That's a good idea. Moderators, or anyone bold enough, care to create a Law section?
Why was the Administrivia.Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment removed from the bottom of the trope description?
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given the current amount of what we shall carefully call "heat" being generated in the USA over this topic, with much of it being fuelled by religious sensibilities that not everybody shares, and with the issue spilling out of the USA into other countries, ROCEJ would be extremely wise here.
Male, early sixties, Cranky old fart, at least two decades behind. So you have been warned. Functionally illiterate in several languages.
I think there should be more of an emphasis on the stigmatization of abortion as the primary reason for why abortion (a character undergoing the procedure itself, to be precise) is rarely depicted on screen (I know there’s already a reference to Moral Guardians, and I think it should be more prominent). It is such a controversial topic that in the rare instances it’s mentioned in film, TV, etc., usually the protagonist will not go through with the actual procedure, and that has more to do with how abortion itself is a controversial, hot-button topic.
Also, the statistic about America’s views on abortion is pretty vague, so I added one from the Pew Research Center
that is more precise.
I don't see an issue with that, since it's obviously the main reason it isn't portrayed as neutral or positive, though it's perhaps something which should be put in the Trope Repair Shop before changing.
Would it go in the Trope Repair Shop or do I start a thread in Trope Talk?
Per wiki policy, Averted Trope examples are not considered worth noting or listing. I am in the process of cleaning them up; a newly launched trope, Abortion Fallout Drama takes examples when a character does get an abortion and this causes drama or conflict.
For other aversions, I'm moving examples to Sandbox.Good Girls Avoid Abortion Aversions. If you think any of these are tropeworthy in and of themselves, feel free to take it to the TLP.
Edited by naturalironist "It's just a show; I should really just relax" Hide / Show Replies
Some Averted Trope examples don’t fit underneath Abortion Fallout Drama because there is no significant “fallout” in particular. For example, the film Obvious Child. As well as the film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, where the protagonist goes on a difficult journey to get an abortion as she is a teenager and her state requires parental consent. After she has the procedure, there is no dramatic fallout and the film ends without any judgement on her character.
On the "Mythology and Religion" folder, in the Catholic Church example, I want to point out that the Catholic Church's condemnation of abortion is not a recent phenomenon. The Catholic Church itself has maintained that it ALWAYS opposed abortion, and even cited writings from church fathers in the 1st and 5th centuries to back this up.
While there was for awhile debate in the Catholic Church as to whether abortion could be considered murder, there was never a time when the Church officially permitted abortion or didn't consider it a grave sin.
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Seems fine to me. All that I ever saw is historical debate over when life begins, not that they ever approved of abortion at all.
Edited by Fireblood
Happy New Year!
'Averted by Lyra Volfrieds, the protagonist in Ursula Vernon's Black Dogs. She is impregnated by The Dragon in an attempt to create a powerful and long-lived bloodline, and in a Heroic Sacrifice she uses a brand of magic to both abort the baby and sterilize herself to prevent this plan from ever being carried through.''
Just a slight terminology issue here. Technically it's the pregnancy that is aborted, not the fetus itself. To say that she 'abort the baby' seems a little off base. Should we use the word fetus over baby? It's more medially accurate, but is overtly clinically. Likewise the word 'baby' is an accepted term, but is emotionally changed. *shrug*
Edited by joeyjojo hashtagsarestupid Hide / Show Replies
"Technically it's the pregnancy that is aborted, not the fetus itself."
Umm... What's the difference? How can you abort a "pregnancy" without aborting the fetus/baby/whatever-we-decide-to-call-it?
Abortion just means the ending of something (here a pregnancy). So it's theoretically possible for that to be non-lethal (and fetuses have survived abortions before).
I was wondering, as it wasn't in the list, about instances where abortion isn't even brought up - even in exigent circumstances - as part of this trope. Abortion is being avoided utterly by not even referring to it; should this not be, say, number four on the list or something?
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Well, the first paragraph uses " someone may allude to the possibility of abortion". This implies that the answer is "no".
Edited by MagBas
Yes, that first sentence made me hesitate, but perhaps the trope should be expanded to include it? It's not like these people aren't aware abortion exists, just because no one suggests it.
In Plain Sight definitely shoud be listed in examples for this trope. Main character Mary Shannon got pregnant accidentally, considered abortion and then was very much set on giving the baby up for adoption. Selecting right kind of couple was even part of the plot. Typically she ends up having the baby and keeping it. Also the pregnancy was written into the show to cover the actresses' pregnancy which is also common. In my opinion it very much ruined the show.
In retrospect, I phrased my post on the original discussion confusingly, and it's too late to edit it. However, new question: Why is the part about the hypothetical girl's religious beliefs lumped in with distrust about the procedure? (And, at the risk of setting off something worse than I know, what about being against abortion for reasons other than religion? Or — I'll admit I haven't seen much in the way of media dealing with abortion — does it not come up much?)
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yeah I'm bothered with the implication that the only reason that someone would have for having reservation with a abortion is religious beliefs. It's hardly an easy choice for most people.
hashtagsarestupid
yeah I'm bothered with the implication that the only reason that someone would have for having reservation with a abortion is religious beliefs. It's hardly an easy choice for most people.
hashtagsarestupid
Same here; sure, I have religious-based reasons for being pro-life, but I have other reasons for it that aren't related to my religion. Would it be safe to say that the assumption is always 'If you're pro-life or choose against abortion, you must be a [conservative] Christian'?
Some people are pro-life from a standpoint of What Measure Is a Non-Human?. Okay, it may not be officially "born" yet, but what if it is still human? Not all the proporters of this argument are Christian, actually.
You might want to check out blog.secularprolife.org. While they're not the biggest component, secular pro-life people are not unusual.
This seems to have become a list of every mention of abortion in anything, ever. Should/could it be more specific?
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I had actually been thinking a rename of the trope might be in order.
Face the past and you'll fly ass first into the future. - My Dad
sjosten
Am I the only one that finds it odd that none of the women on the list considered adoption? I understand that some people are against it, but the whole list?
I don't see it.
Some Guy
I just wanted to mention that I felt really jerked around when I realized the implications media gives us about this trope when coupled with Babies Make Everything Better. Until I found out about Good Girls Avoid Abortion, I realized that even though I consider myself pro-choice, I could not think of any situation where I thought it would be right for a "normal" person to get an abortion, just extreme hypotheticals.
It was a real sobering moment to realize how much my political opinion on that topic had been influenced by tropes. I'd been trained to see abortion as a "necessary evil" to the point that I never thought about how a lot of the time it's a perfectly valid choice, even for someone with means.
Moral of random rant: TV Tropes is not a worthless time-waster. A disturbingly high number of tropes are interpreted as "realities" by people even though the way they go in Real Life can be completely different.
Edited by SomeGuy See you in the discussion pages.
I would question the accuracy of the Cold Case season 3 reference which I presume is the reference to the episode the family. Definitely the episode doesn't present the pro-life nurse as a sympathetic character or the plan to get an abortion as somehow wrong, but the primary reason their lives fell apart is because the baby's father was murdered by the planned adoptive father (who had been banging the pro-life nurse on the side) and the mother panicked when the father never returned and abandoned the baby. While likely their lives would have been better had they had the abortion, the impression one gets that if the father who had decided to keep the baby (which was why he was killed) hadn't been killed they would have been a happy family too. The mother and daughter do reconcile.
In other words, while I would agree Cold Case the episode wasn't presenting the abortion option as bad and it did present the unfair pressure to not get an abortion as bad, the reason their lives fell apart was because of other things not because of not getting that abortion.
I know we shouldn't have a Real Life section, but would a "Law" section be acceptable? There are some countries in the world where abortion is heavily restricted, or outright banned. I feel like that would be worth mentioning.
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