MTV’s hit show 16 and Pregnant is about to air its second season, with a whole new round of pregnant teenage girls. And while I have mixed feelings about the show in general (does it glamorize teen pregnancy or shine a light on what is a huge problem in America?), there is one thing that irks me to no end. Where are the pregnant teens who choose not to stay pregnant? Where are the abortions?
I realize that it’s controversial to document a teenager who decides to end their pregnancy, but the fact is that nearly a third of all teen pregnancies end in abortion. But if you were to watch MTV, you’d never know that – you’d think all young women choose to go through with the pregnancy.
Why are some teen pregnancies worth covering while others aren’t? There is more than one kind of pregnant teen; even if a teenager decides to have an abortion she was still pregnant, her story is still important, and her decision is worth talking about. This absence of teens who choose abortion in 16 and Pregnant feels like a dismissal of so many young women’s experiences.
I know MTV can air whatever it wants, and that at the end of the day this is about ratings and money. But MTV has chosen to frame themselves as a responsible station – in follow-up specials to the show they’ve emphasized contraceptive use, they’ve highlighted teen pregnancy prevention month, and they teamed up with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy. If MTV really wanted to prove themselves as responsible programmers, they would also feature pregnant teens who have abortions.
After all, teenagers are the ones that need the most support and information when it comes to something as serious as pregnancy. For example, teenagers are more likely to delay having an abortion until after they’re 15 weeks along, which increases medical risks. Teens have special needs and consideration, and a show on MTV that spoke honestly about all young women’s pregnancy stories could not only give teens the information they need about abortion, but could also help to destigmatize the procedure.
If MTV wants to take the lead in a national conversation about teenage pregnancy, they have to tell the whole story.
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22 Comments
I wonder how many abortions were the direct result of the cast of Jersey Shore?
I thought about this issue myself and I think that MTV should discuss abortion as a potential option for pregnant teens. But MTV follows the girls around after they have given birth, which obviously provides some drama to intrigue viewers, so the question begs: Could you really get a seasons worth of drama from a teen who underwent an abortion? I don’t think that abortion dramatically transforms a teen’s life for that long and if so it probably wouldn’t be the type of attention feminists would like to associate with abortion, such as teens experiencing regret.
I don’t think the issue is that teens who get abortions might not inspire as much drama as those who give birth; I think the opposite, in fact, MTV would inspire LOADS of drama if they documented a teen girl’s decision to get a abortion on national television. I don’t think MTV is ready to be that honest about “reality” — we all know “reality television” is a variation of actual reality because as Jessica pointed out, at the end of the day, it comes down to money. Anti-choicers tend to have a lot of money (at least the powerful ones do – especially when the Church and the Family fill their pockets) and big networks know it’s never good to piss off contributors (not that I am at all suggesting that religious organizations fund advertisements on MTV — I’m speaking generally that the mass media belongs to the upper class). I mean, imagine the campaign Focus on the Family would launch against MTV for “influencing our daughters to have promiscuous sex because they are teaching her HOW to get an abortion!†Ooo Gasp! Horror! My daughter may become more informed about her legal choice to a healthy and safe abortion, as opposed to becoming a 16 year old mother!
Second, I don’t think feminists would censor the real life documentation of a young girl’s experience getting an abortion in order to avoid further stigmatization of the practice. I think ANY discussion about abortion is better than NO discussion of abortion – especially when 1/3 of pregnant teens make the decision to have one. The abortion conversation is necessary and MTV has the rare opportunity to expose ACTUAL reality in their “reality†television shows. Bravo Jessica! Excellent article!
Great question about showing the stories of teens who choose to terminate pregnancies. Why isn’t this part of the MTV “reality” narrative? I’ve wondered the same thing. But I disagree that the only two remaining choices are to “glamorize teen pregnancy or shine a light on what is a huge problem in America.” It’s not a binary situation. Just like when older women get pregnant, it’s not necessarily glamorous or a huge problem when teens are pregnant. There’s usually a lot more nuance. It’s complicated. Like the way it’s nuanced and complicated to love your baby at the same time she’s puking on you.
Signed,
Teen mom AND PhD.
I would honestly be concerned about the safety and well-being of such teens. You never know if some nut is going to take that information and do their best to ruin or even end the lives of girls who choose abortion.
Also I have to wonder how many teen girls who’ve aborted would choose to expose themselves in this show, considering the stigma.
I’m pretty sure it’s not because MTV doesn’t want to cover teen abortions, but more because the show is called “16 and pregnant”, not “16 and making an informed decision to terminate my pregnancy”. It would probably be very difficult for them to find teens who are pregnant and want to terminate said pregnancy at casting calls — cause once you’ve decided to have an abortion, you first thought is that you want to schedule it right away not call up an MTV producer and say “hey, let’s do several weeks of filming this for your tv show before I go in for my abortion”. In other words, I don’t think it’s a matter of people not wanting that POV on the show, it’s just a timing issue. From what I know, you only have a few weeks to decide whether you’re going to have an elective abortion (depending when you find out, and I don’t think there are a lot of teens out there who are hyper-aware of their menstrual cycle), and in the television industry it can take that long to get a cup of coffee.
I think that you’d be hard pressed to find a teen willing to air their abortion on national television as she makes the decision. That’s something very private and very much stigmatized. Reality T.V. invades people’s privacy enough, even if it is of their own free will. Especially after the murder of an abortion doctor…do you really think teen girls should be put in the spotlight for something like that, which many would consider a painful and emotional experience?
We may WANT abortion to be normal and not stigmatized, but it’s not. And the process of making it so should not depend on the use of teenage girls as soldiers on the front lines.
Let the girls keep their privacy. Later, if they want to put on an “I had an abortion” t-shirt, they’ll be able to do it without worrying as much about prying, judgmental, and possibly hostile eyes…or a permanent broadcast record that everyone and their mother saw.
To be fair, in the season finale with all of the teens, Dr. Drew asked each girl why she chose to keep their baby (or, in the case of one couple, give the baby up for adoption). In addition, I think that the spinoff “Teen Mom” emphasizes the struggles of these girls in deciding to keep their babies. It, for example, shows the girls as unable to study for their GEDs because their babies require their attention.
Also…it’s kind of hard to have a show called “16 and PREGNANT” when the teen had an abortion and isn’t well, you know, pregnant.
I think the safety issue is a really good point (though I doubt that’s MTV’s reasoning behind it!). But it makes this non-coverage issue kind of cyclical – we can say that we won’t feature teens who get abortions on TV because of their safety, but then young women who have abortions continue to be stigmatized, and so on and so on. I think there ARE a lot of practical considerations when thinking about documenting an abortion – especially when you’re talking about a teenager – but that doesn’t mean it’s not important that it gets done.
@Misty:
I think this is part of the problem – we frame pregnancy as only those that are carried to term. Someone is pregnant whether they’re 9 weeks or 9 months along. And I also think it’s good that the show highlights the girls’ struggles in their decisions – but they’re still ignoring the struggles and decisions of a third of pregnant teens.
I completely agree with you. Showing abortion stories on MTV definitely would help to destigmatize the procedure. However, that could be interpreted as MTV condoning abortion, which I’m sure they are unwilling to do.
But I feel like there is another reason, beyond the “it’s too controversial” issue.
Simply: abortion stories are harder to tell. They don’t fit a simplified, happy ending narrative. I wrote a post about this on my blog: Pregnancy plots are easy, writing other choices is hard. I’d love to know what you think!
Also, in response to @Misty:
“Also…it’s kind of hard to have a show called “16 and PREGNANT†when the teen had an abortion and isn’t well, you know, pregnant.”
The follow-up series, Teen Mom featured a girl who gave up her baby for adoption. She was still considered a mom. I think that the a girl who has an abortion still belongs on 16 and Pregnant.
Well done Jessica for bringing up this issue. America is really so weird that August is probably right, it might be actually dangerous for someone to publicly admit to having an abortion.
Finding a girl to film going through the abortion process would be quite difficult considering that most abortions happen in the first trimester. It would certainly not work for the format of this show, but could possibly be addressed more in the aftershow talk backs, or even a special about abortion that coincides with this program. I agree…it would also be quite dangerous to subject a teen to the brutal and militant pro-lifers.
The show obviously does not PROMOTE teen pregnancy, in fact in may subtly promote abstinence, adoption, and abortion more than you think. None of the episodes in the past have storybook endings, but rather show the emotional, financial, and social-cultural toll that teen pregnancy has on the subjects. I’d hope that young women who are not in a position to take care of their child would consider alternatives after watching the show.
Please keep up this discussion.
I agree it would be awesome if they documented and could/would air an episode where a teen choose to abort. Hands down that would put a face to the idea that abortion isn’t something reserved for the “worst women and girls.”
I think a big huge glaring part of the reason why MTV probably can’t or wont air a teen deciding to get an abortion is because MAYBE they have documented it and she decided after getting it that she no longer wanted to be part of the show.
Abortions are much more private than child birth in that there aren’t 5+ people looking into your uterus cheering you on, with a possibly designated camera person to see you through the ordeal. I don’t see a teen volunteering to have her abortion documented and immortalized in TV and the internet (you could go online to view any of the past episodes). That’s asking a hell of a lot of someone who may not be so confident or feel so great in the first place.
One reason why there are no abortions on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant is that MTV historically has given almost no coverage to reproductive rights issues in their public service programmning. It’s really conspicuous by it’s absence, compared to their coverage of other sexual health issues like sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). MTV is well-known for supposedly hard-hitting documentaries on controversial issues, but where sexual health issues are concerned about all they’ve done in depth (accurate or not) has been on STDs, beginning with HIV/AIDS in the early 90s and going more in depth into other STDs in the late 90s, in part in partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation. They have almost never, ever mentioned abortion, and have hardly ever done much in the way of educating young people about birth control.
This isn’t just a USA thing with MTV, the channel is famous for being aired in over 40 countries with careful attention to detail in how it markets itself in each of those countries (all the better to sell it’s product), but to our knowledge they have in no country anywhere given but a fraction of the attention they’ve given to STDs to birth control, much less abortion.
This is worth noting, and thinking about what one can maybe do about it, as this has the potential to negatively affect public policy regarding abortion and birth control access for young people. If it has any effect it ought to make activists even more motivated to ensure government funding and public support for accessible reproductive health services for young and poor people, but in practice it might make it easier for young people to be complacent about increasing restrictions on access, as has been the case in the USA, unfortunately.
I’m so happy I found this article because I always think about abortion when watching the show. Its funny how the MTV producers always have the 16 y/o’s friends mention condoms or birth control for the sake of being “responsible,” but nobody ever mentions abortion.
Most of these girls seem to come from small towns and low income families and I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to them that there are other options. Maybe it has but MTV refuses to show them discussing it. I don’t know, it’s always interested me how pre-marital sex is okay but then abortion is out of the question for some reason.
I completely agree with this article. Girls need to be responsible for themselves, their own bodies, and their own future. Despite what pro-life fanatics claim, abortion isn’t morally wrong – it’s a completely personal choice that allows an individual the right to correct a mistake without having to completely forego their own opportunities, future, and life in general.
Another thing that bothers me, even more than the lack of inclusion of girls who’ve chosen abortion, is that many of the girls who are featured on the show actually express their views against abortion, as something they don’t believe in. Some say that “abortion just wasn’t an option” for them, and some others actually go so far as to say that they’re against it and don’t believe in it. While everyone’s entitled to their beliefs, it would at least be valuable for MTV to interview a teen who’d at least considered abortion, and have her talk about that decision-making process. I worry about the cumulative effect on young viewers of nearly every teen mom in every episode brushing off the entire idea of abortion in just a sentence or two, without much debate or deliberation – the many young girls watching the show may start to brush abortion off as something that’s not an option for them, either.
While I too would worry that depicting the potential painful aftermath of an abortion could actually give fuel to the anti-choice side, I still think that showing at least one girl going through it, or at least CONSIDERING it as a viable option for more than a minute, would be important to show, especially considering the many young girls who watch the show and who may find themselves in similar situations.
This is to commend Jessica Valenti for presenting her well-researched views on key feminist issues in clear, dignified prose that encourages a like response from readers. I am referring not only to the TV treatment of pregnant girls, but also to her recent article applying lessons to be learned from the Assange case to the US social and legal treatment of rape
This dialogue is a heartening repudiation of the “post-feminist” attack on the real work of feminism as insightful political analysis and exposure of sexism to the goal of ending it.. It has always been easier to trivialize feminism by discussing superficial matters in cute or cynical style, as most journalism for women does, than to accept the challenge that feminism represents to acknowledge and oppose sexism.
I 100% agree that if MTV is going to show teens getting pregnant at 16 they should also show the other side of it. Aboration is a topic no one likEs to talk about about the truth is it happens and should be shared. Coming from some who has made that choice very young people should know it’s not an easy choice but also a responsible choice for their situition. I can only hope girls can share their story of the other side of teen pregnancy soon, cuz it’s one that should be told & one that shouldn’t be looked down on.
Actually, MTV has now aired an episode about abortion, though, it occurred after you wrote this piece. Granted, they don’t list this episode in the season index on mtv.com
http://www.mtv.com/videos/no-easy-decision-special/1654990/playlist.jhtml#series=2211&seriesId=25100&channelId=1
Of course there aren’t any episodes; if you are to have an abortion you have to have it in the first few weeks of the pregnancy. Hardly enough time to submit your application (or however you get chosen for the show) to MTV. And then after that there isn’t much time to film. If you decide to keep it… you have 9 months to film.
Even if they do catch you before the abortion deadline, if you DO decide to abort you have already signed lots of contracts with the TV network, are surrounded by camera crews all day… everyone around you is expecting you to keep it.