Last week on A Million Little Things, one of the characters, Maggie, had an abortion. She was going to her doctor for her 6 month cancer screening some time after having sex with her male roommate, Jamie, and part of that screening includes a urine test. They test for pregnancy prior to the screening because the scan can be harmful to a pregnancy.
So at this screening, Maggie’s doctor tells he she’s pregnant.
Now Maggie of course has a lot going on as we all do. She was doing a fellowship at Oxford, she is not really in a relationship with the father of the baby, and the pandemic has just hit the world. At this point in the show they are still talking about 2 weeks to flatten the curve. She has flown home from England to get the screening, so the baby’s father is not in the country.
On the other hand, she has a really great close knit group of friends, she has family, and for all she knows, she is healthy. (Of course she hasn’t been able to have her 6 month screening, but there is nothing else to indicate that she is not healthy.)
With all this in mind, she decides to have an abortion. She decides to kill her baby.
There are so many issues with this portrayal of abortion.
First of all, as confirmed in the podcast of A Million Little Stories, where the show creator, writer, editor and the actress discuss the episode, they state that there is no emergent need for this abortion. She is not about to undergo chemotherapy that might kill her baby, her pregnancy hasn’t put her life at eminent risk. She is having an abortion because killing a baby is more convenient than having it.
In addition, they also have her play this role with minimal emotion. As if killing a baby is as emotionless as taking a vitamin or shaving your legs. They don’t show her having some deep emotional turmoil over this. She chooses to end a life pretty simply. As if because it would make life harder is a good enough reason to kill your own child.
Lastly, the idea that a father should not have a say in whether or not his child lives is ridiculous. Jamie is the child’s father, and the idea that he has to just let Maggie murder his baby just because the baby happens to be growing in her is crazy. There is a reason that it takes 2 people to make a baby, because both people are responsible for caring for it. If we want to talk about equal rights, both people who created the baby have equal rights to decide whether it lives or not.
Maggie is an adult who had sex with an adult. She should be well aware that whether she uses birth control or a condom, or an IUD, none of these work 100 percent of the time. That means she should know full well that having a baby is a real possibility, no matter how remote. If you engaged in the behavior that caused a baby to be conceived, you don’t then have the right to decide that their existence is inconvenient and therefore murder them.
The funny thing is, even if you use abstinence to prevent a pregnancy, you don’t have to abstain from sex all the time. You can just abstain when you are fertile. And there are multiple ways to track your fertility including mucus secretion, basal body temperature, and how the cervix feels. This world would be so much better if we taught women to actually understand their bodies instead of suppress them.
The point being, Maggie chose to have sex knowing that there was a small chance of pregnancy. Of course she probably believed that it would never happen to her. But the fact is, all forms of birth control tell you that it’s not 100%. So she played the odds. But instead of taking the results as they came, she decided to kill her own baby instead. Socially acceptable murder (at least in today’s society), but murder nonetheless.
It’s funny that on the podcast they state that they chose to portray her making this decision in a non-emergency situation as if that story had to be told. As if killing a baby should be commonplace. They stated that abortion hadn’t previously been portrayed on tv in this way before as if that was a bad thing. As if we should be telling people that when you get yourself in a difficult but not at all emergency situation, murder is a legit option.
At this point in time, we have scientific evidence that proves that babies are alive from the point of conception. They have unique DNA from their mother and father, their cells are growing and multiplying, and they have a heartbeat even before most women know they are pregnant. Whether you consider it a potential human life or a full on human life, it has more value than just a cluster of cells. If left to it’s natural processes, it will grow into a human baby
Let’s pretend that life alone isn’t sufficient. We’ll play devil’s advocate. Let’s say that not only does the baby have to be alive but that it must be able to live without assistance. Let’s say you want to draw the line at a heartbeat. That is having heartbeat makes you alive. Then what about people with a pacemaker? They wouldn’t have a heartbeat without this assistance. Should we kill people who need a pacemaker?
What about brain function? Should we then require that the baby has brain function for it to be considered a life? Well what about people in a coma? They lack brain function. Should we keep them alive? They have potential sentience but they also might not come out of the coma. A fetus left to its own devices will almost certainly gain sentience. So we should be all the more protective of those lives.
Any argument you make that can make a fetus unworthy of life, you can find a situation where an adult is in that same position and we will keep them alive.
This portrayal of murder as sterile and emotionless, as if the woman’s rights trumps another human life is just wrong. The idea that a father has no say in his child’s life is wrong.
A woman’s ability to bring a human into the world is a gift, not a punishment. The only other being able to bring a human into the world is God. This gift is precious, but not without the need for sacrifice. Creating a person means physical pain and discomfort. It means caring for someone other than yourself, and that’s a good thing.
If you felt that you couldn’t care for a baby physically, financially, or emotionally, then you can give that baby up for adoption. The character Maggie has two friends that are looking to adopt a baby. And not that they would necessarily adopt hers, but it implies that she is well aware that there are people out there looking to adopt.
There are so many things right with this show, but this is downright wrong. Life is hard, it requires sacrifice, it requires making decisions and then living with the consequences of those decisions. These may be fictional characters but the message it sends young people is that it’s ok to kill a baby if it makes your life harder. It also tells people that they should not seek the support of the people who love them. That they should make these kinds of life and death decisions alone.
I could go on and on about how this message can and will have negative affects on society. We need safe spaces just because someone we don’t like becomes president but murdering innocent babies is fine. Planned Parenthood was started by a racist who supported the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe we should blindly support this organization Maybe we should stop being so afraid of hardships but rely on our own strength and the strength of the people we love to get us through.
Cheers,
Emily
