines on American television (abortiononscreen.org). I separated the sample of 150 plotlines into two groups: plotlines that filmed and/or aired pre-Dobbs (January 2020–August 2022) and those that aired post-Dobbs (September 2022–December 2023). Coding occurred in Microsoft Excel.

Results

Post-Dobbs, there was an increase in the proportion of abortion plotlines that depicted procedural abortions compared with pre-Dobbs, but no change in the consistently low proportion of medication abortion depictions. The post-Dobbs sample included a 10% increase in teen characters compared with pre-Dobbs. Pre-Dobbs, the vast majority of plotlines (77%) did not portray any barriers to abortion care. Post-Dobbs, 33% depicted barriers. The most common reason for abortion seeking in both samples was age (11%). Pre-Dobbs, the next most common was a mis-timed pregnancy (10%). Post-Dobbs, the next most common was health concerns (11%).

Conclusions

Since Dobbs, more television plotlines are portraying obstacles to abortion care, yet they continue to tell stories of white, non-parenting teenagers who make up a small percentage of real abortion patients. Plotlines overrepresent procedural abortion over the more common medication abortion. Depictions of health-related reasons for abortion seeking obscure more commonly provided reasons for abortions, such as mistimed pregnancies, caregiving responsibilities, and financial concerns. Considering the low levels of abortion knowledge nationwide, understanding what (mis)information audiences encounter onscreen is increasingly important.