Stories Begetting Stories: How Pop Culture Reinforces Abortion Stigma -- And Can Help End It

One in three women in the US have an abortion in their lifetimes, while nearly 40 percent of Americans claim they do not know anyone who has had an abortion.

I left the latter group, not coincidentally, around the same time I joined the former. When I got pregnant as a 20-something in Brooklyn five years ago and started telling people I was getting an abortion, I quickly discovered I actually knew three women who’d had one. Again not coincidentally, this was around the time I started to become interested in how the stigma around abortion—in our daily lives, in the media, in pop culture—makes it so hard to speak openly about, even as a pro-choice advocate like me. A couple months after my abortion, I watched a short film called Obvious Child about a 20-something in Brooklyn who gets an abortion, created by young women who were equally frustrated with the narrow representations of abortion in pop culture, and dreamed that one day I’d see an abortion narrative like that on the big screen.

Read more on Feministing