I am pro-life, and remain pro-life after this episode.

The episode filled me with profound sadness on behalf of women and on behalf of aborted children. The pro-life cause is best served by looking at the incentives that push women towards believing that terminating their pregnancy is the best option and addressing them. According to the Guttmacher survey, the top two reasons given for abortion were disruption to one’s life (such as career, education, or other children) and being unable to afford to care for a child. The third most common reason was much less common than the other two - “don’t want to be a single mother or having relationship problems”. “Physical problems with my health” was much lower on the list of reasons given, but that deserves attention, too.

I believe many of these problems could be addressed with social programs. The most obvious intervention would be making healthcare cheaper and more accessible, in order to ease the cost and burden of pregnancy both during and afterward. More research needs to be done on how to help women recover post-pregnancy and manage any personal issues that can appear. This would help with the financial side of things and with the problems that can arise during pregnancy - cheaper or free care means more frequent visits that can assist with any problems that arise.

Regarding disruption to one’s life, pregnancy itself is a disruption, as it can cause months of discomfort, changes in one’s mood and diet, and unexpected physical effects (my mother’s hair went from curly to straight, for example). We need to work towards understanding these effects better so we can provide relevant care. And regarding post-birth disruption, we need a better way to care for unwanted children, like well-funded orphanages and adoption programs that don’t suck. We need to provide a way for a woman to give up her baby easily and ensure that the baby is cared for. If artificial wombs prove viable, we could use them to allow women to remove fetuses from their bodies without killing them, transferring them to the artificial womb instead and bypassing any negative health outcomes that would have happened otherwise.

The third major factor is social in nature. To address it, we would need to address social stigma against pregnancy out of wedlock and single mothers both in the workplace and in society at large. The people mostly responsible for this stigma are, ironically, pro-lifers. Most of the change there needs to happen “at home”, so to speak. Many pro-lifers are hypocrites or haven’t really thought things through - they would oppose the above measures because the Republican party has hijacked the pro-life message. It has used its stance as leverage to serve its corporate masters by convincing pro-lifers that no issue is more important and that many other areas of moral concern can be compromised or discarded if you just get that one issue “right”.

All of the above is just the beginning. Speaking of the Guttmacher survey, that was from 2004. We need newer, comprehensive studies on the phenomenon so we know what we need to address. Banning abortion should not be the first step. It may reduce abortions, but not nearly as much as addressing the root causes would.

To get back to Bojack, many of the above issues were in the background of the episode, though a major theme was that the decision to get an abortion shouldn’t have to be explained or stigmatized. I didn’t hate Diane, Mr. Peanutbutter, or Sextina. The perspective of the showwriters and the characters on the worth of life in the womb is very different from mine. But I do believe that it’s worth reflecting on and examining the reasons why people get abortions. Diane didn’t want children for reasons of her own, whether it was her career or her personal freedom. Financial considerations weren’t a big deal at that point because of her husband. For her to want to go through with her pregnancy, she would have needed assurance that having the child wouldn’t impact her beyond the inconvenience of pregnancy itself. In Bojack’s world, like ours, there is no “safe” option for giving up a baby. Direct-to-family adoptions can fall through. Women can suddenly decide they want to keep their babies after all after the child is born, but may come to regret that decision later. The foster care system is broken and has hurt many people. There is no “safe” place for unwanted children to go. With such a place, it would be easier for Diane, and women in the same position she is, to go through with their pregnancies rather than terminating. If that existed, and if we/Bojack’s world spent more time and effort acknowledging, understanding, and mitigating the negative effects of pregnancy on the body, then she might not have aborted.