Pro-abortion fiction recs

[lb_lee]

So, search engines are failing me, and I know a bunch of my blog readers are bibliophiles, so I am putting it up to you guys: can anyone recommend fiction (books, comics, movies too I guess) where a character gets an abortion and a happy ending? Protagonist preferred, but I'll also take secondary characters at this point.

Right now, all I have are Dirty Dancing and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, both of which are secondary characters. (And Cabaret I guess, but that is NOT a happy ending.) And I just really need stories where an abortion is treated as a thing that actually happens and that the character getting one isn't tainted or doomed.

Googling is mostly getting me dystopias and anti-abortion shit. Sort of like how digging around for songs in a similar vein mostly got me songs about dead babies.

Comments

[someonefromthewater]

Paula Proctor's abortion in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the best example I can think of. Still a secondary character, but handled pretty well.

[sorcyress]

Amanda Palmer has many problems but "Oasis" is the happiest ever song (and music video) about rape and abortion, and I love it very much.

(Keeping an eye on this page for other recs)

~Sor

[lb_lee]

Oh yeah, Oasis and Voicemail for Jill were two of the three songs in the Red and Blue playlist I put in the back! (The other is Back Alley Surgery by Malvina Reynolds, which is only available via LP or piracy because she made it in the '70s. The more things change...)

[writerkit]

"Unpregnant" by Jenni Hendricks is a wacky road trip comedy about going to get an abortion.

[erinptah]

Sex and the City revealed that Carrie had had an abortion when she was younger -- it comes up in season 4 episode 11, where she reflects on it from years later and thinks about how, yeah, this was the right decision.

Bojack Horseman, Diane has one in season 3. There's still a lot of episodes to go before her basically-happy ending, but "divorcing the guy she was with in season 3 and getting into a better relationship without being tied to the old one at all" is a big part of it.

[lilysea]

Films =

Grandma (2015) a teenager goes on a road trip with her queer Grandmother so the teenager can get an abortion

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Two teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania go to New York so that one of them can get an abortion

[lilysea]

Ask for Jane (2018) a group of university students in Chicago provide dozens of women with safe but illegal abortions in the 1960s. (A true story)

Abortion is presented as the right decision for the women who choose it.

[china_shop]

Obvious Child (2014) - movie starring Jenny Slate.

[sovay]

And I just really need stories where an abortion is treated as a thing that actually happens and that the character getting one isn't tainted or doomed.

The setting is a secondary world, but Jennifer Roberson's "Blood of Sorcery" (Sword & Sorceress ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1984) is entirely about the losing of an unwanted child, which frees the protagonist both magically and personally when it finally happens.

[jadelennox]

Coming in from minoanmiss.

• Exit, Pursued By a Bear. TW: Rape.
• Love and Hiaght: abortion in SF pre-Roe, in 1971. (I remember liking this book, but before I recommended it to you I went to search to remember how it ended, and I found this hilariously angry review of it from some conservatives, who hate that her "profanity-spewing rabbi" gives her a halachically-accurate and talmudicly-defined Jewish view of the acceptability of abortion. So I guess it's great.)
• Secondary character abortion: Girl Mans Up

I haven't read, but Kirkus starred:

• Rebel girls
• Unpregnant
• Like Sisters on the Homefront (Note: Middle Grade, CSK Honor book. TW: It's been over a decade since I read it but I think the sex might have been statutory rape, though the child in question believes she's consenting? I can't recall the details.)

I haven't read, but Kirkus liked:

• Girls on the Verge
• Turning (Note: this is a disability book with a potentially glurgy subject, but the review came out after Kirkus went to 100% ownvoices reviewers so I'd tend to trust the positive review.)
• Ask me how I got here (Note: the reviewer, ironically, is mildly down on this book because the abortion isn't a life altering event, and the reader is perfectly happy and hooks up with a girl afterward.)
• Borrowed Light
• Aftercare Instructions

Not an abortion story, but I really love Kristin Cashore's Fire for being a book where a character chooses to make herself permanently infertile as a complicated choice. The understanding that even if you want kids, sometimes the situation means you just shouldn't. It's a painful but also ultimately an easy choice she's happy to have made, and that's pretty rare. On the assumption that Griswold's on the chopping block as well, maybe we need those books, too.

[buggery]

I am drawing a blank on fiction of that sort, but what did spring immediately to mind was Ursula Le Guin's "The Princess" (found in her excellent collection of talks and essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World), originally published in 1982.

You can read a shortened version of "The Princess" that keeps all the relevant details here.

[totient]

(Also here via minoanmiss.)

Fred Pohl, "Gwenanda and the Supremes", in The Years of the City, 1984.

[feotakahari]

I haven’t watched any of these, but there might be something good here:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/12-movies-about-abortion-1235022140/

[(Anonymous)]

"The Future of Another Timeline" by Annalee Newitz is a time travel story about reproductive rights. It has a happy ending, but the story has elements of dystopias, and a lot of violence of various sorts, too. The possibility to get an abortion is treated as a necessity and fought for on a great scale, and the life of the person who gets one changes to the positive over the course of the book. I'm not sure if this story is more intense than what you're looking for, but I had to think of it a lot during the last few days.

[nevanna]

In the graphic novel Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, the narrator's best friend has an abortion. (They're in high school, and she got pregnant from an off-page fling with a married adult, which is inarguably skeevy.) The procedure is physically and emotionally painful, but it's portrayed as the best choice from the beginning, she has support from her loved ones, and they're much happier by the end of the story.

[lb_lee]

I got the book from the library and read it. Laura Dean is the WORRRRSSSSST!

[acorn_squash]

ETA: Cut tags aren't working. Not sure why. Maybe you can't do them in comments? I don't know. I'm new to this.

I'm not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but the only thing I can think of right now is Kate Quinn's The Alice Network. Semi-spoilery explanation below the cut:

One of the protagonists gets an abortion mid-book during a particularly bad time in her life. In her view, this is morally grey and unambiguously the right choice for her. Things continue going badly for her, but they would have gone much worse had she not gotten the abortion. Nothing bad happens as a result of her abortion. She ultimately gets a happy ending, after a lot of trauma. This is somewhat contrasted with a different character in a less-bad situation, who considered abortion, decided that she was being pressured into it and actually wanted a kid, and got a happy ending raising the kid.

So like... I don't know if I'd describe it as pro-choice per se? But it might meet your criteria. Also I just really like the book.

Content warnings below the second cut. They might be incomplete; it's been a long time since I read it.

Sexual assault [including sexual assault of minors], torture, suicide, guns, war, death, racism [including unchallenged racial slurs], Holocaust, unsafe medical treatment, misogyny, teenage pregnancy, prison, gore/body horror, bullying of someone with a speech impediment, alcohol abuse, PTSD, murder... Honestly I could go on and on and on. This is not a happy book.

You might also like this rather old news article (cw: cisnormative language): https://www.salon.com/2015/09/22/my_abortion_made_me_happy_the_story_that_started_the_shoutyourabortion_movement/.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, cut tags don't work on Dreamwidth comments, only posts themselves. Also, thanks for the book rec! It sounds a bit too intense for me, and I had to take a break from the abortion reading, but it's good to know it's there if I feel up to it.

[acorn_squash]

...I thought of some more. Sorry, it's been long enough since I read these that I can't promise the content warnings are complete.

Unclaimed by Courtney Milan, a historical romance novel that ends with an HEA (happily ever after): The main character's backstory includes having a medical abortion administered without her knowledge or consent. This was a traumatic experience for her because she wasn't given a choice in the matter. CWs for the book include: abuse history with mother torturing and medically neglecting siblings, in-universe slut-shaming, authorial ableism / mental illness stereotyping, religious trauma.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a tragic French film: After prolonged exercise fails to end her pregnancy, a secondary character chooses to have a midwife give her an abortion, in the company of those who care about her and on the night of an important village ritual. It's a really beautiful and meaningful scene. The story ultimately ends very sadly, but the character who had the abortion is non-central enough that she's mostly unaffected.

One of the main characters mentions that she also had an abortion in the past, and it's treated as a happy thing that's not an issue; her ending is deeply melancholy but in a way that's completely unrelated to her past abortion.

CWs for the film include: backstory with suicide of sibling (discussed but not depicted), homophobia, onscreen hallucinogenic drug use & smoking & drinking (with no ill effects), nudity & sex (always consensual, sometimes combined with consensual drug use), forced marriage, controlling parents.