Kerry Washington talks about having an abortion

[afeelingunacted]

❤️https://t.co/LuQN8hdVg6
- kerry washington (@kerrywashington) September 26, 2023

• She was well-educated on contraception but got pregnant after not using protection which she blamed herself for
• The abortion happened in her late 20s
• At the time she was a working actress but not yet famous. Nevertheless she used a fake name at the clinic
• One of the

Comments

[insomniachobs]

It's really nuts to me that it took until Scandal for that to be shown on (network) television

[rosytintedflash]

i feel like we see a lot of teen pregnancy stories or pregnancy stories where the person is not ready or something, but never someone who's like "aight bet" and gets an abortion

it's been shyed away from for such a long time. folks don't want to deal with pro lifer fits.

[burntbussy]

[silverstarry]

Or they go the Party of Five/And Just Like That route with a miscarriage.

[theactualworst]

I don’t think Scandal was the first. Wasn’t it a major plot point in the show Everwood?

[silverstarry]

Scandal definitely wasn't the first (I'm pretty sure Maude was the first major prime time show to have a character choose to have an abortion). Cristina on Grey's Anatomy is another example of an adult woman who chose to have an abortion and that happened several years before Scandal's.

[__onthebound]

Scandal is the first to ever be with the character during their abortion. In Everwood (which was the first to mention or have a character agree to have one? It was the first for something) the character (played by Kate Mara!) to agree to an abortion. Then they went off screen and we never saw them again.

We saw Cristina making an appt and telling Mer and Burke. However, Cristina had an ectopic pregnancy and it ruptured before her abortion. OH but even with her one with Owen. Idk.

Maybe scandal was the first to be "witness" to an in-office procedure

[amor143x]

Scandal wasn't the first but there weren't that many until then. Here's a database you can search by year, genre, etc to find abortion stories on tv/film

https://www.ansirh.org/research/abortion/pop-culture

[ahkna]

Manny on Degrassi had an abortion in 2004, but they didn't air it in the US until 2006 because American teens are delicate or something.