Hollywood's Abortion Timidity

The New York Times, Salon.com, and a Wall Street Journal online blog have all discussed various social implications of the smash comedy hit, Knocked Up. This flick tells the story of a young, single television reporter who gets pregnant following a one-night stand with a bona fide pot-smoking, chronic video games-playing, unemployed loser. The only mention of abortion in the movie is a comical reference to something that rhymes with "smashmortion."

A second movie, Waitress, tells the story of a married, low-income woman who is in the midst of plotting to leave her abusive husband. Yet as the Times reports, she's more likely to "ponder selling the baby" than to consider the unmentionable, rhymes with "smashmortion."

Normally I would have dismissed the movies as cultural aberrations, but for the following:. The Wall Street Journal blog piffles on about the right time for a woman to tell her boss she is pregnant, without explaining the career woman in the movie is single. And the Times reports that although most unwanted pregnancies are terminated, Hollywood portrays a mirror universe and fears a mention of the word, abortion.

Get real, Hollywood. One producer told the Times there was better "material" in a script in which the unwed woman has the baby. What if, instead, the waitress had an abortion after leaving her abusive husband, went to college, landed a six-figure job and found a nonabusive spouse with whom she had children? That would have provided the best "material" of all.