By Movieguide® Staff
Viewers of Hulu’s TELL ME LIES spoke out against the show’s abortion plot line, which the show’s creator described as “a victory moment.”
“I have pretty much only seen abortions depicted as a heavy, complicated decision, and certainly that can be the case for a lot of women in a lot of situations, but not always all,” creator Meghan Oppenheimer told The Hollywood Reporter of a character’s decision to have an abortion.
She continued, “Sometimes it is just a relief and something you have to do, and I personally think it is something that can sometimes be a gift to people in certain situations…I wanted to show abortion as something that could be casual, that could even be a victory moment, as weird as that might sound.”
“I’m sure it will upset some people, but it is how I felt about it,” Oppenheimer concluded.
Related: Studios Pressured to Define ‘Clear, Detailed’ Policies on Abortion
Alicia Crowder, the actress who plays the character, made similar comments in an interview with Teen Vogue, saying, “She’s so focused on her future and her education and her career. That is what is important to her and what should be important to her. She’s a senior in college. She’s, what, 22 years old?”
“It’s okay to make that choice, but it definitely affects her life,” Crowder acknowledged. “It affects her relationships. It affects her relationship…it brings back all of this ugliness and sadness that she thought that she had left in the past.”
While some celebrated TELL ME LIES for depicting this situation, others spoke out against how the show handled the storyline.
Reporter Greg Piper tweeted that TELL ME LIES “promotes disinformation about abortion” in the episodes centered on that plot line.
In an op-ed for Evie Magazine, writer Jenny Thomas explained, “What message does this signal to the generation devouring this show? That aborting a baby carries no emotion? That the father involved has no say?”
She referred to Oppenheimer’s comments to THR as well, pointing out that the “millions of women” who watch TELL ME LIES are being told “that abortion should feel casual, that mocking the father is empowering, and that the ‘right’ response is to feel nothing at all.”
“This might ‘just’ be a scene in a show, but there’s a real generation of young women being told there’s only one way to feel about this topic,” Thomas concluded. “Oppenheimer wanted to make a statement. She did. But was it at the cost of every woman whose experience isn’t a TV punchline?”
Read Next: Study Finds Abortion Increases Rates of Mental Health Problems for Women
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