Sisson Gretchen, Rowland Brenly
University of California, San Francisco.
University of California, San Francisco.
Contraception. 2017 Jul;96(1):25-29. doi: 10.1016/j.contraception.2017.03.010. Epub 2017 Mar 29.
To examine the portrayal of complications and long-term health consequences associated with abortion on television, recognizing the impact that fictional stories can have on public beliefs about abortion's safety.
Using a systematic online search, we identified all instances of abortion on US television from 2005 to 2016. We qualitatively coded these plotlines to identify any occurrences of complications, interventions or long-term health consequences associated with abortion care, with 95% intercoder reliability. We calculated the frequencies and rates of these occurrences in Microsoft Excel.
Our search identified 80 abortion plot lines. A percentage of 37.5 of characters who obtained an abortion experienced complications, interventions and/or negative health consequences. This rate contrasts with the 2.1% of real patients who experience complications or require intervention as a result of their abortions. Most onscreen complications were major events (e.g., hemorrhage), as opposed to real women, whose complications are mostly minor. Major medical interventions (e.g., hysterectomy) were similarly overportrayed, while the most commonly used interventions for real patients (e.g., medication) were not depicted at all. Finally, 22.5% of characters faced a long-term adverse health consequence, including mental illness, infertility or death. The onscreen abortion mortality rate was 5%, about 7000 times the actual mortality rate.
Overall, television dramatically exaggerates the risk associated with abortion procedures, overportraying medical complications - particularly major and life-threatening complications - and long-term adverse health consequences. This pattern of misrepresentation may be partially attributable to the occurrence of stories about illegal abortions or abortions taking place outside of modern medical contexts.
Onscreen abortion portrayals may contribute to inaccurate beliefs about abortion's risk that are common among the public, broadly, and abortion patients, specifically. Abortion advocates and providers will be more equipped to respond misinformation if they understand how and to what extent our popular culture portrays abortion as unsafe.
鉴于虚构故事可能会影响公众对堕胎安全性的看法，本研究旨在调查电视上对堕胎相关并发症及长期健康后果的描绘情况。
通过系统的在线搜索，我们识别出了2005年至2016年间美国电视上所有堕胎情节。我们对这些情节进行定性编码，以确定与堕胎护理相关的并发症、干预措施或长期健康后果的出现情况，编码员间信度为95%。我们在Microsoft Excel中计算了这些情况的频率和发生率。
我们的搜索共识别出80条堕胎情节线。接受堕胎的角色中有37.5%经历了并发症、干预措施和/或负面健康后果。这一比例与因堕胎而出现并发症或需要干预的实际患者比例2.1%形成对比。电视上呈现的大多数并发症都是重大事件（如出血），而实际堕胎女性的并发症大多较为轻微。重大医疗干预措施（如子宫切除术）同样被过度描绘，而实际患者最常用的干预措施（如药物治疗）则完全未被呈现。最后，22.5%的角色面临长期不良健康后果，包括精神疾病、不孕或死亡。电视上的堕胎死亡率为5%，约为实际死亡率的7000倍。
总体而言，电视极大地夸大了与堕胎手术相关的风险，过度描绘了医疗并发症——尤其是重大和危及生命的并发症——以及长期不良健康后果。这种失实呈现模式可能部分归因于关于非法堕胎或现代医疗环境之外的堕胎故事的出现。
电视上对堕胎的描绘可能会导致公众普遍存在、尤其是堕胎患者中存在的对堕胎风险的错误认知。如果堕胎倡导者和提供者了解我们的流行文化如何以及在多大程度上把堕胎描绘成不安全的，他们将更有能力应对错误信息。
