Check out this link.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a8483260/gilmore-girls-abortion/

One of my fave shows is Gilmore girls.  Despite its incessant, insufferable quirkiness I found a lot to like in that show, partly because I had a child at a young age too.  I could relate to the feeling that you were growing up together and the strangeness of raising a child when sometimes you felt like you were just a kid yourself, of trying your best to make a family when the rest of the world keeps telling you “you are going about this all wrong”.

Gilmore girls was and is a unique show in that regard.  So many shows portray surprise pregnancies as a life-ruining disaster, and young moms as borderline abusive trainwrecks. How dare any woman ever have a child in anything less than totally ideal circumstances? GG did not do that, and I just really, really appreciated the take that yeah, this is a thing that happens sometimes and when it does, a lot of us proceed to get our shit together, grow up as best we can, have ourselves a baby and work our tushies off to take care of it.   Disaster does not always ensue.

Spoiler alert – so the new Netflix reboot ends with Rory finding herself surprised by a pregnancy.  The show’s creator, Amy Sherman Palladino, hinted that maybe Rory might have an abortion, for all we know.   Then the ever-so wise writers at Cosmo proceeded to turn this into a thought piece so gross that it could only have been written in 2016.

Their take – Amy Sherman-Palladino is a forked-tongue hypocrite because she said that. She’s a hypocrite because  Gilmore girls did not actively show a bunch of people having abortions when they could have.   There were several pregnancies on the show, the author argues, so surely at least ONE of them could have ended with an abortion, for Pete’s sake.   What a wasted opportunity.

Hey Cosmo – have you even SEEN this show?   It’s a piece of cotton candy, it’s like a warm bath on a cold day.  It is soft and fluffy and while the characters do have problems sometimes, they aren’t generally abortion-level problems.  We don’t see Lorelai’s wacky mammogram or Lorelai’s dad’s wacky prostate exam.  We don’t see Rory’s wacky bout with ringworm or that wacky-yet-tense convo when Jess informed Rory that she’d better wackily get checked for an STD and then Rory wackily had to tell Dean the same thing.  We don’t see the doctor scolding Sukie (or Sookie) over her wacky high cholesterol levels or Michel clipping his wacky French ingrown toenail.   It is not that show, people.  How could anyone who has ever watched and enjoyed Gilmore girls seriously think, “ya know, what this show needs is more abortions.”

The entire premise of the show is that pregnancies, even if unplanned, don’t have to ruin your life and while they can change it, that change is not always a bad thing.    THAT IS THE PREMISE OF THE SHOW.  I’m sorry if you don’t like that premise, but there are a thousand other shows that portray pregnancy as some form of female kryptonite bringing Superwoman to her knees, something that must be avoided at all costs.  Personally, I like that premise.  That premise is the reason why I watched the show.

Yeah, some of the scenarios in which pregnancies occurred were not pulled off as well as they could have been.   But at the same time those scenarios were obviously meant to be surreal and played for maximum quirkiness.  Like, the storyline where Jackson lies about getting a vasectomy hoping for another kid someday, and Sookie (or Sukie) ends up pregnant – does anyone really think that is meant as realistic conversation about male responsibility for birth control?  It’s a plot device, a complication, a hurdle for our gang to overcome with girl power and working-mom-teamwork.   Faux-vasectomies are not a realistic problem faced by women and thus the suggestion that the harsh light of reality should be shone onto Stars Hollow with a midnight call to Planned Parenthood is like suggesting that there should be an episode of Laverne and Shirley where they explore their sexuality.  IT IS NOT THAT SHOW, PEOPLE!

Abortion warriors, if you want to address a related problem that actual women do face, I personally know women who have had the opposite occur – they really wanted a child or more children, and their husband had a vasectomy against their wishes.  Other women are pressured into having abortions they do not want by husbands or partners.  Not a few women either (I am a fertility doula in my day job so I talk to a lot of women on 6 continents about their childbearing experience.  This is a serious problem for many women around the world.)  If you wanna open a dialogue, Cosmo, let’s talk about that.

That’s not a dialogue Cosmo wants to have, because it detracts from their doctrine that pregnancy is a horrible tragic event and destroys women’s lives and bodies irrevocably, and abortions are just downright delightful.  Abortions are everything wonderful in the world. Abortions are kittens, puppies, and little baby ducks all rolled into one.  They’re like glitter, everything is improved with a little sprinkling of abortions on top.

Just please – not in Stars Hollow!