Study finds more TV depictions of abortion this year — but they're still mostly getting it wrong

Elizabeth Blair

December 18, 2024 / 6:00 am

There were more abortion plotlines on TV this year – 66 across 63 shows, compared to 49 last year, according to the annual Abortion Onscreen report released Wednesday by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research program on abortion based at the University of California San Francisco.

Despite the increase in on-screen portrayals of abortion, they largely do not mirror reality, said Steph Herold, a researcher for the study. She thinks it's a missed opportunity, especially as consumers try to make sense of changes to state laws.

"People are more confused than ever about whether abortion is legal in their state or not, whether it's legal in the country or not, about what they have to do to get an abortion if they wanted one," she said. "Do they need to cross state lines or not? Will they get in trouble?"

Herold doesn't expect entertainment TV to exactly reflect current statistics, but she thinks an effort toward accuracy is important so that people understand what to expect.

Key findings in the 2024 Abortion Onscreen report:

For the first time, a slight majority of characters having an abortion, 51%, were people of color. That's an increase from last year, but not reflective of the most recent data. According to data collected by the Guttmacher Institute in June 2021–July 2022, about 30% of people obtaining an abortion were Black, 30% Latinx and 30% non-Hispanic White. Four percent were Asian and 7% were another race or more than one race.
One-third of the plotlines in shows such as Chicago Med, Married To Medicine and Girls On The Bus, depicted the political, logistical and financial barriers to abortion. In the musical comedy Girls5Eva a state senator barges in on one character's prenatal appointment in the Ozarks. The doctor tells her patient, "Since Roe got overturned, state law now requires a Fetal Citizen Advocate to be present at all prenatal appointments." The scene and dialogue are pure comedy but, as NPR has reported, doctors' speech has been chilled through legislation.

As in past years, the vast majority of characters having an abortion (89%) don't have kids. But the Guttmacher Institute reports that 55% of abortion patients had at least one birth prior to their abortion.
A majority of characters on TV were portrayed as middle class (46%) or wealthy (21%), which the report says is "a staggering departure from a reality in which the majority of abortion patients are struggling to make ends meet." According to the Guttmacher Institute, "Some 41% of people obtaining abortions had an income below the federal poverty level (FPL) and 30% had incomes between 100% and 199% of the FPL."
Medication abortions accounted for 63% of all clinician-provided abortions in states without total bans in 2023. On TV, however, there were only two such depictions. One of those, Girls On The Bus on Max, marks the first time access to abortion via telehealth was depicted in a scripted TV show.