Doctors and Witches, Conscience and Violence: Abortion Provision on American Television

• In Event: 187 - Regular Session. Rethinking Reproductive Risks

Abstract

CONTEXT. Theorists of abortion stigma describe mass media as both reflecting and producing stigma around abortion providers, while also recognizing popular entertainment as a potential site for contesting this stigma. Understanding how popular culture alternately produces and contests provider stigma requires first knowing how provision is depicted.
METHODS. Using Internet searches, we identified all abortion-related plotlines that aired on American television from 2005 to 2014. We viewed these plotlines in their entirety, and used quantitative content coding to code the presence of abortion spaces and/or abortion providers, type of space, occupation of provider, method and efficacy of provision, and occurrence of violence. We achieved 95% intercoder reliability. We computed relative proportions and used grounded theory to analyze qualitative descriptions.
RESULTS. Television depictions of abortion care upheld the normalcy and safety of medical spaces for abortion provision, and presented non-medical spaces as marginalized and unsafe. Legal provider characters using medical methods were depicted as effective, safe, and compassionate, while providers operating outside of medical authority and legal bounds were depicted as dubious and dangerous. Providers were largely motivated by the belief that abortion is a necessary and moral service. Abortion provision onscreen was also linked to violence.
DISCUSSION. We found that, in aggregate, onscreen represented upheld legal medical oversight as necessary and sufficient for providing abortion care that countered causes of stigma. However, representations produced and/or reflected stigma in depictions of illegal providers. These patterns have implications for understanding stigma in relation to non-physician practitioners and legal restrictions on abortion.

Authors

• Gretchen Sisson, University of California, San Francisco

• Katrina E. Kimport, University of California, San Francisco