Dear Ms. Cohen:
Thank you for your important piece on the familiar pattern where female television characters (and film characters) virtually never get abortions when pregnant.
I’m a writer in New York and teach at NYU. I’m 73 years old, therefore old enough to well remember before Roe v. Wade in 1973 and before New York State legalized abortion in 1970. Some of my published writings have been about television. What you’ve written, alas, is exactly on the mark and rightly challenges the lack of courage of the entertainment industry and its showrunners, TV writers, film directors, and screenwriters.
One of my articles, published in the Journal of Popular Film and Television in 1995, is on THE NURSES, a pioneering CBS nighttime series of the early 1960s. This series, completely forgotten today, was the first nighttime show to star two women in the lead roles and examined many important social and political issues of that time.
THE NURSES had an episode about abortion in 1963, a decade before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was illegal in all 50 states. It starred the late Joan Hackett as a nurse at the hospital who wants to have an abortion. On the whole, it’s an argument against abortion, but it includes a young male physician, central to the storyline, who makes a very strong statement about an illegal abortion (which he decides to perform) as that nurse’s right. But of course she chooses in the end to have the baby!
That episode, like many on THE NURSES, was extremely courageous for its time. I wish more people working in TV and film today had that courage.
Thanks for your article. Let’s hope it helps a bit.
Bob Lamm
P.S. I believe I wrote to you a year or two ago about one of your columns and you sent a nice reply. I’m sorry, but that’s all I remember! 🙂
AUTHOR: Bob Lamm
AUTHOR EMAIL: blamm86@gmail.com
AUTHOR URL:
SUBJECT: [Kate Cohen] Contact
IP: 66.65.97.159
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[4_Comment] => Dear Ms. Cohen:
Thank you for your important piece on the familiar pattern where female television characters (and film characters) virtually never get abortions when pregnant.
I’m a writer in New York and teach at NYU. I’m 73 years old, therefore old enough to well remember before Roe v. Wade in 1973 and before New York State legalized abortion in 1970. Some of my published writings have been about television. What you’ve written, alas, is exactly on the mark and rightly challenges the lack of courage of the entertainment industry and its showrunners, TV writers, film directors, and screenwriters.
One of my articles, published in the Journal of Popular Film and Television in 1995, is on THE NURSES, a pioneering CBS nighttime series of the early 1960s. This series, completely forgotten today, was the first nighttime show to star two women in the lead roles and examined many important social and political issues of that time.
THE NURSES had an episode about abortion in 1963, a decade before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was illegal in all 50 states. It starred the late Joan Hackett as a nurse at the hospital who wants to have an abortion. On the whole, it’s an argument against abortion, but it includes a young male physician, central to the storyline, who makes a very strong statement about an illegal abortion (which he decides to perform) as that nurse’s right. But of course she chooses in the end to have the baby!
That episode, like many on THE NURSES, was extremely courageous for its time. I wish more people working in TV and film today had that courage.
Thanks for your article. Let’s hope it helps a bit.
Bob Lamm
P.S. I believe I wrote to you a year or two ago about one of your columns and you sent a nice reply. I’m sorry, but that’s all I remember! 🙂
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