Mrs. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
It becomes abundantly clear after the birth of Mary that things are not going to get better; Mr and Mrs Bennet at last have an overdue conversation about the state of their finances and reluctantly agree that trying again and hoping for a boy is a terrible plan of action. With only one overtly ridiculous relative (Mary’s much less dour when she’s not trying to distinguish herself from four beautiful sisters), Jane has no problem marrying Mr Bingley the first time he proposes. Mr. Wickham barely comes near the Bennets, who consider him a pleasant, if vague, acquaintance. There is no scandal attached to the family. Mrs. Bennet does not worry herself into an early grave trying to marry off five daughters, and actually finds herself enjoying her old age.
Lane Kim, Gilmore Girls
Lane Kim deserves to have a lot of good baby-free sex before she decides she’s ready to be a mother. One awkward encounter on the beach isn’t going to cut it. She takes some time to think it over, mostly as a nod to appearances (she wants to at least pay lip service to her pro-life, conservative Christian heritage), then calls Lorelai and asks her for a ride to the clinic. They go out for burgers afterward, and Lorelai keeps up a high level of patter every minute they’re in the waiting room, which for once Lane appreciates.
She never tells Zack about the abortion. More surprisingly, she never tells Rory. She loves Rory, but the idea of telling her and then watching Rory not-listen before launching in to a story about yachts and finding herself is just too much.
Ten years later, after extended tours of Europe, Australia, and South America, (and plenty of good sex, in beds, with no sand in them) Lane lets herself think about having kids again.
She’s not against it.
Allison Scott, Knocked Up
Once Allison had a one-night stand with a guy who was completely wrong for her at a low point in her life. A month later she had a non-surgical abortion, made a list of goals, and moved out of her sister’s pool house. She never saw him again.
Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With The Wind
It was for the best, every time.
Lily Potter, Harry Potter
There wasn’t really much to say about it. They were barely into their twenties and on the run from a powerful, genocidal maniac. Years later, after Neville Longbottom fulfilled the prophecy and destroyed Voldemort, James was the one to bring it up.
“I know we said we wouldn’t,” he began. “And it isn’t that I’m not happy now, just the two of us.”
“I would,” she said. “I would if you would.”
He smiled. “You don’t mind I’ll be a little bit old?”
“You’re not old,” she said, and she meant it.
Katniss, The Hunger Games
Peeta had really wanted children, but that was just too fucking bad.
Shelby, Steel Magnolias
It was a difficult decision — she’d wanted a baby, and she’d particularly wanted a baby that grew from her own body — but after the doctor had explained that it would probably kill her, she made her peace with it. She got the abortion. She cried. She mourned that baby. She called her mother late at night and said angry, lonely words to her. And she got better, and she lived.
She lived to raise four children, all of whom grew up with a mother who loved them, and a grandmother who never had to watch her daughter die.
Juno, Juno
“Did you know that–” the girl had started to say before Juno hip-checked her aside. Something about fingernails, it sounded like.
“Sorry,” Juno said, before chucking her ironic Capri Sun into the wastebasket. “No time to talk. I’m late for my abortion.”
Hetty, Adam Bede
Hetty lives a long and quiet life with her Adam, and almost never thinks about Arthur.
Padmé, Star Wars Episode III
It was a terrible time to get pregnant. Hers was no situation to bring up children in. She got the abortion, didn’t die in childbirth, and lived for another 40 years in relative seclusion on a minor planet where nothing important happened. She got remarried, eventually, to a successful farmer who didn’t ask too many questions but always made her coffee in the morning. Someone else brought down the Empire. She doesn’t know who; doesn’t really follow politics.
Every female character in every single Thomas Hardy novel
Tess runs a small but successful sewing business out of her home. The work is difficult, but she’s her own boss and she can hold her head up in the market.
Tags: abortion, family planning, feminism, fictional characters, things mallory does for no reason
Mallory, your presence on the Internet is a shining beacon of sanity.
10000000000%
also KIND OF hoping to get a few pending comments from the overlapping sets of Harry Potter stans and forced-birth nuts
If you love us, you’ll share
if you build it they will come
What, no Hester Prynne?
“What does the A stand for? It stands for the fact that I am awesome!”
CACKLING WITH LAUGHTER SO MANIACAL I CAN’T SEE
Please,please, please can we have Dirtbag Hester Prynne!
Would it really have improved things? She still would have been a Puritan. Which seems only slightly less horrible than being a Puritan single mother.
Mr. Prynne does not change his name to Chillingsworth and haunt Dimmesdale to his doom. Instead, he shows up a couple of months late and proceeds to impregnate Hester half a dozen times before dying when the eldest is not quite ten, leaving her a respectable but poor widow with four children to support. (Child mortality was quite high.)
At least Hester’s pregnancy drove away her awful husband and awful boyfriend! In a way, she won!
“It was for the best, every time.”
Perfect.
And in her case so true.
1) this article is amazing and the Lane section made me tear up (of course she’d tell Lorelei because Lorelei is her cool aunt but Rory’s way too self centered for that kind of thing)
2) I think James and Lily would still be dead, and Voldemort would have never been stopped the first time.
There’s probably a fanfic somewhere where Harry is never born, James gets axed in the war, and Lily runs around boffing [Snape/Sirius/Lupin//takeyourpick].
Actually, given fanfic being fanfic, I think it’s more likely that Lily bites it, and then James runs around boffing Sirius AND Lupin, and it’s all hurt/comfort all the time.
ETA: Actually probably there’s both because the internet is a vast and wonderful place.
okay but in the femslash scenario WHO DO WE PAIR LILY WITH after James bites it??????
Luna Lovegood’s mom, who then DOESN’T die, and the two of them just spend their lives blissfully inventing spells while lounging around in their underwear and drinking firewhisky
omg my immediate thought was “Luna’s mom” but then I was like “…about whom I know/remember LITERALLY NOTHING is she even like a thing” and therefore I asked. GOOD ENOUGH. GOOD ENOUGH.
Please not Molly Prewett. Ew.
i literally do not know who that is so i think u are safe?
Molly Weasley, née Prewett.
AHHHHH.
I am not, er, an HP buff. But yes I agree that would be Bad.
Andromeda Black.
GOOOOOOOOD
Bellatrix and Narcissa Black (at the same time)
Voldemort might have run into the same problem trying to finish Neville as an infant. (In which case the Longbottoms are probably dead rather than tortured into insanity after his fall.) While James and Lily might have been targeted as members of the Order, they probably don’t get Voldemort’s personal attention without a baby associated with an important prophecy.
Of course, if Alice and Frank Longbottom have the same conversation, presumably Voldemort becomes the immortal wizard lord of England. (The rest of the world is, mysteriously, both uninterested and unaffected by this development.)
That’s 1981 in the HP timeline. Reagan’s crew is not going to pass up an excuse to float a fat, fat defense bill:
-a satellite network capable of tracking apparations and vaporizing wizards with lasers (the press dubs it “the Gandalf Swatter.”)
-a new generation of anti-broom fighter jets.
-a new generation of anti-broom submarines.
-a new generation of anti-broom tactical nuclear missiles.
Republicans vs Voldemort is now my favorite “who would win”
Fight never happens. Discovery of magic in a Western country causes hardliners to take over control of the Soviet Union from Gorbachev and then nuke the crap out of Britain. Reagan amiably shrugs.
An abortion for Merope Gaunt might be added to the list.
Fuck yes!!! Wizardbortions! You probably flick your wand and say, like, Fetus Reductio.
“Fetus deletus” was the joke from this reddit thread (which doesn’t exactly read like HP but is still pretty funny): http://np.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2j…
I was about to be SUPER OUTRAGED but there she is, there’s Tess, the poor little baby.
If we’re talking Hardy characters, I’d like to add Sue from Jude the Obscure to that list. I also feel like Jude’s first wife, Arabella or whatever her name was, would have cheerfully gotten an abortion if that option had been available to her. And would have been much happier for it.
Fanny, from Far From The Madding Crowd! It would have been better for pretty much everyone. Except I guess Gabriel, because he probably wouldn’t have ended up with Bathsheba.
Poor Fanny!
He still might’ve ended up with Bathsheba. whatshisface (Troy? i forget) would go off and marry Fanny, the weirdo would still end up going crazy because there was no way Bathsheba wasn’t going to just keep stringing him along and it would have just driven him over the edge eventually, and Gabriel is the kind of guy who would forgive Bathsheba for being a brat and she’d still have trouble with the farm and have to humble herself to seek his help.
See, Mr Hardy! We still could’ve had all the good bits!
Wait, women making decisions on their own?
What did non-abortion-having Padma even die of?? I am not subjecting myself to that movie again, but I seem to remember some pretty healthy-looking full-term twins and no particularly gruesome hemorrhaging or anything before she succumbed to Dead Mom Syndrome.
She died of the Intense Sadness of being a Plot Device for both a villain AND a hero.
The stress was too much.
Via wikipedia: “Padmé dies after delivering twins (Luke and Leia) due to having lost the will to live.”
aka bullshit
I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS THE ACTUAL ANSWER, OH MY GOD
And it doesn’t even make sense with the other movies! Leia explicitly REMEMBERS Padmé in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Not much, but enough to indicate Padmé lived for a few more years in hiding on Alderaan. Lucas threw a massive continuity monkey wrench into his franchise just so he could have a woman die in childbirth because she had nothing to live for, other than, y’know, those two children.
I believe the official handwave for that (not that any of it’s canon anymore, maybe, who knows, whatever) is that she’s remembering her adoptive mother, Saché Organa, who died when she was a little girl because … well, who was retroactively declared to have died when Leia was little in order to make that line make some sort of sense.
I kind of thought it was The Force maybe?
But Luke says, “do you remember your mother? Your real mother?” right before he tells Leia that she’s his sister! NO SENSE.
My fanwank for that is that Leia’s memories of her birth mother are entirely false, and she just told herself, as a child, that she remembered her mother, and did this so many times that it stuck.
But her HEART was BROKEN and in case you didn’t know that she EVEN SAID “Anakin, you’re breaking my heart” right before she kicked it, just to make sure.
My college roommate and I used to play endless games of gin rummy with a pack of Star Wars quote playing cards that my brother gave me, and we always knew when the other person had the Queen of Hearts because neither of us could ever resist saying “ANAKIN you’re BREAKING my HEART” in the most obnoxious voice possible.
I don’t know, by the end of that movie I had lost my will to live too.
A BROKEN HEART. Because Anakin was evil. Obviously.
She died of “we need a reason for Man Aaaaaaaangst.”
/totally not still rolling my eyes over this, years later
A BROKEN HEART.
I’m like 99% sure that’s canon.
She died of Being Tragically Underwritten, and also of Sad.
No, you silly people. As is made clear in the movie, Padme dies of grief as a result of Anakin’s turn to the dark side. This is pretty weak storytelling (and actually sort of misogynistic on the part of George Lucas since no other major character in the new trilogy- ALL of whom are male, conveniently enough- ever DIE due to emotional problems or ‘losing the will to live’ or whatever weak-ass explanation they gave us) but hey- I DIDN’T WRITE IT. Padme having an abortion wouldn’t have changed that outcome; Palpatine would have just found some other way to manipulate Anakin.
She died of George Lucas’s inability to fathom the female psyche. Even my Dad was all, “Um, right after seeing those babies? I can’t even imagine a Mom seeing her babies she just delivered, into this dangerous world, and then being ‘nope, I think I’ll die now, because I have NO REASON TO LIVE.”
(also, as Ignorance-Of-Girls evidence: Padme apparently *ignores* the handsome, age-appropriate Jedi who saves her life in Ep. I, who turns out to be pretty much the only person in her life who doesn’t screw her over, who she gives custody of her CHILDREN to eventually, because instead, she forms this odd emotional bond with a *9-year old*. I get being a older sister figure, but there were some weird vibes about it. After Phantom Menace, I was all “You know nothing, George Lucas.”)
I agree that Obi-Wan would have been a better partner for her in the long run…but they still have an 11-year difference, I believe. I think I remember Obi-Wan being 25 in the first movie, which would be weird paired with a 14-year-old. By the second and third movies, this would have no longer mattered, though. (And in the tradition of teenage girls, it would have made complete sense if she found herself crushing on the unattainable older Obi-Wan upon first meeting him.)
True. Definitely was going off of how old Natalie Portman appears to be (gosh I thought she was at least 19/20?) and for Ep. I was thinking the whole “inevitable teenage crush on the older Jedi.”
And yes, in the second and third movies, I’m just a ball of WHHYYYY. 😛 (mainly because I am a sucker for steady, responsible types, and Obi-Wan is the soul of bearded sense, whilst also being wow, good-looking.) (also because I want to slap Anakin entirely through AotC and RotS, and I resent that Padme, who is painted as a level-headed, sensible, mature girl, is fobbed off on the most emo character outside a My Chemical Romance song. But the CANON NEEDS IT, I understand. *sigh*)
Plus crushing on Ewan McGregor makes total sense in any universe.
Thank you. I saw that movie pregnant and I was like: Yeah, my husband turns evil and I birth twins, my response is going to be “give me a million blasters and 6 Jedi and get me up out of this bed ’cause anyone even _laughs_ evilly around my kids, they are dying right there.”
Seriously she didn’t die in childbirth , she died cuz her husband was an abusive ass. Didn’t he kill her with his evil?
JK
Interesting theory on io9 recently, which is that it’s shown interspliced with Palpatine bringing back Anakin from the verge of death and essentially recreating him. But there’s no way he has that kind of power on the regs, so essentially he was draining her life force to feed it into Anakin (or maybe Anakin was, subconsciously; either way it’s because she’s still the one to whom he has the strongest bond). Anyway it’s the only explanation I’ve heard that wasn’t *complete shit*, which probably makes it much less likely, but I’m making it my headcanon nonetheless …
“That was just too fucking bad” PERFECTION
Katniss didn’t seem like a bad/unhappy Mom even with the PTSD, though? I think it’s a wash either way, babies or no babies. Both are valid post-dystopic lifestyles.
omg she seemed MISERABLE, that epilogue was like a note from a hostage
Clearly I need to reread this thing man.
MY CHILDREN PLAY ON GRAAAAAAAAAAAVES
But on the one hand “My children play on graves, gloom,” on the other “the graveyards have turned into happy places where children can play, it’s hopeful.”
Really? She’s super detached in the epilogue. They aren’t even given names, just ‘the children’.
I feel like the babies were a bit tacked on and unnecessary. Like she was a fertile woman in a YA novel so she had to get pregnant. It’s that whole Chekov’s womb thing.
Chekov’s womb!
“So, let me get this straight,” said Katniss, setting her glass of honey mead on the coffee table and rearranging herself more comfortably on the couch. “They made you have children, too?!”
“I know, right?” Hermione rolled her eyes. “As if it weren’t a totally overused trope to begin with. Besides,” she continued, dropping onto the cushion next to Katniss, “in what world would having Ron’s greasy dick in me be even remotely acceptable?”
“Yeurrrgh!” Ginny, seated to Katniss’s left, shuddered violently. “I could have gone the rest of my life without thinking about my brother’s junk. Thanks for the nightmares, Herms.”
“De nada,” Hermione returned, blowing the redhead a kiss.
Katniss yawned and stretched her arms above her head, then completely without subtlety draped them across the shoulders of her wives. “Well, we still won in the end,” she pointed out, and the three women turned their heads as one to the coop in the yard, where a Rhode Island Red, a bantam Australorp, and a one-legged Golden Bugg alternately scratched for bugs and tried to mount each other.
“Yep,” said Ginny, and then the three went upstairs and fucked each other enjoyably all night long.
I could kiss you right now for this.
C’mere.
I’m going to bookmark this and re-read it every time I come across “all the ladies must have babies” endings that piss me off.
And then I will make lots of middle fingers at whatever I was reading. Thank you.
She talks about how she’s terrified every time she looks at her children and what kind of a world she brought them into, will the games ever return, can they be truly safe, etc. And how it was only after “years” (YEARS) of Peeta pressuring her to have kids that she gave in.
This article is just so correct.
EAT IT PEETA!!!!!
your name is a type of bread, you can eat that first if you want
Oh my god. I just got that. I’m an idiot.
your name is a type of bread
oh god why didn’t I ever realize this
you can eat that first if you want
and this is where I almost started laughing to myself in my office room of three people
what how did I never notice this.
For everyone who is just realizing Peeta’s name is a type of bread, I give you this, in which the role of Peeta is played by a piece of pita bread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7nD02Im5E
Somehow, I still manage to get just as much out of his character after that replacement. Huh.
It’s true. Whoever designed that pita managed to get Peeta’s full range of facial expressions down perfectly.
Though I am somewhat disturbed that they seem to be running around the forest with Muppetized Guy Fieri.
I’m realizing that my response to unexpected food is exactly the same, “Ooh – snacks!”
Also just realizing Peeta = pita…
Said Dirtbag Katniss.
oh my god.
add me to the list of people who just realized this……
Think of the men who wouldn’t have made money or gotten famous off of these fictional characters’ stories, though.
No wait, don’t think of them.
never think of them. live blissfully.
You mean, the women who wrote Harry Potter and The Hunger Games? And the woman who wrote Gone with the Wind? And the actresses, female musicians who profited from Juno?
…the WOMAN who wrote Juno too? Maybe? xD
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one long UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! I like deep, dark tales but wow, Hardy. Still glad that I lost that copy of Jude the Obscure before I had a chance to torment myself with it.
Oh god, never find Jude the Obscure.
It’s lost in the bowels of my mother’s house never to be seen again.
Jude the Obscure is REALLY boring for the 1st 3rd of the book and then there is a twist that is all sorts of deeply disturbed. Let’s just say that an abortion would have meant the entire book was incesty but boring. (Did I just type that? Yes, I did. It’s what Hardy does to people)
ALSO I love that book because it’s so morbid. I would definitely keep it lost if that’s not what you’re feeling like reading.
Don’t bother, but do watch the five-minute video version. Chris Eccleston and Kate Winslet smacking each other with inappropriate objects and then dying after a miserably long time!
tl;dr Birth control, kiddos. It’s a social good.
OMG. I was given Tess by an English teacher when I was 14 or so, and I hated it. My mother agreed with me and told me never to read Jude.
NOW I SEE WHY.
So happy for Lily and James yet so sad for Neville. FEELINGS!
(also, I’m sure this is fanfic’d somewhere and now I want to read it)
But would they have survived? Voldemort is clearly after Harry, and if there were no Harry then Lily wouldn’t have died saving him and Snape wouldn’t have turned to Dumbledore, but would Voldemort have killed James eventually anyway for fighting him (or to give Lily to Snape as a reward)? Or Snape would have killed James.
And what if both Alice and Lily had had abortions? (Someone else would have stopped him)
Lily & James would be the perfect candidates to foster Neville. Sure, putting him with Gran is the same “old magic” that put Harry with the Dursleys, but Lily and James are battle-hardened soldiers and close friends of the (dead or mad) Longbottoms.
<s>you can read all about it my ten-thousand page epic fanfic</s>.
links or it didn’t happen
😀
+1 for GWTW. Those kids never had a chance. One was virtually ignored by his mother and horrifically traumatized by the burning of Atlanta/starvation at Tara, one had something along the lines of fetal alcohol syndrome, and one was spoiled terribly and then dies as the indirect result of said spoilage.
Also: Johanna, the extremely minor character in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn who has a baby out of wedlock at age 14, and the neighbourhood shuns her for it and eventually STONES HER.
Holy shit, I forgot all about that scene until you mentioned it. The blood running down the baby’s face!
Scarlett just did NOT need to be a mother. Give ’em all to Melanie, sure, but none to Scarlett.
It’s also the scene where Francie is like, “WELP, I SHALL NEVER TRUST A WOMAN AGAIN.”
Sigh. I’d like a version of that book where Francie doesn’t fundamentally distrust all other women.
It sounded like Johanna didn’t want an abortion, though. Didn’t all the woman begin stoning her precisely because she made it clear that she wasn’t ashamed of her baby and fawned over it all the time? She was like the anti-Hester Prynne.
whoa, I’ve never read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but apparently I need to!
It’s horribly sad yet amazingly humane. Beautifully written and makes you feel all the main character’s feelings. Lovely book, read it as soon as possible@
Pretty much all of the Fallen Women of Victorian literature:
Lady Dedlock (Bleak House)
Ruth (Ruth)
Fantine (Les Mis)
etc., etc.
+1 for Fantine. I love Cosette and all (HATERS TO THE LEFT) but no baby is worth THAT.
If we’re listing Les Mis, can we add Marius’s mother? (That was not a character that improved the lives of others.)
Except in that a century later, the character gave to us the wonder of a young Michael Ball for the ogling.
I stared at “Padma, Star Wars Episode III” for fully 30 seconds before I figured out who you were talking about.
ugh you knew what i meant come on
It was because of the Harry Potter brainspace, “wait, Padma Patil was in Star Wars, wait no”
“Someone else brought down the Empire. She doesn’t know who; doesn’t really follow politics.”
Anakin, probably. He only went Dark Side in the first place because he was obsessed with saving Padme. (Insofar as it’s possible to discuss “characters” with “motivations” in the prequel trilogy, anyway.)
… it’s Padme.
I’M SORRY I’M A STAR WARS NERD I CAN’T HELP IT EVEN THOUGH IT’S FROM THE PREQUELS THAT I PRETEND DON’T EXIST
Otherwise, totes A+, would read again. And 100% cosign on Katniss.
Star Wars extended universe canon (read: no-longer-Lucasfilm-endorsed but someone has to pick up the pieces) sez Padme’s injuries from being force-choked by Anakin were ultimately fatal:
“After Amidala’s death, there were conflicting reports regarding her death, the circumstances of and behind her death, and how she spent her final hours, but all of the autopsy reports agreed on two things: that she died by strangulation, and that the child she was pregnant with had died with her. What puzzled people most though is how exactly she could have been strangled even though there were no external signs of strangulation. There were no bruises (nor signs of bruises) on her neck, there were no scratches of any kind nor signs of congestion; there were no signs of exterior trauma at all. Her throat was “pristine”. This led some, including Captain Typho, to conclude that Amidala was Force choked.”
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Padm%C3%A9_Amidala
So seriously, this culture can create a FULLY FUNCTIONING HAND that’s indistinguishable from the real thing, but can’t diagnose and treat asphyxia?
Were they standing around going “Well, she clearly can’t breathe, and her airway seems to be collapsed or something, but her neck looks okay, so, meh, broken heart it is I guess”?
I like to think of all of these characters being aided by time-travelling Flora Poste.
Thank you for bringing a Glorious New Realm of Imagination into being inside my head.
“Nature’s all very well in her place, but she mustn’t be allowed to make things untidy”.
PERFECT.
Guys, I started watching Gilmore Girls for the very first time when it was added to Netflix and I am NOT complaining about spoilers on a show that’s been around for over a decade, but knowing what happens to Lane makes me DESPAIR. Lane is so much better than that. And so much better than Rory.
Re-watching on Netflix also gives me the same feelings. IT ISN’T RIGHT, DAMNIT. Lane should have been a rock star or a famous music critic. Had wild stories to tell her children years later and if she wanted them about her youthful days as a drummer partying with musicians and getting exclusive first cuts of CDs.
Lane’s friendship with Rory makes a lot more sense when you realize she’s basically just using her for access to her cool mom who will let her sleep over any time without warning and let her band practice in her garage and smuggle her rock music. For Lane, that’s necessary enough to make up for Rory’s incredible selfishness as a friend.
I also am watching Gilmore Girls for the first time (well, I definitely watched the first season on the WB when it first came out, but didn’t stick with it), and I am just SHOCKED right now! Lane does not deserve that story arc!
I’ve seen bits and pieces of Gilmore Girls over the years but somehow missed this storyline, and I am DEVASTATED by this news and I won’t lie, kind of ruins the charm of the series for me. WTF! Lane deserved way better.
i could fuel at least five star systems with my hate for that epilogue and KATNISS COERCED INTO BRINGING TWO BAGS OF PITA CHIPS INTO THE WORLD.
PITA CHIPS
“Coerced”?
Sybil. Downton Abbey. The feminist of the bunch. The wearer of daring harem pants. What happened to you was SO UNFAIR. You should have run away with sweet Gwen, the maid-turned-typist. You clearly loved her! And she adored you. There was CHEMISTRY there. Not so with your hotheaded boyfriend. You can start a revolution without him, I promise.
Gaaaah “I don’t love you.” “You’re only saying that because you’re a rich snobby princess.” “I’m not a rich snobby princess!” “Then you love me.”
He really is the unending worst, isn’t he?
yes
h8 u branson
Remember when he burned down a house, fled without his pregnant wife and still had the temerity to be rude at dinner? I DO.
Remember his stupid smug face? I DO.
God bless all of you.
Remember when he immediately abandoned his Socialist principles to live a life of luxury, stopping only to feel sad about how his friends kept treating him like an aristocrat now that he lived with aristocrats, was super-wealthy, and had the power to get any of them fired at any time? I DO.
Sybil and Gwen could have then headed north, become part of the Free Folk, and then Gwen/Ygritte wouldn’t have bothered with Jon Snow because FUCK MEN.
Instead they would’ve just created a lesbian commune in the snow, maybe in collaboration with the White Walkers.
Like Craster’s keep but without Craster.
Still with the sacrificing of man children though.
YES, EXACTLY
100% less rape and creepiness
100% awesome female-centric commune
Here is my Sybil Crawley alternate future:
Sybil’s illegal termination in Ireland permanently affected her fertility. She and Tom tried for many years to have another child, but were ultimately unsuccessful. While heartbreaking for them both, this allowed her to travel around Ireland, passionately speaking on abortion rights and the necessity of safe and legal family planning services, and eventually landed her a seat in the Oireachtas [Irish Toasties, would this be right? Help me out!]. Her activism and grace are remembered to this day.
Yes, Sybil Crawley, TD! I love this.
In order for her to have a position in independent Ireland, the show would have to remember that Ireland actually achieved independence. Nobody has said a single fucking word about Ireland on that show since Branson & Sybil fled. Even though what was actually going on in Ireland while we’ve been ignoring it throughout the early 20s was kind of a big deal, what with there being a fucking war on and stuff.
Yes, but that doesn’t provide an opportunity for the aristocracy to look magnanimous and perfect.
Also, if Sybil had got an abortion, I would’ve kept watching stupid Downton Abbey BECAUSE THE CHARACTER WHO WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF WATCHING IT WOULDN’T BE DEAD
The only reason Sybil died in childbirth is that the actress playing her got better offers and decided to leave the show. She wanted Sybil killed off, instead of, say, funding a revolution in Ireland or moving to Paris with Gwen, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to come back to the show.
I ship Branson with Thomas – partly because Thomas should totally have a boyfriend, and partly also because the two actors have such great chemistry together. (Also I wish Downton Abbey would focus way more on queer stuff instead of straight people problems.) Besides, Gay!Branson means that Sybil doesn’t have to die. If only Mary had died instead, I’m sick of her whining about having to choose between what men to go out with, completely derailing the show with boringness. Thomas didn’t get to do ANYTHING in season 4, I was so disappointed, and they just lamely wrote out O’Brien so we don’t even have her around anymore! So lame.
Amy Pond. She finds out early, knows she doesn’t want kids (especially not if she’s going to be traveling with the Doctor). Rory is sad, but respects her decision. River Song gets a backstory that isn’t many layers of gross and creepy and awful. Most of seasons 6 and 7 of Doctor Who just didn’t happen somehow, okay?
I think for the “Rory is sad, but respects her decision” part she would need a husband who is not Rory and a writer who is not Steven Moffat.
YEP.
I think Rory would respect her decision! Possibly Moffat-Rory would not, but the essential Rory who exists outside the way writers might depict him incorrectly would be fine with it.
I wish that Rory did exist. He and the essential Amy-that-Steven-Moffat-never-got-his-grubby-mitts-on who exists only in our collective imagination would be so happy together.
Maybe I was just still naive and optimistic about Who in 2010, but I still love the season 5 Ponds! and I believe season 5 Rory at least would have respected her decision. For me their relationship only got gross and weird in season 6
I love them too.
I’m quite annoyed at The Doctor for not telling Amy that he thought she might be pregnant. I know he couldn’t work out how she could be both pregnant and not pregnant but surely if he respected Amy as a friend and a person he should have told her. Yes it was complicated because of the Doppelganger, but he could have at least told her of his suspicions.
Everyone in “Gosford Park” who had a child. I can say no more.
Emily in “Our Town”. I sometimes go on a soapbox rant about that speech where the two mothers make three meals a day and kept the house clean without getting a vacation or having a nervous breakdown in which I go “And when Emily tried to do it she up and died!”
I have (unreasonable) hopes that the movie will just have Katniss NOPE NOPE NOPE frolicking out into the woods after the war to live off her trusty bow and arrow and never deal with another soul again.
Mildred Pierce. She lived happily ever after with her delicious husband and eventually her restaurant wins a James Beard Award. She looks young for her age, at 60.
IS THIS A SAFE SPACE TO DISCUSS HOW ENRAGED I STILL AM AT JACKSON FOR LYYYYYING ABOUT GETTING SNIPPED AND SOOKIE JUST LIKE, GOES ALONG WITH IT AND NO ONE BATS AN EYE. BECAUSE NOOOOO.
WHYYYYY.
BUT REALLY.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo stahp you are the worst jackson the worst.
YES WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT, JESUS CHRIST
everything about that storyline was the worst and i want to set it on fiiiiiiiiiiiiire.
THANK YOU FOR YELLING AT IT WITH ME.
ALSO I HATE HOW HIS CHARACTER IS PORTRAYED LIKE THE ULTIMATE NICE GUY SCHMO WHO JUST WUVS BEBES OMG WHAT A PSYCHOPATH!!!!!
I would also like to mention THAT IS NOT HOW VASECTOMIES GO. You can’t just sign someone up for one and they fit you in after a birth. Sookie and Jackson needed some communication skills. And understanding of insurance.
Sookie should for sure have had an abortion. And then gotten a divorce. Or, failing that, kept the baby, pretended to be ok with the whole thing and then, once it was born and Jackson was full of happiness and love, left in the middle of the night with all the kids and all his valuables. After having salted his garden and given him some kind of infertility-inducing poison.
… i think we just became best friends?
I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS. WHAT THE EVERLASTING HELL WAS THAT STORYLINE???
Jackson was the worst. Such a selfish lying liar. Oooooh my blood is boiling just thinking about it.
I introduced my partner to Gilmore Girls and he loved it, but as soon as we got to season 7 he turned to me and said “What the freaking hell is happening to this show?!”
ANDREA ZUCKERMAN!
When I saw this headline. Andrea Zuckerman was the first character I thought of! If she had an abortion, she could have gone to Harvard as planned and gotten off the show way earlier. Her storylines were always soooo boring!
I said it last night on twitter, but Dean’s GF after Rory should have had one too. Though, as some one else mentioned, Lorelei probably should have had one too. That show is just a bunch of sadness when it comes to pregnancy.
I’m so conflicted, because I feel like Lorelai’s life would have been miserable if she hadn’t had Rory! She would have ended up rebelling in some way, and having a kid got her out of that life in a way that forced her to be responsible.
(Also, and this is only semi-related, but Gilmore Girls gives me the most intense FOMO (or fear of HAVING missed out? FOHMO?) because my biological mother was cool and young and also a teenager when she had me, but I was given up for adoption at the last minute and grew up with older, arguably less cool parents. And I love my mom and dad! And, anyhow, it was totally the right choice to put me up for adoption, and my biological mother is now very happy with that decision. Still, watching GG always made me intensely jealous of that kind of mother-daughter relationship that I didn’t get to have.)
wtf are you talking about? “Dean’s GF after Rory” meaning Lindsay? She was never pregnant.
I feel like Game of Thrones would be a little more chilled if Cersei Lannister had access to proper healthcare.
But Cersei wanted kids with Jaime – she used the abortifacients at her disposal (well I guess getting Robert drunk and making sure he never came inside her) to make sure she didn’t have his children, but if she really wanted to get rid of the Jaime kids she could have, and she didn’t want to.
Cersei canonically did have at least one abortion – she mentions that Robert got her pregnant one time despite her best efforts; she couldn’t stand the idea of having his child, and so went to an old woman who got rid of it for her.
She wanted the children she had, and didn’t have the one/s she didn’t want.
Oh, really? Well, you do you, crazy lion lady. But if she had proper healthcare, maybe she could get therapy to work through some of her issues? She drinks her feelings away a bit too much to be healthy and all the conspiring to murder people isn’t really good for the psyche.
Westeros’ court therapist would have a long-ass waiting list of clients. But no matter who it was, they’d be better than fucking Grand Maester Pycelle. Tobias Funke would be better than Grand Maester Pycelle.
oh man, now all I can think about is Tobias Funke blueing himself in King’s Landing.
Y’all need Arrested Westeros, the world’s best GoT/Arrested Development mashup blog.
Yup, it’s phenomenal. The hand jokes and huge mistakes alone would be enough…but they have so much more!
Those “uncle-father Jaime” jokes are my favs. That blog really brings out the silliness of GoT and the grimness of AD (I didn’t use to notice the common motifs of incest, arson and mutilation).
So, Arrested Westeros just about got PartnerChouffe to pee himself at the bar last night from laughing so hard, so thanks 😀 that was AMAZING.
Every character who has ever said repeatedly that they don’t want children but then went and had them anyway.
I have my issues with Grey’s Anatomy, but I have to give that show MAJOR props for sticking to its guns when it came to Cristina. She never wanted kids, and she never had kids, even when she was married and her husband wanted her to keep the baby. Just another reason she was the best goddamn character on that show (why do I still watch it why).
I’ll just be sitting here with you missing Cristina. 🙁
I’ll join in on that party.
My issue with Grey’s is that no one ever DISCUSSES whether or not they want kids until AFTER THEY ARE MARRIED WTF.
I mean, seriously. That’s like the #1 thing you can’t compromise on in a marriage. You can’t halfway have a kid. You have to TALK TO THE PERSON YOU ARE GOING TO SPEND YOUR LIFE WITH ABOUT THE MAJOR LIFE-RELATED CHOICES YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE APOERUSEIOHFSGHSDLJFLD (dissolves into rage-puddle).
But also yes, yay Cristina for refusing to have any of Owen’s bullshit guilt-tripping.
I’m correcting you not out of pedantry, but because I can never turn down a chance to rage about Owen. Cristina and Owen did discuss the matter offscreen. We know this because when Cristina mentions it, Owen’s response is that he assumed she would grow up and get over that.
Owen is the worst. I am so ashamed of the time I spent shipping Teddy/Cristina/Owen.
Let us all agree that Cristina’s marriage to Owen was in no way, shape or form a Good Life Choice. They didn’t even TALK ABOUT GETTING MARRIED before they got married.
Oh, Christina Yang.
I never liked Owen, but that entire plot made me SO RAGEY. Everything he did on that show was awful. And I also feel like he is basically Fitz on Scandal, except Fitz is worse.
Anyway. Meredith / Christina 4eva! Remember that episode where they saw themselves as old people living together? And in the AU episode where EVEN IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE they cannot avoid their soul-bond?
I just want the show to end with Cristina’s triumphant return where she promptly throws Meredith over her shoulder and strides off with her (and the kids behind her because, fine) into the sunset so they can live together and Be Surgeons Forever.
There’s an AU episode? Did I just block this out of my memory?
It’s in season 8, when Meredith dreams about if her mom never got sick and had married Richard. Bailey has dreadlocks and Meredith is engaged to Alex. It’s weird.
her first abortion – which the show treated as Important But Not Permanently Life-Altering And Also Totally Her Choice – is what made me fall in love with the show. (My best friend and I watched the whole first season in one night. Nine hours straight.) F yes, Cristina. G-d help me, I still love the show, but I’m not caught up to season 10 and I don’t want to watch a show without Cristina Yang.
Yeah, it actually kind of bummed me out that she didn’t get to go through with the abortion in the first season because miscarriage, but she was 100% there and that was so rad.
Mother Leeds, who gave birth to the Jersey Devil:
“It was said that Mother Leeds had 12 children and, after finding she was pregnant for the 13th time, stated that this one would be the Devil. In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night. Gathered around her were her friends. Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child’s father was the Devil himself. The child was born normal, but then changed form. It changed from a normal baby to a creature with hooves, a goat’s head, bat wings and a forked tail. It growled and screamed, then killed the midwife before flying up the chimney. It circled the villages and headed toward the pines. In 1740 a clergy exorcised the demon for 100 years and it wasn’t seen again until 1890.”
SHE KNEW SHE WOULD GIVE BIRTH TO THE DEVIL
We’re talking about FICTIONAL characters.
We could go with Lavinia Whateley, maybe?
that was an efficient exorcism, though. only supposed to last 100 years, managed to keep it away for 150!
(I was born in South Jersey, the Jersey Devil is my jam.)
Possibly demons are just bad at math.
That may be the most metal birth in recorded history.
I love you for this
I am reading the new Sarah Waters novel and
SPOILER ALERT
the home abortion scene in it is almost as bad as the one in The Night Watch. One of the many things I love so much about her novels is that she does the research and the description so that now I can imagine what, for example, Mrs. Bennett would have had to go through to get that abortion.
“Katniss, The Hunger Games
Peeta had really wanted children, but that was just too fucking bad.”
YES. I hate the ending of The Hunger Games series SO MUCH.
Clearly I blocked this part out from my memory of the books b/c I remember it ending where they lived next to each other and were pals who loved each other, but not in *that* way. My version makes more sense, really.
(According to certain fan theories) Lyanna Stark, Game of Thrones.
Hell, make that the mother of every (non-Dornish) bastard in the GoT universe. They always seem to be dead from childbirth or otherwise MIA, after being treated abhorrently by the worthless lords who knocked them up.
(those would be the fan theories that suggest Lyanna died giving birth to Jon Snow, who is secretly the bastard of Rhaegar(?) Targaryen)
Yes.
I never understood why Katniss and Peeta got married in the first place. Honestly, Katniss should have just been a lesbian and Peeta should have just moved on. No man can deserve her, and Peeta, if he wanted children so badly, should have found somebody who wanted them rather than coercing Katniss.
Because she had severe PTSD and needed someone in her life who could begin to understand the horrible shit she had been forced to go through, and she obviously couldn’t marry Gale because he blew up her sister, the reason she volunteered to go through all that horrible shit in the first place.
Katniss
UGH
I will never, in this life or another, forgive them for what they did to Lane Kim. I felt legitimately betrayed by the show when that whole thing happened.
I should just stop my re-watch before I hit season 7, shouldn’t I?
(Baby teenage me watched the show as it aired and I wasn’t A Feminist yet so these plotlines didn’t bother me but now that y’all are reminding me of all this grossness I kind of want to bail before it gets bad.)
Yeah, I was like, a baby feminist in training then, so I watch it now and I want to set many things on fire. Like…Lorelai, why did you allow your 16 year-old-daughter to date a possessive, mentally abusive jackwagon prick, who used to skulk around your yard, basically stalking said daughter until she agreed to date him? I mean, jesus.
And, oh god yes, stop before you hit season 7 (actually earlier but, definitely before season 7)
But, but… So many things are terrible but Rory dumps Logan to go be a reporter on SENATOR BARACK OBAMA’S campaign trail.
Which is glorious.
And, and….when I talk about the show I remember how terrible lots of it is, but I amidst the bad there is always good
Yep…what they did to Lane and to Sookie is just appalling. Season 7 is the absolute worst season for those two plot lines. Why oh why did Amy Sherman Palladino leave?!?!
They had little choice with Sookie. I think it was an “Oh crap, the actress is pregnant!” storyline.
Much more slender, and therefore more obviously pregnant, actresses have hidden their bellies behind suitcases and store counters, not to mention big winter coats that seemed to be ever present on that show anyway.
I say this as a size 22 woman, who managed to have coworkers who never knew I was pregnant, even after the baby shower.
THANK YOU for that Juno one.
YES, god! Juno, your ‘baby’ does not fucking have fingernails unless you’ve missed like 2-3 periods or whatever. It’s got stubs at best; abort.
Lane. LAAAANE. Currently rewatching Gilmore Girls (because WHO ISN’T) and my boyfriend keeps saying how much he loves Lane and how awesome life will be for her when she’s an adult and gets out of the house and I just look away and weep.
Oh. Oh, your boyfriend. Poor guy won’t know what hit him.
*bravely wades into Harry Potter swamp* If we’re going to talk about characters whose lives would be greatly improved by an abortion: Merope Gaunt. I want a story where that love potion wears off (who gave who the potion?? I don’t even remember. Probably Tom Riddle because men are gross), and Merope sells a family heirloom to fund her escape to a big city. She decides a pregnancy does not fit into her plans to establish herself far, far away from her gross family, makes an appointment with a midwife witch who charges on a sliding scale, and then makes a bunch of friends who are not terrible human beings and lives happily ever after. Over the next 50 years, muggleborns, who are not embattled/facing targeted & widespread persecution/dead, are able to fight for and gradually win more rights, to the point where social reforms are enacted that ensure that anyone would have the support to leave their terrible families and have/not have any babies they wanted.
Basically the whole HP series could still exist, but Hermione would be the main character.
NO Merope did the love potion and she was awwwwfulllll
She gave him the potion. She really wanted that baby. Not that I disagree!
I’d argue that she didn’t exactly want the baby. She more wanted to have Riddle as her husband. She wanted to have the life that he represented. Her naming her baby after his father, even after his father left when the love potion wore off, indicates that.
I’m up for that.
This one makes more sense than Lily Potter, because there’s no prior reason for Lily to not want to have Harry, but there is with Merope. And of course it seems things would have been much better in Tom Riddle’s absence. Then again, it’s clear that he had the right environment to draw a lot of supporters. Instead of Lord Voldemort, would it be Lord Snape and/or Lord Malfoy and/or Lady Lestrange?
Anyway, Hermione certainly does more pro-active main-character stuff in the books, so yeah, she’d get the title if it weren’t for a stupid scar.
Tom Riddle wouldn’t have been able to make a love potion if he’d wanted to, he was a Muggle.
Katniss is that girl who never leaves her hometown and gets pregnant and then becomes some sort of stoic sad character you meet at the reunion. Only with a dead sister and PTSD.
Scully. Scully should have aborted that possibly Mulders alein baby. Her pregnancy & subsequent motherhood storyline took away her awesomeness! It was like they said, oh this interesting strong character needs to become bland and dull and moan about her baby a lot. Yes, lets go ahead and make that change. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU XFILES! NEVER!
P.S. Seasons 8 & 9 don’t even exist to me anymore so, don’t even try to argue with me.
1) Agreed 100% on Seasons 8&9
2) Scully REALLY wanted to have a baby tho
I knooooow! That’s what makes it extra terrible. She could have kept all her amazing character AND become a mom but it was like the writers just decided that “she’s a mom now so she has to be standard naggy TV Mom” instead of Scully.
Also: Aeryn Sun.
I’ve never seen Farscape but I will fist bump you on that anyway! Gotta return the favour!
YES YES YES RE: AERYN SUN
AND THEN SHE LOST THE BABY IN THE END ANYWAY!
I mean not during the pregnancy, but later! She didn’t even get to RAISE him!
ARGGGGGGGGG.
If they had to give her a baby they could have at least given her a sex life as well.
YES. I would really like to have seen her sleep with sheriff Luke Wilson in Bad Blood.
Anne Blythe could have aborted Shirley and it would have made absolutely no difference to the plot of any of the novels.
Since she had a pretty bad track record for prolonged illnesses after pregnancy, it might have been a good idea to terminate some of those pregnancies. I’m not particularly attached to Nan or Di either.
But what about the whole “living epistles” and having good her entire identity be subsumed by motherhood?
Eh. Anne wanted the family she never had growing up and was a good mother. I’m not sure that writing stories about the conversations between the spirit of the wild violet and the spirit of the wild apple tree in the woods would have been a better use of her time. I just object to her having a kid that gets maybe 20 words of dialogue in the entire series.
Now, Emily of New Moon I’m betting got plenty of abortions.
That’s a really safe bet for Emily.
“Characters whose lives were improved by the abortions they probably got”
Can also be filed under “Characters whose lives would have been improved if they had run off to New York with the successful lesbian writer instead of staying in her rural backwater and almost marrying her dad’s old classmate who had been perving on her since she was TWELVE.”
CARRIE MATHISON, Homeland. Poor tiny ginger terrorist baby, nearly drowned by the end of the second episode of her mortal existence.
I’m a season behind, so I just watched the episode where her doctor confirms the pregnancy . . . goodness gracious, she is the most inequipped for a baby of all fictional characters.
Do they ever explain why nobody figured out she was pregnant when she was committed?
I forgot about her being committed so I may not be the best person to answer, but I don’t think that’s explicitly addressed. Unless it was all part of Saul’s plan? (I don’t want to spoil anything else you haven’t seen!)
Darla from Buffy (although the pregnancy happened in Angel, Buffy always gets first billing)
There’s no way this 500 year old badass evil vampire wouldn’t have been like, ‘Haha pregnant? What? No.’ The woman had places to be and people to disembowel!
Also, it would have saved us from the existence of Connor and all related plot lines.
Darla tried really, really hard to get an abortion and was attempting to kill that fetus up until about a week before it was born. But there was some mystical protection or some shit.
Oh jeez I totally forgot about that. All I remembered was the bit at the end where she was all ‘I’m full of EMOTIONS now and my personality is completely different. Time to kill myself for my baby cuz there’s no way he’s going to grow up to be the world’s most spectacular jerksaucer.’
Ugh though, Powers That Be conservatives, always mystically fucking with a vamp’s right to choose.
yeah, Darla did all the things. She went to shamans in distant countries and everything.
she only got all sappy when the fetus’ soul kicked in and gave her emotions and shit. I don’t think her personality changed but her priorities did, and like any ensouled vampire was scared of losing it again.
I mean, would the world have been better off if she just let the kid die unborn? Probably yeah.
Well that certainly would have been more sensical than the whole "SUDDEN ONSET TERMINAL CASE OF SADS" thing that killed her in the movie.
Somehow, I still manage to get just as much out of his character after that replacement. Huh.
Mother Leeds, who gave birth to the Jersey Devil
More surprisingly, she never tells Rory. She loves Rory, but the idea of telling her and then watching Rory not-listen before launching in to a story about yachts and finding herself is just too much.
This sums up so much about Gilmore Girls and its chief characters’ self-absorption. I binged through the whole series about a year ago, and I realized midway through that I would much rather have followed the adventures of Sookie and Lane, who occasionally end up doing catering/musical gigs for that demanding Gilmore woman a few towns over who throws all those fancy parties.
*Possible SPOILER alert for “The Fall”*
Sally should ABSOLUTELY abort the baby (even though it’s N. Ireland) and divorce the SHIT out of Paul instead of resigning herself to “oh, I’m preggers again and we have two kids, I might as well live with it”
NO NO NO NO NO
This show needs to come back on the air noooowwwww!
That was my first thought when she said “oh I’m pregnant, I guess we have to stay married” before I remembered that they live in Northern Ireland and also are probably Catholic.
Brianna, in the Outlander books. I don’t want to get into it too much for spoilers, but if I were her, I would have aborted the crap out of it.
Also, Lori in the Walking Dead.
Ooooh, I’m at that part of Drums of Autumn right now and so far, yeah, I bet Claire would have been able to handle that shit post-fucking-haste.
Wait what? I only read the first three books and then decided I didn’t like them enough to continue. What happens to Brianna?!?!?!
SPOILER ALERT!
Brianna goes back in time, gets it on with Roger (who has followed her), and then shortly after is raped by a different dude and becomes pregnant without knowing who the father is or whether the baby will be able to time travel. So, she might be having a rapist’s baby, and she might be trapping herself in the past (assuming she wouldn’t just ditch her baby to go back to her own time).
And then Brianna never gets to do *anything* fun ever again, and Roger and Jamie both show their true MAN colors as MEN who need to pass on THEIR genes and protect THEIR women and THEIR children and aaargh I did not enjoy those two books.
WHAAAAAAT?!?!? That is insanepants! Couldn’t she and Roger just say in the present? What is wrong with those two? I always thought that it was super weird that Clare was like, “I can leave Brianna now because she just met this man who will take care of her” even though they barely knew each other and why does Brianna need a man to take care of her anyway? I appreciate this update. If you have any weird plot spoilers that you are dying to share, feel free to tell me. I love spoilers for these books!
The TV show is way better so far IMO.
Argghh I read through Drums of Autumn and am taking a hiatus to decide if it’s even worth going on, but INDEED, ABORT ABORT ABORT. Also, I hate Roger with the fire of 10,000 suns so even if it was his baby, no great loss there, Brianna.
The TV show has totally been so much better than the books so far, but I don’t know if anything will be able to fix that train wreck of a plot line.
THANK YOU. I don’t know what the hell happened to Roger. He seemed like this totally fine researcher dude, then all of a sudden he’s all about NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE and NO TROUSERS and GENETIC PATERNITY. Ugh.
ETA: He does not get any better in The Fiery Cross. In fact I think he develops even more hangups about how he’s a MAN so he needs to use GUNS better.
YES Lori in the Walking Dead. In a zombie apocalypse, every woman should RUN to the nearest pharmacy and stock up on birth control and Plan B.
I mean, Judy’s a cute baby, but SERIOUSLY. How many times has her life been saved at the expense of intelligent decisions?
(Though Lori wasn’t my favorite, either.)
I met a dude in Denver who is into apocalypse survival skillz (which I actually think is really cool!). I asked him to tell me about it, and he was like “Why? In the zombie apocalypse, you’d just be a breeder.”
Then I turned into this
and the conversation was abruptly over.
Top of my list: Catherine Earnshaw Linton, who then runs away to London and meets several someones who are maybe not the most overtly passionate people in the world but at least respect her desire to have nice things *and* go hiking.
Not that I’m all that emotionally invested in it, but Bella from Twilight. I have long been on Team Bella Goes To College And Travels Around Europe Or Somewhere, Gets A Sassy Haircut, And Finds Her Passion That Is Not A Dude.
Oh GOD number one on the abortion candidacy list (aside from poor old Tess).
Pretty sure even a priest would have done this abortion (not that anyone wants that) but, like, you might have needed one present to throw holy water on the foetus, just in case.
I’m Team Bella Never Needed an Abortion–because at the end of the first book, Edward failed to save her. She became a vampire. The love triangle fell apart because she felt betrayed and the vampire/werewolf thing couldn’t work with Jacob. She realized the Cullens suck at immortality, so she went to college and…well, what you said.
I can’t remember, is Johanna dead at the end of the books? I don’t think she is, because maybe the flood? Besides! “I BROUGHT THEM FOR YOUUUUUU” she’s like the best/worst cat in the world, bringin’ nerds to Katniss in a fury.
OKAY GILMORE GIRLS QUESTION: I’m watching Gilmore Girls for the first time on Netflix. At what point should I stop in order to avoid a rage stroke? GIVE ME THE BENEFIT OF YOUR BETRAYAL, TOASTIES.
I second this question!
How okay are you with spoilers? I can’t remember what season the shark-jumping moment is in.
The first three seasons are great.
Season four has high points and low points but suffers from the “high schooler transitioning to college” thing that almost never goes well on shows.
Rory’s storyline from the end of season four on is just not good. They change her character for the worse and it will probably make you really mad. But the rest of the show is actually pretty good in seasons five and six barring a very stupid plotline involving Luke.
Season seven is garbage and you should skip it and just watch the series finale by itself.
Cosigned.
This is very valuable information, thank you.
Catweazle is right on point, seasons 1-3 are great, season 4 was a struggle, they ruin Rory after she goes to college, season 5 was good, oh god, season 6 and that Luke plotline, jesus (however, “Friday Night’s Alright For Fighting, that last scene was fucking brilliant, watch that season if only to fully enjoy that scene). Season 7 is a trash bag full of bandaids and hair on fire, except the finale.
Also Betty Draper, possibly all three but definitely her third.
YES, Betty and Don’s relationship is the perfect example of why not every happy couple should move to the suburbs and have 2.5 kids.
They could have been so much happier. I mean, Don still would have cheated on her eventually, but she still would have had her modeling career and wouldn’t have gone crazy from housewife syndrome, or whatever Betty Friedan called it.
Betty Draper should never have been a mother. I think the writers have actually tried to make that point.
I… don’t really hate the Katniss thing?
I mean, yes I hate it, but it seems so bleakly realistic to me. She’s broken, everything she went through is functionally for nothing, of course she does things she doesn’t want to do, that tear her apart, and she gets through her life by dissociating completely.
Yeah, “bleakly realistic” is exactly the phrase I’ve thought about that ending. It’s not super common in YA dystopias.
Yes, thank you. She has mixed feelings about things like marriage and partnership and family and children and she always will. She has a tough time dealing with the life that she ended up living and she always will. She’s not going to get a happily ever after, and that’s just something she has to live with. And I *love* the ending for that. For me it’s the opposite of a betrayal. What did people expect? I don’t get how anyone could read the series and imagine a happier life for her than the one we get, and have it be believable. (Not even a version where she becomes lesbian lovers with Johanna — although I still ship it like hell!)
Telling fact: when I first read the first book, it never occurred to me that there would be a sequel. I just thought it was a dystopian ending.
I have a parent who has war trauma, so Katniss’s ending felt appropriate and fitting to me, mostly because the way Katniss talks about her kids in that prologue is the way that parent relates to me and my sister (both wanted babies). It’s like, you can love your kids, but of course they aren’t going to Magically Solve your Trauma.
I also never read Katniss as the sort of person who categorically does not want to be a mother, but rather as someone for whom emotional attachments are dangerous, so she disassociates. For me, her finally agreeing to have kids was a sign of partial healing, but of course that healing was never going to be total. Because God. She went through some SHIT.
This, exactly. She never said anything along the lines of Just Not Into Kids At All, Ever, In Any Circumstances, it was always, I don’t want to have kids in a world of Hunger Games and also I am pretty scared of loving anyone, see also Hunger Games. So I was really happy for her that she eventually healed enough that the fear was no longer a barrier, but it would have been much too saccharine and untrue to what had gone before if it was gone altogether.
Honestly, I find it more realistic that she has children and lives for them (and fights through her ptsd for them) the way she was basically living for Prim before. Katniss takes care of the people she loves, and beyond that there’s not a whole lot to her. I can’t see her getting up everyday for 60 years without that kind of purpose.
Now, if she had actually been pregnant in Catching Fire (they way they pretended she was), oh god yes, abort that asap.
I honestly don’t understand why Knocked Up is a movie.
There is no universe where that women would have kept that baby in that situation. Or gone home with that dude in the first place. She had JUST gotten an on-air job and was feeling awesome! Step OVER the low-hanging fruit!
CORDELIA FREAKING CHASE.
Which one of her mystical pregnancies, though?
All of them. All of the godawful non-consensual mystical pregnancies.
That makes no sense. It wasn’t really Cordy at the time, it was Jasmine using her body, and her entire plan hinged on getting pregnant so she could give birth to herself. (And on the off chance you mean “Expecting”, she was still trying to figure out what the hell that thing WAS — kind of a prerequisite for deciding anything — before the demon’s protection impulse kicked in.)
Mary/Mariam from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. First of all, when the angel Gabriel appeared to her, he informed her that she was to carry Yahweh’s baby, he didn’t ask for consent. So not only was she carrying God’s rape baby, she was way too young to safely carry a child and was forced to give birth in a goddamn barn, which is far from sanitary. Because of her carrying the child to term, King Herod commits the Massacre of the Innocents after being inadvertently tipped off about a potential usurper by the Magi. After all that, instead of getting to see Jesus live a long and happy life with children of his own, she has to watch him tortured and brutally murdered. Fuck that shit. In the end, her “reward” is to spend eternity appearing in water stains and grilled cheese sandwiches.
No thanks.
Love love love, and my favorite line:
“In the end, her “reward” is to spend eternity appearing in water stains and grilled cheese sandwiches.”
I would have gone with being used as a device for absorbing goddess-worshiping, matriarchal societies into the cruel, patriarchal Church of Rome, but that didn’t seem that funny.
“it does take careful thought; what is it about gods
that insists on making more gods out of human beings
crucifying them as one pits a peach, to release the seed?
what is it about the human imagination that insists on being used
by anybody in a beat-up 1936 Chevy with bruised fenders
selling Old Doctor Barmecide’s indigestion powders
or demands the harsh ruffle of painfully-extended wings
pulling the back muscles out of true, demands
grace, as if without the mysterious secret ingredient
Mary was not yet Mary, only an opportunity?”
-William Dickey
That doesn’t rhyme, so I don’t think it is real poetry, but thanks. I was a little intimidated about posting here, because everyone here seems to be an insanely brilliant, well-educated English major, but I noticed I already had an account with the commenting program and I had a comment to make. But now I will look up the rest of Dickey’s work, because I somehow wasn’t familiar with it, even though he taught in my tiny hometown for a couple of years. So seriously, thank you for introducing me to something new; not as great as my friend who introduced me to A Song of Ice and Fire, but you can work on that.
If I could just hit ‘like’ on this comment over and over again for he rest of my life I would.
Has anyone ever read Chicano by Richard Vasquez? The abortion storyline in that book still makes me upset to think about. (SPOILER: not because she gets one… but because her boyfriend takes her to a sketchy place for her abortion, then abandons her when she has to be hospitalized afterwards. And, of course, she dies.)
Whatever the author intended, I read that book as a “SAFE, LEGAL ABORTIONS” and a “don’t be a douchewad and desert your girlfriend when she does the medical procedure you demand” lesson. Not an “abortions are bad” lesson.
How could you bring up GIlmore Girls without including Lorelai?! Clearly *she* is the one who should have had an abortion. Then she wouldn’t have been kicked out of her house, wouldn’t be a teen mother with no support, wouldn’t have wandered homeless into that inn, etc.
Sorry Rory, we enjoy your eventual banter and all, but really, logically, you shouldn’t exist.
I agree Lorelai should have had an abortion, but I must point out that she was not kicked out, not by any stretch.
Can I just register my discomfort at the idea that any woman who gets pregnant in less than ideal circumstances automatically *should* get an abortion? I mean, I know this is a somewhat lighthearted thread about fictional ladies, and I get that there are seldom spaces for women in fiction to even express the idea of NOT wanting to be pregnant, but when a woman (fictional or otherwise) gets pregnant and actively makes the choice to stay pregnant, I find it, frankly, disrespectful and patronizing to say that that’s the wrong choice.
Katniss had to be convinced, over years, to have kids — sure, she probably would have been better off choosing not to have them! Sure, safe and legal abortion probably wouldn’t have been a real option for Mrs. Bennett, and I’m all for talking about how access to it would have changed her life. Sure, stories like Knocked Up and Juno where abortion gets paid lip service, but isn’t treated like a real option are infuriating. But Lorelai clearly wanted Rory. Someone downthread mentioned Amber’s current storyline on Parenthood, and Amber has clearly stated that she wants to keep the baby, even though she knows it will be difficult. Treating these women like they don’t know what’s best for themselves doesn’t sit right with me.
Sorry if it seems like I’m singling you out, by the way! Like I said, you’re not the only one who’s expressed this idea. It’s just one that gets under my skin.
However, if I remember the show correctly, the option of abortion wasn’t even discussed for Lorelai. Her parents dismissed it out of hand in a conversation with the baby-daddy’s (can’t be bothered to remember his name, sorry) parents and decided to marry her off. Lorelai was having none of that, so she ran away, but we never actually know whether she saw abortion as an option.
You’re probably right — I haven’t watched the S3 flashback episode in quite a while. I do remember that when Sookie gets pregnant, Lorelai reminisces that she “loved’ being pregnant, but that’s her speaking from hindsight, so who knows how she felt at the time. But my point about Amber still stands, and it’s not like this is the only time that I’ve ever run into this idea. It’s an argument that I’ve had a number of times with my husband, when we’re watching something where a woman character decides to keep an accidental pregnancy and he rolls his eyes at her making a “stupid” decision instead of acknowledging that it’s a complex issue without a “right” answer.
And I mean, there can be a fine line in fiction between “woman character makes a complicated but right-for-her choice to keep an unplanned pregnancy” and “male writer doesn’t even seriously consider that abortion might be a good option for this fictional woman because omg the horror,” but I feel like the middle ground has to be something other than “pregnancy should only be depicted if the pregnant woman is of an appropriate age and married and/or well-off financially, and all other on-screen pregnancies are wrong and dumb and should just be aborted.”
Of course, maybe I just take it too personally, as the daughter of a woman who got pregnant at 18 after leaving college and getting a job as a convenience store clerk. Would she be better off financially, if I’d never been born? Probably. But that wasn’t her only consideration when she made her decision, and her life has turned out just fine, thank you very much.
It’s a few days after the fact, but I just want to say that I agree with you 100%. While most of these are characters who seem like they definitely would have been better off with an abortion, some are just women who got pregnant under less than ideal circumstances. Amber from Parenthood and Allison from Knocked Up are women in their early 20s with jobs and supportive families who have access to abortion and no religious or family pressures to remain pregnant. I’m not sure why the immediate reaction is that they would have been better off with abortions instead of remaining pregnant.
It is very frustrating that abortion isn’t ever discussed as a viable option though.
“things mallory does for no reason” is my favorite tag
Amber, Parenthood. Right now. Amber started the medical abortion pills at the clinic the same day she went in for her exam. It was so easy because she lived in Calfornia. She spent a week laying wrapped in that blanket on that couch in her apartment and crying her mascara onto her cheeks. A rotating cast of family brought her takeout in plastic takeout bags. Drew strummed the guitar. Three months later, Amber decided she was sort of over the Bay Area, so she took a train to New Orleans. Nobody ever mentioned Ryan.
YES. THIS.
Thank you.
If only.
I am NOT WATCHING this season of Parenthood solely because she didn’t get an abortion (not that they didn’t cover abortion already, but seriously, so do two Jason Katims, up your ante after Friday Night Lights), even though I have a massive crush on Matt Lauria and want him on my TV as often as possible
Oh my gaawwd the way they handled it w/Amber and the doctor was just so awful, too.
GABRIELLE. I don’t how safe it is to take a morning after pill when impregnated by a rapist demon who plans to take over the world, but it would probably have caused less heartache than Hope existing!! (Yeah, Xena demanding that she/you kill a cute, human-looking baby was pretty harsh, but it didn’t have to come to that!)
If anyone on here reads (read) manga, I vote Hachi from the Nana series. I’m re-reading it for the first time since middle school, and DAMN every bad thing in that series could have been avoided if Hachi had had an abortion.
That series was meant to be a lesbian love story, and nothing will convince me otherwise.
Lane deserved SO MUCH MORE.
Please don’t forget poor Max from The L Word.
Ilene Chaiken never deserved him.
OMFG STILL ANGRY ABOUT MAX PUNCHING THE TRANSLATOR BOYF BECAUSE ~PREGNANT ANGER~ AND THE BOYF LEAVING AND THAT FUCKING PREGNANCY.
Well, you know, taking T makes you irrationally and violently angry, being pregnant makes you irrationally and violently angry…Ilene Chaiken was clearly trying to address all the violence facing the the trans community.
/migraine-inducing eyeroll
Everything about Max’s storyline was terrible.
The L Word itself was an abortion.
Both Anna Karenina and her poor sister-in-law. Anna, of course, figured things out, unlike Dolly.
“This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she was horrified.”
“then calls Lorelai and asks her for a ride to the clinic. They go out for burgers afterward, and Lorelai keeps up a high level of patter every minute they’re in the waiting room, which for once Lane appreciates.”
Even though this didn’t happen, it is nevertheless exactly right, and no one will ever convince me that Lorelei Gilmore is not the best.
James Potter’s mother should’ve had an abortion. Then Lily could’ve married Remus Lupin or some other decent wizard instead of being stuck with an arrogant bully.
Amen. Severus was bad news, but so was frickin James Potter.
I mean, yes, James was a dick in high school. But Lily was plainly capable of turning him down when she thought he was a jerk who was unworthy of her. He changed his behavior and became less of a dick, which many people do after high school, and then she became interested in him. Obviously, of course, Remus Lupin is 10000x more amazing than him, I just don’t think Lily thought of herself as being “stuck” with James.
THANK YOU for the Katniss one. I cannot forgive that damn epilogue and will forever be Team Katniss Is Fine Alone, thankyouverymuch.
“Sorry,” Juno said, before chucking her ironic Capri Sun into the wastebasket. “No time to talk. I’m late for my abortion.”
YES! I hate that scene so much. No, it wasn’t a psychotic, intimidating crowd shouting at Juno. It was a cute harmless Asian girl. How unrealistic. This would have improved that movie 1000%
Saint Mary
Gabriel: You’re gonna have a babby even though you’ve never got to have sex.
Mary: that doesnt seem fair.
Mary has an abortion and Jesus dies for our sins thirty years earlier.
To quote Jim Morrison, after a fashion, “no I like the way I said it better.” Points for “babby” though.
I saw a trailer for a film recently that, as far as I could gather, had this basic plot: boy and girl grow up being best friends, boy has crush on girl. As teenagers, she wants to go to Harvard and travel (they are not in the US), and he applies to university in Boston as well so they can be together. She starts going out with a popular boy, gets pregnant, he buggers off; her best friend goes off to America, leaving her with a baby and no chance of university and the life she wants. I spent the trailer trying to work out why someone would not have a termination under those circumstances. It’s only now I have looked it up that I finally realised why: it’s set in Dublin. Maybe it’s a cunningly designed way to encourage changes to abortion legislation in Ireland?
Do you recall the name of the film? I have done some preliminary Googling to no avail. 🙂
SPOILER AGAIN!
So, the reason Brianna goes back in time is because she reads in an olden-timey newspaper that Jamie and Claire have died in a fire, and she wants to prevent it. Roger follows her because . . . ? True love?
Brianna is an engineer with a degree from MIT! Why would she go back to olden times? Although, she actually has practical skills, whereas I would be completely worthless in pre-revolutionary America.
She loves Rory, but the idea of telling her and then watching Rory not-listen before launching in to a story about yachts and finding herself is just too much.
Oh god, this. Being friends with Rory Gilmore must be exhausting.
And I will always and forever hate Thomas Hardy and every word he ever wrote about a woman. Horrible, horrible man.
I think “The Ruined Maid” deserves an exception. It’s a perfect mockery of sexist standards of female purity.
-Edna Pontellier from The Awakening
-Adèle Varens’ mother in Jane Eyre (Jane & Mr R could meet another way and we wouldn’t have that insufferable child; her mother abandoned her anyway)
-Amy March (I hate Bess)
What is the point of Bess?
How would a Potter abortion affect Ronbledore?
Cathy from East of Eden. I mean, I know she tried with the knitting needle and whatnot, but if only she could have just gotten a legal, safe procedure and have done with it
Hi Mallory, this made me cry at work, bye Mallory.
Relevant: http://41.media.tumblr.com/2485e564915bc024ea036b…
If the Weasleys, and like, all of the other Order members, survived, Lily and James for sure would have. Alice and Frank were aurors, so they were huge targets whether or not they had Neville. Snape could have killed James I guess, but I doubt it. Don’t think he ever cared for killing people himself. Alice and Frank were older than Lily and James, and seemed to be in a more stable relationship, so I really don’t see them having an abortion, but either way, I thought it was established that “the Prophecy” was basically self-fulfilled, and that the only reason Harry was able to take him down was that he was a horcrux. And the first time, the “love” thing, I mean, I’m sure another witch could die protecting their kid at some point.
“…the idea of telling her and then watching Rory not-listen before launching in to a story about yachts and finding herself is just too much.”
NAILED IT. Ughhh Rory is the worst friend. I think she got it from observing Lorelai and Sookie, who don’t really listen to each other either. But Lane is amazing!
One scene that always breaks my heart is the one in the first season when Rory asks Sookie for rocky road cookies for Dean. While Sookie and Lorelai tease Rory, Sookie nudges Lane and says, “She’s bringing baked goods to a boy!” And poor Lane just grimaces because Rory has been ignoring her for like an hour and she feels so left out. Then Rory proceeds to make out with Dean without even saying goodbye to Lane. Ughhhhhhh.
I was rewatching Gilmore Girls before it was cool.
…seriously I have the DVDs
I would add Wendla Bergmann to this list, except she DID get an abortion and got fucked over anyway so her fuckface rapist of a boyfriend could sing a boring song about how sad he is.
(fuck you Dancan Sheik! fuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!)
OH MY GOD. I’d just gotten over the whole Rent discussion from the other day and now this. Welp, there’s my day.
This reminds me. Has anybody tuned in to Jane The Virgin? It’s really fun, but the not-getting-an-abortion aspect is…troubling to me. I know there are cultural aspects to take into consideration, and they do address it in the show, but even so, the situation is so absurd (and, again, I know it’s a telenovela, so realism is not necessarily the priority) that I just can’t quite do it. Anyone else?
ETA: For those who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about an adult virgin-by-choice in a committed LTR who conceives when her distracted OB-GYN inseminates her instead of doing a pap smear.
I read a couple reviews saying the show was really good! But I’m a little skeeved out by the premise and haven’t watched. You’re liking it though?
I do like it. It’s has a mostly-Latino cast. The OB-GYN, who is a prominent character, is a QPOC, and that’s cool. But the fact that Jane chooses to remain pregnant, and that that’s really key to the show’s plot, is very distracting for me.
“She lived to raise four children, all of whom grew up with a mother who loved them, and a grandmother who never had to watch her daughter die.”
I can’t stop sobbing Mallory what have you done to me, you Word Sorceress?! Steel Magnolias isn’t even one of my favorite movies. I’m a chronic lurker. I don’t comment about my optical incontinence… Why?!
p.s. Yes to all of this so much.
Um…not to be that person who goes for the obvious, but…Rosemary Woodhouse?? Assuming Satan Jr. didn’t prevent the operation through its evil embryonic powers, Rosemary would have discovered that her unfathomable traitor husband was in league with the cultists and divorced him. She later marries a nice, trustworthy man with whom she has little Andy/Jenny.
Mina Harker. Because she is psychic and can tell that if she has a child so soon after the whole vampire thing there will be endless scholarly wank about whether the kid is actually Dracula’s, she has Jack Seward hook her up with someone reliable, then has a baby with Jonathan two years later. Unfortunately, this does not stop the scholarly wank. Nothing ever will.
But …but… Neville’s parents were also members of the Order of the Phoenix, so they would have had the same reasons not the have a kid as Lily and James did, based on this logic…so what happens with no Harry AND no Neville? GUYS, WE CAN’T LIVE IN A WORLD WITHOUT HARRY POTTER. 😀
Hermione. Harry couldn’t even complete have his “wins” without her.
Why why WHY am I almost-crying over the Steel Magnolias thing I am so sick of that fucking movie it just shows up sometimes and I end up watching it and I don’t even like it that much WHY IS THERE MOISTURE HERE I SHOULD NOT BE THIS SAD ABOUT FOUR PRETEND KIDS WHO WERE NEVER PRETEND-ADOPTED BY DUMB PRETEND JULIA ROBERTS LADY
I HATED that fucking movie. HAAAAAATED. I cannot think of a movie I dislike more than Steel Magnolias. I loathe that movie with the fire of a thousand nuns.
I was going to comment about this, but then realized that all the people I’m thinking of are not fictional. It turns out that lower middle class drifting into parenthood without much thought is A Thing, in fact The Thing, where I live, and the struggles to make ends meet combined with haphazard parenting practices and an economy that went south 30 years ago basically makes The Thing multigenerational, exasperating, depressing, and largely hopeless.
In other words, IUDs and abortions for free for all.
Moll Flanders. Though, the first six or seven kids didn’t seem to affect her too much.
Susannah in the Dark Tower series, OH MY GOD FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS WITH AN AXE FATHER CALLAHAN. First of all, shut up, and second, I’m reasonably sure even the Catholic Church would grant some kind of dispensation for aborting a *demon fetus* that makes you eat LIVE GODDAMN FROGS in your sleep.
Lillian Gilbreth. Like, five or six of them. That scene in the book/film where the Planned Parenthood lady comes to the door and goes away in a hurry and the Gilbreths are all “We showed HER…” No, you really didn’t.
But Lillian Gilbreth wanted to have that many children? Like, she and her husband — both real people — purposefully set out to have 12 children. The scene with the family planning woman is rather infuriating, yes, but reproductive choice includes being allowed to have a ridiculously huge number of children if you want to.
She was… actually ridiculously successful? Both in her career and family life. She wanted those kids, even knowing that her husband might die early.
I’m very cool with judging/imagining fictional characters’ reproductive choices, but I am 100% anti judging real, actual people’s reproductive choices.
How about Merope Gaunt has an abortion? After she enslaves Tom Riddle with a Love Potion because of her intense infatuation, she becomes pregnant. She frees him and he flees, leaving her poor and depressed with an unwanted pregnancy. She has an abortion because she never wanted a baby, neither did the biological father, and her baby would be a product of rape. Voldemort is never born (instead of being abandoned at an orphanage), so Lily and James Potter are free to have the family they dreamed of about 60 years later. Harry is born and they are happy. There is no war.
HERMIONE GRANGER AND GINNY WEASLEY.
I could totally see them being mums at some point (they’d probably be like my sister and my best friend, who aren’t Molly-level clucky but are still pretty good at parenting) but NOT IN THEIR TWENTIES. Hermione needs to be a Time Lord and Ginny needs to start a riot wytccch punk burlesque band first.
Luna got the later-at-life birth, why can’t they?
As much as I love Molly Weasley I think perhaps it would have been better for her to delay having children if not an abortion given that, while she is a good mother and obviously doesn’t die, having (at least) five energetic children running around at the height of the First Wizarding War -Bill was born the year the war started (1970) and Ginny the year it ended (1981) – must have been unimaginably scary for her. Especially when you consider that most of her family were either tied up on Order business or miles away so she would have had very little support. No wonder she was so terrified when Voldemort returned, the thought of her family being at risk all over again must have been awful.
Also, she is a badass fighter, so imagine what she could have done during those years if she hadn’t been held back by babies.
Exactly. You would never mess with Molly under normal circumstances, but God help you if she’s duelling.
I mean definitely they did not need Percy, that’s for sure.
Oh, Percy you treacherous little git. I know that he gets better but I still can’t forgive what he put everyone through.
I kept thinking about Andrea Zuckerman after I read this and am STILL FURIOUS. She went to the abortion clinic and was sitting in the waiting room and then somehow, magically, FELT THE BABY KICK EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS MAYBE SIX WEEKS PREGNANT?! Fucking ridiculous. Apparently Andrea’s pregnancy was written into the show at (had to look this up) Gabrielle Carteris’s request because SHE was pregnant [and also, what, about 45?] but WHATEVER…HAVE HER CARRY EVEN MORE BOOKS SO ANDREA CAN GO TO HARVARD.
CO. FUCKING. SIGN.
I guess Bella from Twilight goes without saying. Have an abortion. Do not deliver a demon baby that cracks your spine on its way out and then hooks up with an adult werewolf.
Fuck this is great. Especially Knocked Up because seriously wtf. And also all of them. ALL OF THEM. A+
Harriet in The Fifth Child (Lessing). Four is the perfect number of children for her perfect family.
Came here to mention this one, it’s so vivid a horror story about a worst case scenario for a pregnancy.
I’d argue that instead of Harry was a wanted child. Sure, it wasn’t the best time for people to have babies, but that happens all of the time.
You know who definitely should have had an abortion in the Harry Potter universe? Merope Gaunt, or Voldemort’s mother, who used a love potion to rape his father, Tom Riddle. When the potion wore off, Riddle (understandably) hightailed it out of there, leaving Merope in the same squalor she’d grown up in, carrying a baby she could support neither financially nor emotionally, who would come to be known as the most terrible dark wizard ever.
Anastasia Steele, 50 Shades series
Terrified of what Christian’s reaction to her unplanned pregnancy will be, Ana immediately gets a chemical abortion and goes on with her newly-wedded life, never mentioning the pregnancy to anyone. A year later, at Kate’s insistence that it will be fun, she allows herself to be dragged along to a women’s studies seminar at the local college. The class resonates with Ana, but she can’t really say why, until one night when one of Christian’s tantrums once again turns to threats of non-sexy-times violence against her. For the first time, Ana recognizes him for what he is: an abuser who constantly belittles, insults, and frightens her. When he shoots down her last desperate plea for marriage counseling, Ana buckles down, moves in with her mother, and files for divorce.
The divorce is an ugly one. Christian regularly shows up on her doorstep to threaten, intimidate, and beg her (in that order) to reconsider, until Ana finally has to get a restraining order. Luckily, though, she finds a fantastic divorce attorney, who makes the process as painless as possible for her. Months later, Ana feels a tremendous weight lift off her shoulders as she walks out of the final hearing happily divorced, with a powerful restraining order and half of Christian’s fortune, which she donates to a local women’s shelter. Shortly thereafter, she realizes she’s fallen in love with her supportive, mild-mannered attorney, and they begin dating. Five years later they are married, and live a perfectly average life in the suburbs.
Meanwhile, some digging (by a source who insists on remaining anonymous) reveals that Christian’s massive fortune is the result of some extremely shady business practices. He is found guilty of a slew of criminal charges and his business empire is dismantled. He is currently serving 20 consecutive life sentences in a white collar prison.
Two words: Les Miserables.
Anna Karenina had the abortion. After the rush of new love faded, she realized that Vronsky was balding and had a Mommy complex.
She left her husband to his own devices, took her son and became a stunning Hat model for artists of the day.
This article actually made me cry a bit. Will be sharing this one…thank you for writing it.
Edgar was pretty nice and not very passionate, but he probably didn’t respect her. Every woman in a Brontë novel – life improved by an abortion. I’m struggling to think of a woman in a 19th century novel to whom this doesn’t apply.
Jane Eyre was pretty much okay, by the time it happened.
(Should’ve been a GIRL, though.)
Thomas Hardy was an English author who lived in the 19th Century
His portrayal of the tragic story of Tess / “‘Tess of the D’Urbevilles” shows more insight and compassion towards the plight of women than any New Age novelist, Columnist or Politician!
We like to believe women are finally liberated and Abortion is may sound horrendous but it’s also a safe way for a female to determine her own destiny
It’s no shock that women have had their own dangerous methods of aborting pregnancies in the past
Whatever their reasons, they should be respected!
Thank you for tackling that awful scene in Juno. I love Ellen Page in everything, but hell no.
Holy hell this post is awesome and so are the comments. There are far too many book series I have had to stop reading because they have entered the “baby” phase and they lost all of their appeal. Just the comments show how many opportunities were wasted in these books and movies, argh!
Besides Hardy,there’s Dickens. The future Lady Dedlock, for instance could have had the abortion and waited for what’s-his-name to come back from the wars. Or married Sir Leicester and lived a peaceful blackmail-free life,
David Copperfield’s mother could have not died in childbirth, with the happy side-effect of preventing all of David’s orphan angst. Dora Copperfield nee Spenlow could have had an abortion and not died of being Too Stupid To Live, with the happy side effect of preventing David’s man-pain. Mrs Micawber could have presented Mr Micawber with not quite so many pledges of her affection, and the family might have been a bit better off… Really, that book is full of cautionary tales for women, although I’m not sure that was exactly the author’s intention.
And has no one mentioned that Lori person from The Walking Dead? Surely an abortion would have been better than giving up her life to produce a zombie-bait Baby Plot Device, in the ugliest manner imaginable, in the middle of a goddam zombie apocalypse. I don’t understand that show, I really don’t, but especially not that plot thread.
Hey, I felt like I was reading the last dozen pages of Before I Die through Niagara Falls as much as the next person, but the way Tessa pretty much guilts her friend out of getting rid because THERE’S GOING TO BE ENOUGH DEATH ALREADY BECAUSE I’M DYING, I’M SIXTEEN YEARS OLD AND DYING OF CANCER, NOT TO LOAD MY ARGUMENT OR ANYTHING really stuck in my craw.
And yeah Juno, accch. What in the wide wide world of sports is going on with soi-disant right-on lefty arseholes (Portlandia and Donnie Darko, I’m looking at you too) thinking it’s alright to be racist against Asians? “Babies want to get borned!” Fuck off.
Yeah, my comment was sarcastic, and I was trying to point out just that– this list at several points takes people who *chose* not to have an abortion (or takes people who *wanted* to have children/ more children), and acts like they made the wrong choice just because their situation was not ideal.
If abortion is the only allowable answer to any person in anything other than perfect circumstances, than we don’t have true Choice at all.
(Also, I think Ellen Paige’s opinion of Juno, that it is a story of a woman who *thoughtfully* chooses to have a child is a bit closer to the film than characterizing it as a film where abortion is only given lip-service)
Ah, gotcha. Sorry! I apparently had my sarcasm blinders on, I completely missed that that was your intention. It seems like we’re pretty much making the same argument, then?
As for Juno, I really enjoyed it when I first watched it; I haven’t seen it in a while, but I’m pretty sure it holds up. And I think that it’s true that in the movie, Juno is very thoughtful about what to do about her pregnancy — she knows she’s not ready to raise the kid herself, she’s honest with her parents about what’s going on, she tries to make sure that the baby goes to a family that will do right by that baby… I’m still not crazy about the scene at the abortion clinic, though. Juno seemed ready to get an abortion, and then she changed her mind because of a bunch of misinformation spewed at her by one “well-meaning” girl. I’m willing to read it as Juno not actually being comfortable with getting the abortion, since it was so easy for her to be convinced not to go through with it, and ultimately deciding that it wasn’t right for her. But given that that’s the only really point where the movie addresses Juno’s decision, I definitely think it could have been made clearer that the movie wasn’t sending a message about abortion in general.
This is lovely. About the only wrinkle I’d add is that sometime later Padme had a daughter with the farmer. I like the full circle of the daughter going off one day to the new Jedi Academy, the crystal for the laser of her lightsaber a jewel from one of her mother’s crowns.
I disagree about Juno – there was no long-term negative effect on her life, and the baby went to a woman who really wanted it, and would raise it well.
Also, I feel sorry for Peeta – “too fucking bad” is a little rough on him! My preferred ending is not abortion but rather Peeta marrying SOMEONE WHO ALSO WANTS KIDS. The number of couples who get married without having that conversation boggles the mind.
I disagree about Juno – there was no long-term negative effect on her life, and the baby went to a woman who really wanted it, and would raise it well.
Also, I feel sorry for Peeta – "too fucking bad" is a little rough on him! My preferred ending is not abortion but rather Peeta marrying SOMEONE WHO ALSO WANTS KIDS. The number of couples who get married without having that conversation boggles the mind.
OMG. I was given Tess by an English teacher when I was 14 or so, and I hated it. My mother agreed with me and told me never to read Jude.
NOW I SEE WHY.
He still would have told Voldy cause he was still Voldy's man. He just wuldn't have felt guilty about it or gone to Dumble-D and switched sides
Dewey Dell Bundren! DEWEY DELL BUNDREN. Because I was an ignorant teenager, I genuinely thought maybe she’d get the abortion she desperately, desperately wanted and break the cycle of generational poverty in her family. But nooooo. Fuck you, Faulkner.
I see your Lily Potter and raise you Merope Gaunt. There, now there’s no Dark Lord to stop.
Michelle Williams’ character in Blue Valentine.
I couldn’t even stand watching Knocked Up. Maybe if it had been set in Dublin. Maybe.
Michelle Williams' character in Blue Valentine.
I couldn't even stand watching Knocked Up. Maybe if it had been set in Dublin. Maybe.
My sophomore year of college a friend and I would get together every Wednesday evening, eat Chinese food and watch a couple episodes of Gilmore Girls. But, we never ever watched passed Season 4. I've seen some of the episodes of Seasons 5-7, but not many, so I'm kind of curious what that point in my Netflix binge will be like.
I thought her and Johanna living together in the end would have made more sense. In District 13 the two of them were room mates and bonded. Their relationship seemed much more real than that of Katniss and Peeta. I didn’t make sense to me that Johanna would just go back to District 7 after the events of Mockingjay, she said herself in the arena that she didn’t have anyone left.
I thought the entire point of that was that no, she *didn’t* die in childbirth, but they faked her death so Anakin would not know his children lived. They separated them to further reduce the risk of him getting his hands on them, if he somehow found out.
Thus Leia remembers her, and she dies during Leia’s childhood. Presumably still of a broken heart. Sigh.
Bit unfair that one gets raised as royalty, the other gets to be a farm boy, scratting around to buy second hand droids they know are stolen, because how else are they going to afford to fix things up? Harsh.
If ever there were two characters who needed access to birth control and abortion it was Jude and Sue. Talk about your “coming universal wish not to live”– that book created it. Depressing from beginning to end. I sort of loved it.
Thank you for the Knocked Up one. That movie was a literal horrorfest for me. It was like Watch a Pregnancy Completely Ruin Someone’s Life: The Movie. I couldn’t even watch it until the end, it made me sick.
Hedda from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler; it’s so, so apparent that she does NOT want to be pregnant at all. I don’t know what she’d do after that given her intense fear of scandal and whatnot, but it would still at least get rid of one of her problems.
“Peeta had really wanted children, but that was just too fucking bad.”
YES! That’s how this series should have ended. I just remembered how much I hated it. And it felt so tacked on.
"Peeta had really wanted children, but that was just too fucking bad."
YES! That's how this series should have ended. I just remembered how much I hated it. And it felt so tacked on.