What Grey's Anatomy Gets Right About Abortion
Shondaland is pulling storylines straight from Northwest headlines.
When a Bay Area reproductive health policy think tank released its annual breakdown of abortion storylines that aired on TV last year, one show came up again and again: Grey’s Anatomy, which in its 19th season has not only turned into a maximalist show (there’s now an ensemble cast of what feels like 20 named main characters) but also started incorporating post-Roe Northwest abortion politics into its storylines—with surprising realism.
I wasn’t shocked that a Shonda Rhimes show could depict abortion with sensitivity—she’s known for that. I was surprised to see a show set in Seattle (but filmed in Vancouver and LA) handling abortion policy in a way that felt quite geographically specific. But that’s exactly what I found when I dug into the Grey’s episodes cited in “Abortion Onscreen,” an annual report on abortion storylines on scripted and reality television tracked by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health.
I’ve already written about one of these, “When I Get to the Border,” because a source in reproductive health sent it my way back when it first aired in 2023, expressing deep-seated surprise that a dynamic particular to the Pacific Northwest—the bright ideological line between Idaho and Washington State that brings patients west across the border for care—had become fodder for the most miraculously resilient medical drama on TV.
Turns out that episode was just the beginning of the show’s inventive post-Roe storylines, which include a multi-episode arc on clinic harassment and cover wonky but meaningful topics like the challenges of getting abortion training, a problem that preceded the Dobbs decision but, like so many things, was exacerbated by it.
The show’s 19th season also includes an on-screen abortion almost in real-time: In the episode “All Star,” a pregnant patient who already has two children presents with bleeding. The patient is fine, but she reveals to surgical intern Dr. Jules Millin (Adelaide Kane) that her pregnancy was accidental, she had terrible postpartum depression with her previous pregnancies, and she wants a termination. “I love my kids. I want to stay alive for them,” she says. “I want to be okay for them. I can’t do this again.”
Jules and OB/GYN Dr. Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) arrange for the in-clinic abortion, which is shown on-screen, with Jo narrating what she’s doing as the procedure progresses. It’s over quickly, in what turns out to be the only case in the episode that’s resolved simply.
“That’s it,” says Jo as she concludes the quick procedure.
“That’s it?” the patient responds in surprise.
As a reproductive health policy reporter, this storyline felt real to me, because most people who have abortions do already have children, and an early in-clinic abortion is typically short and uncomplicated. Many storylines make abortion more dramatic than it is in reality, but the patient’s arc in “All Star” felt true to life in how unremarkable it was—especially juxtaposed with other cases on a show that’s often about remarkably rare and complicated-verging-on-baroque medical situations.
Season 19 also takes on the challenges of being an abortion provider. When Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) starts providing care on a mobile unit she takes into abortion-hostile parts of the country, it makes her a target for both adoration and harassment, which is exactly what would happen in real life.
In the episode “Training Day,” this dynamic is explored in depth when Addison comes to Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital (this is the hospital’s newest name; it changes several times over the course of the show for chaotic reasons) to provide abortion training to OB/GYN residents traveling to Seattle from states where abortion is illegal. When intern Dr. Mika Yasuda (Midori Francis) complains to a coworker that it isn’t fair out-of-state residents get to work with Addison, he responds by saying “Well, neither is having to go to another state to get fully trained in your specialty.” This is something that could’ve come directly from a news report, as abortion training has been a major casualty amid abortion bans, and was already limited before Roe was overturned.
There are numerous other storylines that touch upon abortion throughout the season, including one in which a woman comes to the hospital for an abortion with her pregnant best friend, who ends up delivering her baby the same day. Her doctors go from dispensing mifepristone to catching a newborn in a one-episode reminder that abortion is part of a wide spectrum of reproductive health care services.
But the most effective moment in this season comes in “Gunpowder and Lead,” after the harassment—now transferred onto a new target, Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson)—concludes a little too neatly, with hospital staff pitching in to call Bailey’s harassers directly in an improbably successful effort to remind them that she’s human. Given what I know about right-wing anti-abortion terrorism, this is pure fiction, but after dragging Bailey through hell across several episodes, it’s a relief nonetheless.
The biggest comes later, after Addison, who shows up to the hospital on the pretext of supplying her mobile unit, reveals to Bailey that she really just wanted to check in on her. She reveals this information while poised over a box of medication. The camera flashes across the box’s contents so quickly it’s hard to see what’s inside, but I knew the label when I saw it, and when I hit pause, there it was: boxes of the abortion medication mifepristone, framed like any other drug that might show up in the background on a TV show set in a hospital.
Grey’s Anatomy is a wild show, maximalist in the trauma it depicts. With plane crashes and shootings and medical gore and love triangles and emotional spiraling and medical anomalies, it’s fearless to the point of goofy in its willingness to go there. But in a political climate that’s enabled constant attacks on mifepristone, treating the pills as ordinary, essential supplies may be the most subversive storytelling choice the show has ever made.
This Shondaland deep dive was originally published at the South Seattle Emerald. Read it there.
What I’ve been up to: Traveling an excessive amount — to my ballet intensive in Salt Lake City, to my college reunion in Massachusetts, to my family reunion in New Hampshire (which also included a side trip to my college town, and my dad’s old boarding school in Vermont!), to Portland for a wedding and quality time with friends. All wonderful reasons to travel with people I care about very much and I’m glad I did, but I’m tired and I’m glad to be home!
What I’ve been writing about: All of the Supreme Court’s latest abortion rulings. I covered the rulings on mifepristone and emergency abortions, and did some background reporting ahead of the EMTALA ruling. In the process, I’ve been fielding comments from local advocates and providers on what they think about all of this. This one pretty much sums it up:
“I am pleased any time the Supreme Court doesn’t codify laws that harm pregnant people, however it’s the bare minimum we should expect,” said Sarah Prager, a Seattle-area abortion provider and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington, after Bloomberg News reported the decision ahead of its official release on Thursday. “I would expect Idaho doctors will still not feel particularly supported in offering emergency abortions without fear of reprisals, just given how the laws are written.”
I also interviewed fellow Northwest writer Hanna Brooks Olsen about her new book on Lou Graham, a storied madam who helped make Seattle what it is, and reported on Boeing’s latest slap on the wrist from the NTSB, which involved getting too honest with journalists. I guess at least it’s a different kind of error this time? One of the best things about working at Axios this year has been getting to do aviation coverage, and it’s something I’m thinking about continuing now that I’m back in freelance mode. The field certainly could use more women.
What I’ve been reading:
My friend Maggie’s very good new book, Better Faster Farther, on the history of women’s running, which made me realize where the pressure to run through my overuse injuries as a teenager came from. Oops!
Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, Peter Robison’s exhaustive accounting of What Went Wrong at Boeing. The book reads like an extra tragic doomed-startup limited series, and it is so much more compelling than whatever Sam Bankman-Fried Hulu or Netflix product we’re getting next. (I am already dreamcasting my own prestige TV adaptation. I’d like to see Jon Hamm as a shareholders-first exec and Matt Damon as a beleaguered engineer.)
Rare transparency from the Bachelor Franchise on its history of racism.
What I’ve been watching: My friend Sarah and I recently treated ourselves to a double feature of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Body of Evidence, two 1990s erotic thrillers set and filmed in Seattle and Portland respectively. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is the superior of the two—the villainous nanny is oddly easy to root for and the whole movie has a sturdy emotional logic despite some absurd plot points.
But Body of Evidence, which stars Madonna (!) and a very handsome Willem Defoe in little lawyer glasses, is… not a good movie. It’s still worth seeing for the filmmakers’ attempt to pass off the clearly marked Washington State Capitol as a very fancy Portland courthouse, a move that in real life drew ire from then-Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a Republican. According to an LA Times report, Munro wrote an angry letter to Washington’s Department of General Administration about the film: “As you know, the name of this movie is ‘Body of Evidence’ and the plot is that the character played by Madonna seduces a man to death. I am told by your staff that the movie is filled with sex and violence. Why should we condone or cater to anything of this kind?” This makes me like Body of Evidence more. Anyway, Pacific Northwest cities were made for noir, even when the noir is bad.
A note about this newsletter: It hits your inbox at least once a month. Burbank Industries is just me, a reproductive health policy reporter at the dawn of the theocracy. This post is public, but most of the content on this account is going to be paywalled, so if you want to follow it, I would strongly recommend a paid subscription.
Your paid subscription makes my reporting for each newsletter possible, so that I can conduct interviews and research at a fair hourly rate. It also covers any costs related to transcription, licensing for images, payment for photographers and illustrators, gift subscriptions for folks who otherwise couldn’t afford to subscribe, and any additional fact-checking and editing the newsletter needs.
As a journalist who’s worked within and outside of newsrooms for over a decade, it is my strong belief that nobody should be doing this work for free, and neither passion nor exposure are appropriate compensation for any form of media labor (or any other kind). If you pay for this newsletter, you are the reason it exists. Thank you! (And if you can’t swing a subscription financially but want to keep up with the newsletter, fear not: I have a limited number of comps available. Let me know and we’ll figure something out.)
Playing you out: Françoise Hardy, my favorite French singer and the reason I went into a Paris salon and asked for bangs for the first time at age 22, died in June at age 80. She was a wonderful singer with incredible personal style who never really stopped recording, and, with silver cropped hair in the latter era of her career, a glorious example of a woman aging realistically while living a large and beautiful life in the public eye. Here’s a remastered version of one of my favorite Françoise Hardy songs.