If you have an interest in fashion, you may have heard about the “20-year trend cycle.” This is an idea that refers to trends resurfacing every two decades, and it’s commonly referenced in conversations about style trends. However, the theory could apply to the television shows we watch as well.
Almost a year ago, I [Aiko] encountered a “TikTok edit” of the show House, which surprised me. After all, the show is two decades old now! Nevertheless, the comments were loving it. After seeing that one edit, I feel like I’ve been seeing so many House references in internet culture, whether it be an increase in fandom engagement on social media or just screenshots from the show being used for memes. It got to the point that I’ve begun to rewatch the show myself.
The titular Dr. House is a loud jerk. He says pretty much whatever he wants to the absolute chagrin of everyone around him. He’s misogynistic, racist, homophobic—all of it. House fits right into the 2000s climate of rampantly fat-shaming, casually gay-bashing “edginess,” which is all to say that he’s the kind of protagonist that likely wouldn’t be written for cable television today.
It’s abundantly clear that our culture has shifted politically since 2004. However, the first time it really hit me was when the topic of abortion was brought up. House is unique in that it focuses specifically on unusual and complicated cases, and emergency abortion is very relevant in many of the episodes. A standout example of this is the season 3 episode “Fetal Position.” House and his team treat a pregnant woman who suffered a stroke. It quickly becomes apparent that terminating the pregnancy would be the safest choice for the woman, yet she refuses. Dr. House urges her to terminate.
The most interesting part of this episode, to us, is the language. Throughout the episode, House will only refer to the fetus as a fetus. Anytime someone calls it a baby, he interjects and corrects them.
In the last scene he shares with the mom, he starts calling it a baby. She hasn’t had the baby yet, but the shift in language isn’t because she’s no longer sick. It’s because House has started to regard the fetus as a baby and not a fetus, after it touched his hand during their surgery. The message is this: This is a baby, something alive, despite the fact that it couldn’t survive on its own.
House thinks everyone is stupid, but he doesn’t think that Emma Sloan is stupid because she wants to save her baby. Instead, he thinks she’s stupid for refusing to terminate because the only real options are that it dies or they both die. Luckily, the woman’s choice ended up working out in her favor, as she birthed a viable baby and eventually regained her health, something that all of the doctors told her was impossible. Statistically, the woman made an incredibly high-risk choice, yet by the end of the episode, she is rewarded for it. This ending reads a bit problematic in our modern political climate. Although the character’s refusal to get an abortion makes for good television, we feel that the perfect ending of this episode downplays the dangers of carrying out a pregnancy with severe complications. The last scene of the episode drives this point home, with a scene of the mom lifting and cuddling her happy, healthy baby boy, as if to say, “Look at them! If she had gotten that abortion, that cute little baby would be dead. Who cares that the other real option was them both dying—they made it, so that doesn’t even matter.”
E.R. is facing its own renaissance with the popularity of The Pitt bringing new eyes back to the show that was a smashing success in the late 90s and early 2000s. It came out 30 years ago, but a surprising amount of the show has held up very well. As someone watching it for the first time in 2025, I don’t find myself wincing at offensive remarks as often as I expected to.
One of E.R.’s most abortion-centric episodes is “Shades of Gray,” which is the 19th episode of the fourth season. In the episode, a Chicago reproduction clinic is bombed, sending patients to the County General.
One of the patients who comes into the ER was part way through a later stage abortion when the bomb went off, and the doctors have to complete the abortion in order to stop her from hemorrhaging. Anna Del Amico, one of the doctors, is unable to complete the abortion because of how she feels about it, especially considering that the woman is 18 weeks along.
Kerry Weaver, the other doctor in the room, completes the abortion. When she talks to Anna about the case after the fact, she tells Anna that as doctors, they sometimes have to do things that they find distasteful. This is something that’s important to recognize; that when doctors refuse to perform procedures or treat patients based on their personal feelings, it is a very slippery slope to refusing to treat people on the basis of their race, orientation, insurance, and just general vibes.
When Anna treats a woman who got glass in her eye at the clinic, she starts to reevaluate her stance. This woman, who says she ‘marched with Dr. King,’ talks to Anna about what a shame it is that these extremists were blowing up buildings with people inside, but she reveals that she was one of the protestors at the clinic. She even references the poem “First They Came” when talking about abortion to Anna, because when she’s protesting against abortion she views it as her protecting the ‘children.’
She tries to give Anna a pamphlet about her group, and when Anna refuses it she still leaves it for her. She says that she “thought that they shared the same views,” even though Anna hasn’t really said anything to show that she agrees. Even at this point, this woman still seems relatively harmless. She’s polite and calm, and she’s not shouting or insulting anyone. But then we see her sign.
This woman, who has condemned the violence of the people who blew up the clinic, is walking around carrying a sign that says “STOP Abortionist Genocide.” This isn’t harmless behavior. She condemns the violence of other protestors, but she’s walking around carrying a sign that is wildly inflammatory and insulting, and Anna points that out. The woman’s only response is that “it’s reality,” and if the sign upset her then it’s done its job.
By the end of the episode Anna still isn’t sure whether she would be able to complete that abortion if the same case came in tomorrow, but her perspective has changed. She isn’t okay with that woman and her behavior, but her whole perspective hasn’t changed in a few hours. It’s realistic, because a few hours isn’t enough to fully change an opinion or predict what you’ll do in the future, but she’s considering how she feels and what she would do.
At the end of the episode, when the woman is leaving, she reveals to Kerry that it’s not the first abortion she’s had and that she’s been using them instead of birth control, because her partner doesn’t like condoms and the pill makes her fat.
Once she knows about this woman’s history, Kerry doesn’t change her belief on abortion. As she explains to Anna, she did overseas work in Africa, and because abortion is illegal in the country she was in she saw a lot of girls who had failed abortions or got infections and died because of their lack of access to abortion. That’s why she supports abortion, and seeing one woman who abuses the ability to have abortions is not going to change her mind.
In a later episode in season 12, a character actually considers getting an abortion. She gets back together with her ex, another main character, and she gets pregnant only a few weeks into dating.
Grey’s Anatomy, despite the criticism it gets, has always been vocal about the right to choose. In its second season, main character Cristina Yang scheduled an abortion before having an ectopic pregnancy, and in season eight Cristina had an abortion after getting pregnant unexpectedly. In both cases, Cristina never wavered on wanting an abortion. She was steadfastly child free, and it wasn’t because she didn’t like kids. She cared about her career and about being a surgeon, and she didn’t want anything to take her away from that.
TV shows live for conflict and drama, and none more than Grey’s Anatomy, but Cristina was never conflicted about having kids or being a mom–she didn’t want to. All of the drama stemming from her abortion was from the way her partner reacted to her getting an abortion, despite knowing that she never wanted children.
Her partner, Owen Hunt, married her knowing that she was never someone who wanted kids. He held her hand at her abortion, but then he harbored resentment over her having an abortion despite going with her. The drama in this plotline isn’t the abortion–it’s the behavior of a man who can’t express his emotions or respect his partner.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Grey’s redoubled its focus on reproductive healthcare. They brought back the character Addison Montgomery, a neonatal surgeon and OB-GYN, in order to showcase the problems that come with Roe being overturned. She returns to Grey Sloan Memorial, the hospital the show is set at, to work with the hospital in order to spread awareness about proper sex ed. She also works with Miranda Bailey, a doctor at Grey Sloan, to train OB fellows from states where abortion is illegal and therefore not taught.
Over the five episodes that Addison comes back for in season 19, abortions, both medication and surgical, are shown and described in detail. The show also highlights the importance of proper sex education and access to contraception, especially after abortion access was cut so drastically. Grey’s’ post-Roe abortion storylines aren’t just about the lack of abortion access itself. They showcase the rage that women all over the US feel about their rights being taken away.
Over and over, Grey’s makes it clear that women have the right to choose what to do with their bodies. There’s no wishywashyness or pandering to people who think they deserve to control others. It makes its stance clear–let us control our own bodies.
Overall, E.R.’s portrayal is the most nuanced. Both sides, pro-life and pro-choice, are given the chance to have a voice, and while the show leans more towards being pro-choice, pro-life opinions aren’t outright dismissed. Instead they’re reasoned with, and the general feeling is that while the doctors might be pro-life for themselves, they support a women’s right to choose, and are therefore pro-choice.
One issue that all these shows share, however, is the people that they have getting abortions. According to data from 2021, only 30% of people were non-Hispanic white. But when we look at the women in these shows who are getting abortions, the majority of them are white women. Grey’s gets the closest at accurately representing the demographics of who gets abortions, but House and E.R. only really show white women.
Although abortion now is an incredibly divisive topic, it’s interesting to see how it is portrayed in media from before it came to the forefront of our politics. We find that, although shows take a more nuanced approach than they likely would if they were released today, many episodes hold up no well. After all, even if a show does not directly say that it is pro-choice, the fact that abortion is being portrayed as a reasonable option is powerful. As restrictions on reproductive freedoms tighten, it is these casual representations of abortion that will speak the most to the average person.