Critic's Notebook: Abortion a muted matter on 'Grey's Anatomy'

Los Angeles Times / latimes.com ^ | October 9, 2011 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

[thecodont]

... During the recent eighth-season premiere of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) had an abortion.

It was not the first abortion for a character on network television — that would be "Maude's" in 1972, just before Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal nationwide — but it was the most culturally significant since then. Because unlike virtually every character who has ever had, or contemplated, an abortion (and on TV, fewer women have abortions than have brain surgery), Cristina is not a teenager, or a rape or an incest victim. She is not poor with eight kids and an abusive husband or suffering from mental illness. She does not have a rare disease that makes pregnancy a physical risk. Unlike Maude, she isn't an "older" woman with mid-life concerns. Cristina is married, healthy, financially stable and of prime childbearing years.

She chose to have an abortion because she did not want to have a child.

[...]

In television, as in life, real change is not big and new and flashy. It's not about how many women are on TV. It's not about the "Bridesmaids" effect or Whitney Cummings having two shows on competing networks.

Real change is slow and persistent, and often overlooked and occasionally irritating. It's about what women are doing on TV, and why they are doing it. It's about Alicia Florrick having great sex and then showing up at work in the morning, dealing with parental issues and getting her daughter a tutor.

And it's about Cristina Yang exercising her legal right to an abortion because she doesn't want to be a mother, and nobody really noticing.

[POWERSBOOTHEFAN]

That’s don’t have sex or,use protection