On Roseanne, Roseanne’s grandmother Nana Mary reveals that she had two abortions.
Anything But Love. Ann Magnuson’s character. Rough scene that almost didn’t get aired.
Does Stangers with Candy count? It is a sitcom (though on cable, not broadcast) and Jerri Blank has had many abortions in the past (& one son she put up for adoption and later dated).
On the “over the top” sitcoms, there’s actually a really funny episode of Sarah Silverman about her character’s abortions and subsequent interaction with a pro-Life terrorist group.
Apparently Maude is the only character whose abortion has been a major “before and after” plot point (i.e. not just referred to in retrospect) other than for surreal sitcoms. I can’t imagine Rachel or Phoebe on FRIENDS or [to go more modern] Britta on COMMUNITY having one as a plot point. Amazing how much more ballsy the 70s could be than today.
Regarding Convenient Miscarriages, those are particularly a staple of soap operas and not only do they feel the need to have an accident or other incident cause them but often saying “BOO!” behind a pregnant woman is enough. I trace them back to GONE WITH THE WIND when Scarlett’s fall down the stairs caused one. In the book it makes it clear that her fall down the stairs wasn’t just an ‘ouch, that hurt’ fall but much more serious:
There’s even an implication later that the doctor may have performed an abortion, either intentionally as a necessity or as a consequence of a necessary operation on her. (Earlier, when Scarlett learned she was pregnant with Bonnie- her third child [and she’d always hated being pregnant] she told Rhett she was going to abort and her became almost violent, having once seen a woman die from a botched version of the procedure.)
Since then though I can think of several women- Pam Ewing on Dallas and several on soaps I used to watch when I was a teenager- who the second you see them near a staircase you know “Pregnancy is over”. In reality it’s not uncommon for women to fall down stairs or have major car accidents and the fetus come through just fine- it’s REALLY well protected in there and accidents that cause miscarriage are not that common and there are usually extenuating circumstances. My understanding is that it’s far more common for a woman to- for lack of a better phraseology- miscarry for no apparent reason- it just happens- than due to an accident.
Well… the Godfather II when Kate reveals the Micheal that she aborted his child…
yeah i remember the Maude episode… and THe Degrassi episode the character was Manny (Manuela) the young filipino girl who gets pregnant by Craig… I tell my gf that what’s amazing is that Degrassi would’ve NEVER gotten done in the United States…
There was that episode of Three’s Company in which Chrissie is in the bathroom discussing removing a wart with Jack and Janet while Mr. Roper is fixing the drain in his bathroom. He hears just enough of the conversation to jump to the conclusion that she’s going to have an abortion.
The big laugh was the look on Norman Fell’s face when he hears Jack say he can take care of the problem with a set of nail clippers and a Band-Aid.
But that isn’t really what the OP wants.
Not only did Manny get an abortion on the surprisingly addictive Canadian teen soap opera Degrassi The Next Generation, in the original Degrassi (which aired in the 80s) one of the twins, forget their names, gets an abortion. What I do remember is that anti abortion protesters were portrayed as pretty much complete dicks, who call her a murderer and a slut and basically have nothing better to do than harass women going through extremely difficult times. This is a show which is partially funded by the Canadian government and is marketed to teens and preteens. Almost makes me wish i lived in Canada. Almost.
On an episode of 21 Jump St dealing with anti-abortion terrorism, Judy Hoffs revealed she had an abortion.
I love Degrassi The Next Generation (probably more than a male in his late 20s should), but portraying anti-abortion protestors like that is probably the most realistic thing either show ever did.
The above mentioned 21 Jump St had a similar portrayal.
Yikes! Was this discussed flippantly around a lunch of salads?
The premise of the episode as announced when I read about this moneygrab…err…editorial control:
Lois agrees to carry a surrogate child for some friends, but early on the friends die in a car wreck. Then Lois has to decide whether to abort the child or not.
I think they were having sandwiches that day.
But yes, they were in their cute little coffee shop. It comes up when Miranda finds herself pregnant by Steve (they have a little one night stand thing even though they’re no longer dating) and then she says she wants to have an abortion, so Samantha says she’s had two and Carrie mentions having had one. Carrie also is compelled to track down the guy who got her pregnant years ago and tells him but she realizes that would be stupid.
The Miranda pregnant plot also involves Charlotte. Char wants to get pregnant badly but is having trouble, doing IVF–anything to have a child, and it’s devastating to her that Miranda is pregnant and won’t have it, when she can’t even conceive.
The more you knoooow. 
Another “character who had an abortion in the past” is Mary Beth Lacey from Cagney & Lacey. In some episode I otherwise barely remember, she came home to find her son making out with some girl on the couch. She demands her husband to have “the talk” with the boy, and later tells him her own tale of woe, ending with “you almost weren’t my first born”.
Yes, but the abortion protesters were on the original Degrassi series that aired in the late 80s-early 90s, Degrassi High, which was FAR more realistic than the new version! I seem to remember them sort of glossing over the actual abortion part with Manny in the new one, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode so I could be wrong.
Just to add a few more details, the Degrassi High abortion episode was two parts, if I remember correctly. The twin (Heather or Erica, I can never remember which is which) gets the abortion in the first part, and then deals with the outcome in the second part. Her twin sister was totally against the abortion and ends up going to a classmate for advice. I think another girl - who happens to be anti-abortion - overhears and decides to harass the twin by taping signs to her locker that say “Baby Killer!” or something along those lines. The twin manages to catch her in the act and they get into a huge cat fight right in the middle of the school hallway, rolling around on the ground and pulling hair and I think the twin even calls the girl a self-righteous bitch. It was pretty hardcore! For a low budget Canadian tv show, Degrassi never failed to deliver.
That plot line is from the original Degrassi High from back in the 80’s. You should check it out. For some reason the Catholic TV station back home aired it, completely, dubbed in Spanish. That part of the series was no exception. I watched it as a kid.
As part of that plot, one of the protestors was also the punk/goth vegetarian pro-animal rights chick who was BFF with the punk single teenage mom. She went so far as to pin “baby killer” or something like that in the twin’s locker door. Finally the punk teenage mom (her friend) told punky alternative chick that while she chose to have her kid and raise her, that isn’t the only option and she should stop being so self-righteous and mean to the twin.
I thought (as a kid) that it was weird someone with such otherwise left-leaning politics would be such an ardent pro-life, but whatever. Her self-righteousness flaw, though, had been pointed out earlier, in another plot (involving animal rights).
I got that. I just meant that on the whole, the Degrassi shows were ridiculously unrealistic, even as far as teen TV shows go.
I love old Degrassi. Back when kids could actually look like kids, pimples and all! I still remember the one old woman holding up a plastic fetus yelling ‘Look at your baby!’ Scary. But sweet and honest, in that the one twin didn’t support abortion, in theory, but supported her sister’s right to choose and was just there for her.
Yea, I realized that when I reread it… :smack: But after edit was able.
If you don’t mind one of those surreal sitcoms, you could count the Sarah Silverman show. The one and only episode I watched featured her making friends with a Christian organization, and was going to go protesting with them, just to find out she was supposed to protest against abortion. She went into a loving flashback of all eight (?) times she’d had an abortion and how great it was.
She goes along with it for a bit, until she realizes that some of them wanted to make it violent. She then winds up saving the doctors and other people in the clinic (which just so happens to be the one she always uses.)
I think Jo-Jo from “Buffalo Bill” (mentioned several times above) also qualifies. Unless you’re arguing that “Buffalo Bill” was not a sitcom. But it was a half hour and I’m pretty sure it had a laugh track.