Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, Oakland, California.
Womens Health Issues. 2024 Nov-Dec;34(6):589-596. doi: 10.1016/j.whi.2024.09.004. Epub 2024 Oct 13.
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.
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.
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%).
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.
自 2022 年多布斯诉杰克逊妇女健康组织最高法院判决推翻联邦对堕胎权利的保护以来，许多州已经限制了堕胎。尽管新闻媒体通过报道来报道这一不断变化的局面，但本文记录了娱乐内容如何在其故事讲述中对这一新现实做出回应。
该样本来自美国电视堕胎情节的公共数据库（abortiononscreen.org）。我将 150 个情节分为两组：多布斯判决前（2020 年 1 月至 2022 年 8 月）拍摄和/或播出的情节，以及多布斯判决后（2022 年 9 月至 2023 年 12 月）播出的情节。编码在 Microsoft Excel 中进行。
多布斯判决后，描述程序堕胎的堕胎情节比例有所增加，而药物堕胎描述的比例一直很低。与多布斯判决前相比，后一组的青少年角色增加了 10%。在多布斯判决前，绝大多数情节（77%）没有描绘任何堕胎护理障碍。在多布斯判决后，33%的情节描绘了障碍。两个样本中寻求堕胎的最常见原因是年龄（11%）。在多布斯判决前，下一个最常见的原因是怀孕时机不当（10%）。在多布斯判决后，下一个最常见的原因是健康问题（11%）。
自多布斯判决以来，更多的电视剧情节描绘了堕胎护理的障碍，但它们继续讲述白人、无子女的青少年的故事，而这些青少年在真正的堕胎患者中所占比例很小。情节对程序性堕胎的描述多于更常见的药物堕胎。寻求堕胎的健康相关原因的描述掩盖了更常见的堕胎原因，如怀孕时机不当、照顾责任和经济问题。考虑到全国范围内的堕胎知识水平较低，了解观众在屏幕上遇到的（错误）信息越来越重要。
