Hollywood's Role in Stigmatizing Abortion

[...]its responsibility now As we collectively reel from the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, every reproductive rights movement conflict, messaging failure, and cultural flashpoint is facing public scrutiny, in an attempt to place a retrospective narrative on the unraveling of abortion rights in the United States. Because viewers tend to incorporate what they watch on television into their political views, even if it's fictional, these inaccurate depictions could lead people to mistakenly believe that abortion needs to be more regulated to address nonexistent safety concerns. If viewers don't see that people have trouble paying the hundreds or thousands of dollars for the cost of an abortion out of pocket because their insurance doesn't include that service, they may be less inclined to understand the desperate need to ensure that both Medicaid and private insurance cover abortion costs. Once there, patients face a barrage of abortion restrictions designed to delay or impede their care, from mandatory waiting periods (which forces them to pay for extra nights at a hotel), gestational age bans, prohibitions on specific types of abortion procedures, and many other cruelly tedious and medically extraneous rules. The majority of Americans are deeply confused about this difference, and more accurate and common portrayals could help viewers distinguish between these medications, understand how safe abortion pills are and that buying abortion pills online is an option (even if legally risky), and learn how to support someone who needs an abortion in a legally restricted landscape.