NPR: It’s Been a Minute – Is Hollywood to blame for abortion stigma? (2026)

Source: NPR – It’s Been a Minute
Author: Brittany Luse and Alexis Williams
Published: August 4, 2026
Document Type: Podcast Interview / Transcript Excerpt
Source Link: View original episode page (NPR)

Have our favorite shows and movies shaped the way we think about abortion? Hollywood has a huge impact on how we understand the procedure. It can drive a plot, like in Dirty Dancing, or inspire conversations about who gets abortions, like in the television series Maude. It can also be dramatized — turning a common medical procedure into something good, bad, or anything in between, depending on who is telling the story and how.

NPR’s Brittany Luse chats with Janet Goldwater, director of the documentary Hollywood Does Abortion, and Steph Herold at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) to understand how Hollywood handles, or mishandles, the topic of abortion. During the discussion, Luse credits a “Canadian teen soap” for providing her primary exposure to a realistic portrayal of the topic.

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT:

BRITTANY LUSE: …To start off, what was the first abortion storyline that you ever saw on screen? … For me, it was Manny Santos, this character on “Degrassi: The Next Generation.”

STEPH HEROLD: Yes, yes.

LUSE: This is actually, like, a Canadian teen soap. And Manny was this, like, Filipina Canadian character. She was 14 years old, and she got pregnant. … And she decided to get an abortion with the support of her mom. Like, she felt like having a kid was just not going to work for her plans for the future. And so she decided to do it. Her mom supported her.

LUSE (Later): I mean, it’s just wild to me. Like, I watched Manny Santos get an abortion when she was 14, when I was also a teenager in the 2000s on Canadian TV. And in hindsight, I’m like, yeah, it probably was notable on some level that, like, for me, maybe even subliminally, that this character was not white. But I just — I really didn’t realize it had taken that long [for Hollywood to catch up].

STEPH HEROLD: …Hearing people say, like, it was so powerful to see the mom support her daughter through an abortion. I wish I had had that during my abortion… [Degrassi] can show people what’s possible, not just what is.

Archival Note: This 2026 feature from NPR highlights the enduring legacy of the 2004 Degrassi: The Next Generation two-part episode “Accidents Will Happen.” Decades after it was famously banned from airing in the United States by The N, cultural critics continue to cite Manny Santos’s (Cassie Steele) storyline as a “gold standard” for realistic, non-stigmatized representation on television. This episode was produced by Alexis Williams and edited by Maya Dangerfield and Annabel Edwards.