Bozell & Graham Column: Hollywood Isn't Supportive of Abortion?

June 16th, 2018 7:34 AM

Feminists who embrace the "right" to abortion – the right to destroy an unborn life on a woman’s demand at any point in pregnancy – just will not accept they are powerful enough in Hollywood. Abortion scenes in TV and the movies need to be more “educational” and end the “stigma” of violence against babies, such as being torn to pieces and feeling the pain of being chemically burned to pieces. Both things have been proven true after the 20-week period, yet it remains a "stigma" against their mothers.

This lecture came again recently in Austin, Texas at the ATX Festival on a panel discussion titled “Her Body, Her Choice.” Rina Mimoun, who scripted an abortion plot for the drama Everwood back in 2003, is still upset the main doctor character on that show wasn’t an abortionist, as they wanted. She’s upset that abortion is relegated to a Very Special Episode. 

“The goal for all of it – network, streaming, everything – is to stop making it the one-off episode or the arc,” Mimoun said. “It would be nice if it was just part of the conversation and didn’t have to be so special and so earnest and so important.”

Earth to Mimoun: Tearing a baby apart limb by limb is important. People earnestly oppose it as monstrous. You may want to treat it as similar to a tooth extraction, but it’s not. 

Her feminist ideal came on CW’s show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. A woman has an abortion, and the pizza delivery driver rings her doorbell. In response her son says, “Mom, I’ll get it, since you just had an abortion.” 

Here’s the problem: if abortion should completely lack drama, why would you need to put it in a drama?

“Everyone is so afraid to be earnest or afraid to be like preachy or teach-y....They’d rather be salacious,” Mimoun said. “They’re trying to shock you into watching their shows and there aren’t as many people that are [embracing] the challenge of educating. It’s an opportunity that we have.” To anyone milking the subject for ratings, “Shame on you,” she said.

So one minute, this woman’s upset that abortion episodes are too earnest, and then suddenly she’s complaining everyone’s afraid to be earnest? The only check on Hollywood’s “opportunities” to educate/indoctrinate is viewers clicking to another channel.

Mimoun’s not really against “salacious” episodes, since she liked the shocking abortion-at-Christmas plot on ABC’s Scandal, when the main character Olivia Pope had an abortion to the soundtrack of a gospel choir singing “Silent Night.” Then Olivia celebrated at the episode’s end with a glass of wine and Stevie Wonder singing “Ave Maria.”    

Mimoun added a complaint that male show-runners in Hollywood have told her they don’t want an abortion plot because it’s a “women’s issue.” Another panelist, Mauricio Mota, a writer for the Hulu series East Los High, replied “That drives me insane,” since men are half of the equation. “Is it God who put the baby in the belly?”

In Hollywood, that’s not a serious theological question. That’s a laugh line. But they don’t really want a male opinion on abortion – if it’s not fully supportive.     

Mota accused Hollywood of being uptight and sexist. Why aren’t there enough abortions on TV? “It’s about controlling women,” Mota asserted.. “Abortion is just one of the facets of society’s search to control women.” 

In reality, every Hollywood writer thinking about an abortion scene is going to be controlled enough to consult with Planned Parenthood  to make it “right.” These lecturers are all about what the campaign consultants call “message discipline.” They want pro-abortion talking points, and never, ever even a debate.

When was the last time you watched a mother on TV, pressured to have an abortion, choose to keep her child because it was the morally right thing to do?