In last week’s “Scandal” winter finale, Olivia Pope has an abortion. The storyline is short and to the point, the first time we learn of Olivia’s pregnancy is when a nurse is turning on the vacuum aspiration machine.
After the procedure, she ends her relationship with the president (who we presume is the father) without telling him about the choice she made. It is her choice, after all. The scene is all of two minutes long, but it is groundbreaking.
Despite the fact that abortion has been legal since 1973, it’s rarely depicted on television. When the subject is broached, usually a woman considers having an abortion, but backs out at the last minute (see: Jane of “Melrose Place,” Andrea of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” Ruby of “Felicity,” Miranda of “Sex and the City” and Jessa on “Girls”).
In more recent years, there have been storylines depicting women who go through with abortions, but only if the character in question is sufficiently young, disadvantaged or desperate (see: Manny of “Degrassi: The Next Generation,” Becky of “Friday Night Lights” and Amy of “Parenthood”). There is a common, more widely accepted abortion narrative, and Olivia Pope does not fit it.
Olivia is powerful. She has an established career. If she chose to raise the child, she likely wouldn’t have to do it alone (she has turned down marriage proposals from the president on multiple occasions). In fact, she has such phenomenal access to healthcare that she can apparently bribe an abortion provider to open just for her in the middle of the night. She is not young, disadvantaged or desperate, she simply does not want to be pregnant.
In 1996, Bill Clinton gave a speech on women’s healthcare declaring, “Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.” In the years since, this safe, legal and rare mantra has become the rallying cry for moderates and has been echoed by both President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But “rare” suggests abortion is something that should be avoided. That it’s still somehow selfish or immoral. It implies that there are women who deserve to have abortions, and there are women who do not. By right and law, this is a falsehood.
A 2008 study by the Guttmacher Institute estimates three in 10 women will have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old. For some women, making the choice is stressful. For others, it isn’t.
For everyone, the choice is valid. Olivia’s abortion is normal. It is moral. It is right. For decades, abortion has been a positive choice for many of the women seeking it. “Scandal” is one of the first television shows to say that truth out loud.
