Many TV Shows Still Missed The Mark On 1 Issue This Year

LOADINGERROR LOADINGAcross America, abortion has gotten harder and harder to access ― and heading into a second Trump administration, restrictions on abortion are likely to tighten further still.But pop culture hasn’t been accurately reflecting that reality.In 2024, TV shows that took on abortion largely failed to depict the many barriers to abortion access or reflect the real-life demographics of abortion patients — and in some cases, reinforced misleading tropes, according to a new report about abortion representation on television.Advertisement Each year since 2016, abortion researcher Steph Herold and her colleagues at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco have maintained a database of abortion storylines in film and television.This year, she found at least 67 abortion-related storylines on TV across 65 different scripted and reality shows, the most she has ever documented.

These shows and storylines were varied, from Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New York,” when cast member Erin Lichy decided to publicly share her abortion story, to the Disney+ limited series “Pauline,” which dedicated much of its six-episode run to its protagonist trying to get an abortion.And for the first time, just over half of the characters in the storylines Herold tracked were people of color — an improvement from previous years, when the vast majority of abortion storylines on TV involved white characters.However, as has been the case in prior years, there were plenty of missed opportunities to tell a wide range of abortion stories.

Advertisement “We’re really not seeing the reality of what abortion access is like in the U.S.reflected on screen,” as Herold told HuffPost ahead of the report’s release on Wednesday.

In a time of rampant misinformation, pop culture can play a crucial role in directing people toward accurate and empathetic stories about abortion, she said.“My hope is that ...