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REVIEW

CURRENT
OPINION Abortion in the media
Jennifer A. Conti and Erica Cahill

Purpose of review
To review updates in how abortion care is depicted and analysed though various media outlets: news,
television, film, and social media.
Recent findings
A surge in recent media-related abortion research has recognized several notable and emerging themes:
abortion in the news media is often inappropriately sourced and politically motivated; abortion portrayal in
US film and television is frequently misrepresented; and social media has a new and significant role in
abortion advocacy.
Summary
The portrayal of abortion onscreen, in the news, and online through social media has a significant impact
on cultural, personal, and political beliefs in the United States. This is an emerging field of research with
wide spread potential impact across several arenas: medicine, policy, public health.
Keywords
abortion, news media, social media, television

INTRODUCTION editors face [1]. News stories traditionally give pur-

The portrayal of abortion online and onscreen is a
new and rapidly developing area of research, partic-
ularly because of its potential for significant public
and political impact. Previous studies investigating
the influence of various media outlets on public
abortion attitudes are limited in number and scope,
often investigating only subsets of this question: is
abortion portrayed accurately; where is abortion
portrayed; is abortion portrayed at all? There is still
limited information about how these portrayals and
representations affect public opinion, and even
more broadly, how a media-influenced public opin-
ion affects healthcare policy. The aim of this review
is to consolidate recent data and highlight potential
avenues for future research into this rapidly emerg-
ing niche.
ABORTION IN THE NEWS MEDIA
Whenever represented in the news media, abortion
inherently encounters one reoccurring challenge:
portedly equal representation to both sides of an
argument, but if one side is blatantly wrong (i.e. a
media piece about a new law that requires physi-
cians to tell patients that abortion causes breast
cancer), then journalists must find a way to appear
nonbiased and still represent all aspects of the story,
even if one side is scientifically false or based on no
evidence at all.
Other inherent difficulties with abortion report-
ing include editorial bias with pitching and assign-
ing stories; issues finding new angles and sourcing
stories; and journalist harassment from antichoice
media consumers (Sisson). Each of these issues,
alone or in league, make abortion reporting an
especially challenging niche.
Representing contraception without bias is sim-
ilarly challenging. In a study investigating national
network television news coverage of contraception
following the rollout of the 2014 Affordable Care
Act, authors found that news coverage centered
around political and social themes, rather than
&&

neutrality. Unlike other news topics, abortion is
often difficult to cover because of the journalistic
drive to avoid bias and still give fair weight to the
scientific facts regarding safety and efficacy, which
favor a pro-choice viewpoint. Media scholars term
this editorial dissonance as ‘false equivalency’. A
recent study by Sisson and coworkers points to this
as one of the main challenges that reporters and
medical facts [2 ]. The most effective contraceptive
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
Correspondence to Jennifer A. Conti, MD, MS, MSc, Stanford University
School of Medicine, 300 Pasteur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
E-mail: jconti@stanford.edu
Curr Opin Obstet Gynecol 2017, 29:000–000
DOI:10.1097/GCO.0000000000000412

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GCO 290607
Family planning
KEY POINTS
 Abortion in the news media is often inappropriately
sourced and politically motivated.
 Abortion portrayal in US film and television is
frequently misrepresented with gross overestimates of
risks and complications.
 Social media has a new and emerging role in abortion
advocacy.
methods (long acting reversible methods) were
rarely discussed (represented in only 5% of all quali-
fying news stories), and the most frequently cited
&&
sources were political figures [2 ]. Notably, govern-
ment experts made up 40% of all sources, whereas
Catholic church leaders made up 16%, and only
&&
11% were actual medical professionals [2 ].
The framing of abortion and contraception
through political and social lenses deemphasizes
the public health significance of these topics, and
contributes greatly to the public’s misunderstand-
ing of reproductive health.
ABORTION ON TELEVISION AND FILM
There are numerous noteworthy aspects of abortion
coverage on television and film, and a recent surge
in related research has helped to identify several
themes that no doubt influence public policy and
perception on this topic. Some of these themes
include: portrayals of the women who consider
and eventually elect abortion; portrayals of abor-
tion-related complications; and portrayals of end
outcomes following abortion decisions.
In regard to the on-screen fictional women who
grapple with abortion, one recent study analyzing
plotlines on American television between 2005 and
2014, found that of all stories wherein a character
considered abortion, only 51% resulted in an actual
pregnancy termination [3]. The researchers also
found that compared with data on real women,
the characters who obtained abortions were dispro-
portionately white, young, wealthy, and not parent-
ing [3]. Moreover, in comparison with real-life
reasons for abortions, the television portrayals con-
centrated on immaturity or interference with future
opportunities, rather than financial hardship or
pregnancy mistiming.
In drastically misrepresenting the demographics
and statistics surrounding abortion, modern tele-
vision portrayals appear to perpetuate the idea that
most abortions are a want rather than a need [3].
This is particularly concerning because of the idea of
2 www.co-obgyn.com
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Cultivation Theory, wherein the immersive envi-
ronment of television causes people to believe that
social, real-life reality mirrors the fictional reality
portrayed on television.
Another major onscreen theme is the risk of
complications following abortion. In an analysis
of 80 abortion plotlines on American television
from 2005 to 2016, researchers found that 37.5%
of characters who obtained an abortion experienced
a complication, intervention, and/or negative
&&
health effect [4 ]. This true life aggregate risk is
only 2.1%, so the on-screen representation is a gross
exaggeration of the facts [5]. The analysis also found
that most onscreen complications and interven-
tions were major events like hemorrhage requiring
major surgery such as hysterectomy, rather than
more frequent occurrences like bleeding requiring
simple administration of a uterotonic medication
&&
[4 ].
Most notably, the onscreen depiction of death
following abortion occurred in 5% of all plotlines,
which is about 7000 times the actual mortality rate
&&
seen in US abortion statistics [4 ]. Similar to the
misrepresentation of the portrayal of women who
undergo abortion, the over inflation of onscreen
complications contributes to the pervasive and false
rhetoric that abortion is dangerous.
Finally, recent research has also identified inac-
curacies in plotlines concerning abortion-related
follow-up. The question of, ‘What happened next?’
is also a commonly misrepresented theme in Ameri-
can film and television. Researchers investigating
abortion plotlines over the last decade, found that
only 55.8% of stories resulted in an actual abortion,
25.8% in parenting, 4.2% in adoption, 6.7% in
pregnancy loss, and 5.1% in an unresolved plotline
[6]. Among all stories, an alarming 13.5% resulted in
the death of the woman seeking an abortion,
whether or not she obtained one [6].
This analysis also found that the portrayal of
abortion in US film and television occurred more
frequently than previously assumed, but that pat-
terns of outcomes and high rates of mortality were
out of proportion to real-life experiences. Among
fictional characters who died following abortion,
the majority of those deaths were because of abor-
tion-related complications, however murder, suicide,
and accidents also occurred [6]. In the United States,
the abortion mortality rate is actually 0.73 deaths per
100 000 abortions [7].
Also, notable from these data is the aggregation
of various plot outcomes before and after the legali-
zation of abortion with ‘Roe v. Wade’ in 1973. A
higher concentration of pre-Roe plotlines was
resolved with abortions compared with plotlines
that occurred post-Roe (64.7 versus 55.1%) [6].
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Abortion in the media Conti and Cahill

Similarly, rates of adoption and miscarriage were
higher post-Roe (2.9 and 1.5%, respectively pre-
Roe, versus 4.7 and 8.5% post-Roe).
Again, the impact of these thematic portrayals is
multilevel. Misconceptions about the demographics,
safety, and outcomes following abortion, no doubt
contribute to public perceptions, health policy inter-
ventions, and antichoice legislative interferences.
ABORTION IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Today’s news media is dominated by various social
media outlets. This is because social media provides
consumers with constant, real-time information
updates, and multiuser simultaneous sourcing.
There is no quicker way to get ‘news’. One major
issue with this platform, however, is that because
everyone can contribute content, credibility is far
more difficult to discern and verify.
On Facebook and Twitter, for example, social
media networks with more than 328 million and
1.94 billion monthly users, respectively, online
posts originate from official organizations, govern-
ment accounts, and individual consumers [8,9].
There is no official distinction between opinion,
advertising, and evidence-based facts, which makes
credible news consumption challenging.
In a recent study that examined 346 health-
related tweets for content accuracy, researchers
found that only 53% of tweets were testable claims
(statements supported by medical evidence), whereas
nearly 18% reflected personal experiences [10]. Fur-
thermore, the authors found that after expert review,
almost half of the medical tweets from verified pro-
fessional Twitter accounts were false [10].
Similarly, researchers evaluating the accuracy of
625 health-related tweets from health professionals
found that almost 51% were false, or not supported
by scientific data [11]. The authors found that
although government institutions and physicians
were less likely to relay false information, approxi-
mately 20% of government tweets and 38% of
physician tweets were false [11]. Further research
is needed to determine if this trend holds true for
family planning-related tweets as well.
What little we know about family planning
coverage via social media comes from a recent
online survey that explored young adults’ views
on abortion and the sources of information attrib-
uted to the development of these views [12]. The
authors queried almost 1000 Facebook users about
pregnancy-related decision-making, including abor-
tion, and compared these data with those from the
National Survey for Family Growth statistics. Partic-
ipants reported that ‘media’ was the most popular
source of abortion information (68% of all
respondents), followed by didactics (48%), friends
(45%), and parents (42%) [12].
Interestingly, however, whenever the authors
stratified these responses by participants’ beliefs
about abortion, this distribution changed. Respond-
ents with antichoice stances were more likely to cite
religious figures as a source of abortion information,
whereas respondents with pro-choice stances were
more likely to cite friends and the media [12]. These
findings suggest that social media outlets like Face-
book can significantly influence public perception
about abortion and also act as an emerging tool for
investigating these beliefs. Again, further studies on
the accuracy of this shared information and its
influences on public attitudes is needed.
THE CASE OF WENDY: POLICY SUPPORT
VIA TWITTER
One notable example of abortion coverage in social
media is the storm of public support that emerged
on Twitter after Texas State Senator, Wendy Davis,
delivered a 11-h long filibuster of a Texas state
antiabortion law, HB2. A recent study investigating
Twitter trends before and after this historic event,
found that it was possible to identify and track pro-
choice supporters across the country through the
use of thematic hashtags like ‘#StandWithWendy’
[13]. Also, whereas the news media assumed most
public support concentrated around the more lib-
eral city of Austin, social media data tracking found
there was, in fact, more wide-spread and even oppo-
sition of abortion restrictions throughout Texas [13].
This study also noted that although methods of
analyzing social media data are still in their infancy,
identifying pro-choice supporters via their online
behavior has the potential to classify individuals’
policy orientations in a way not previously recog-
nized [13]. This could assist social scientists in pre-
dicting abortion politics and guide advocates’ future
efforts to rally support.
More recently, scholars have analyzed how Twit-
ter responses to the 2015-2016 Planned Parenthood
video controversy influenced public perception and
understanding of abortion [14]. Using the hashtags
#defundpp and #standwithpp, researchers character-
ized the content, tempo, and location of abortion
related messages in current social media. Similarly to
the case of Wendy, this study suggests that research-
ers and advocates should be more involved in social
media monitoring and public communication.
CONCLUSION
The portrayal of abortion onscreen, in the news, and
online through social media has a significant impact
on cultural, personal, and political beliefs in the

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Family planning

United States. This is a rapidly emerging field of
research with widespread potential impact, particu-
larly because of the sheer volume of people who
consume media daily. Given this enormous breadth
of influence, there are numerous opportunities for
future research into this topic, including most nota-
bly, how abortion portrayal in the media directly
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This study is the first of its kind to investigate the accuracy of news media content
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