Abortion Storylines on Television: Trends and Disparities
Overview of On-Screen Depictions
Television programs in 2025 featured 65 storylines related to abortion, consistent with the 66 plotlines observed in 2024. These depictions spanned various genres, including dramas like The Pitt and Call the Midwife, reality shows such as W.A.G.s to Riches and Love is Blind, and animated comedies including Family Guy and South Park.
Declining Rate of Abortions Portrayed
The proportion of characters depicted as obtaining an abortion decreased to 37% in 2025, marking a 14% decline from 2023 figures. This data originates from the annual Abortion Onscreen report, produced by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a research program at the University of California San Francisco.
Disparities in Representation Compared to Real-World Data
Research indicates that approximately 60% of individuals seeking abortions in the U.S. encounter some form of barrier. However, only about one-third of television characters seeking abortions faced such obstacles. These barriers often included:
- Financial constraints
- Lack of childcare or work coverage
- Geographic distance to clinics
- Insurance non-coverage
In 2025, most TV storylines depicting struggles to access abortion focused on legal challenges.
Socioeconomic and Demographic Disparities
On television, 80% of characters seeking abortions are portrayed as upper or middle class. This contrasts with real-world demographics, where a majority of abortion patients experience financial difficulties. This disparity obscures the role of poverty in access to abortion and may explain the infrequent depiction of financial barriers in storylines.
Medication Abortion and Parental Status
Only three out of 65 abortion plotlines in 2025 depicted medication abortion, despite research showing that abortion pills constitute the majority of abortions in the U.S. Additionally, only 8% of characters seeking abortions on TV are parents, whereas most real-life abortion patients have at least one child.
Trends in Emotional Support and Stigma
Fewer characters received emotional support for their abortions in 2025. Several shows, including Chicago Med, 1923, Breathless, and Secrets We Keep, featured storylines that linked religion with prohibiting abortion. The report notes these portrayals often depicted religious patients as exclusively Christian and did not explore religion as a supportive aspect of abortion decision-making.
Racial Representation Improvement
A positive development noted in the report is an improvement in the racial representation of characters in abortion plotlines. A slight majority of characters involved in such storylines are now people of color. This marks an improvement from a decade ago, when portrayals more frequently featured wealthy, white women seeking abortions, despite people of color constituting the majority of abortion seekers in real life.