Our TV, Ourselves

In the season one Family Ties episode unfortunately titled "Oops," Mallory's friend Cindy finds out she's pregnant and struggles with telling her mother. First, they confide in Mallory's mother, Elyse.

"I'm so confused," Cindy says. "I don't know whether to have an abortion or put the baby up for adoption or keep it."

It was December 22, 1982, only one month away exactly from the tenth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, and the extent to which this decision had become an established fact in American lives seems reflected in the structure of Cindy's sentence; she lists abortion alongside adoption and becoming a mother as a possible choice. It's X or Y or Z, each possibility given equal weight.

We don't learn what Cindy chooses to do - the main point of the episode is about establishing open communication with her mother - but even that unresolved ending feels different from how this same subject matter would be handled on later television and film, where the point often feels like an avoided abortion  - whether that's avoided through miscarriage, as on Party of Five in the 1990s or adoption, as in Juno in 2007. The prevalence of these alternatives makes stories where a character actually has an abortion, as on Friday Night Lights or The Obvious Child, rarities and news. And not knowing the outcome of a pregnancy, as in the case of Cindy? Other than the 1996 film Citizen Ruth, I can't think of another example off the top of my head, although I'm sure there are more. Still, the dearth of such examples seems telling: in most mainstream TV and film, women's bodies need to be resolved.

"Did I really look like that when I was born?" Jennifer wants to know.

Before Cindy comes over to the Keaton house, 10 year-old Jennifer sits down on the couch with the copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves that she's taken from Mallory's room. Alex, the conservative teenager, objects to "a book like that being in this house," but Elyse sets him straight: "There's nothing wrong with this, Alex," she says. "It's just a health and sex manual for women."

This scene, and much of this episode, amazes me and makes me a little sad, too. I love that it's "just" a manual, just another day for this family, but it makes me sad that their ordinary day, 30 years later, feels more than a little extraordinary now.