The natalist streak running through Amy Sherman-Palladino’s shows
Tim Rice
Something strange is happening in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The current and final season of the Prime Video hit opened with the revelation that Mei, the girlfriend of the titular comedienne’s ex-husband Joel, aborted their baby. Mei’s news is met with only sadness, notable for a show whose characters hold unambiguously, even anachronistically, liberal views about motherhood.
It’s also out of place with most depictions of abortion on television, which are increasingly either matter-of-fact or darkly funny. In Salon, Alison Stine says that Mei’s abortion is treated as “a simple fact” and that “we don’t need to say more or make it a big deal because it isn’t.” Stine adds that this is an important reminder as our world descends “into post-Roe darkness.”
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Where liberals see a coming darkness, conservatives see a bright but vexing future. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization left the American pro-life movement feeling like the proverbial dog that caught the car. After years of fighting to ban abortion, the movement now faces the possibly greater challenge of reshaping politics to support children who otherwise would not have been born and the women who otherwise would not have borne them.
Those seeking to tackle this matter will find a vision for a post-Roe America in the oeuvre of Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. Though best known for her boldly feminist heroines, Sherman-Palladino is likely the most successful pro-life showrunner in recent history.
A natalist streak runs through her body of work, which shows fertility specialists as the pinnacle of success and always treats pregnancy — even unplanned, difficult pregnancy — as a joyful thing. This is true for the short-lived Bunheads, which has a happy unplanned pregnancy subplot, and the even shorter-lived The Return of Jezebel James, which revolves around a woman serving as her sister’s surrogate. But nowhere is Sherman-Palladino’s pro-life ethos clearer than in her most successful show, Gilmore Girls.
Beneath the hijinks of its fast-talking heroines, Gilmore Girls is, at heart, a show about women who choose to have unexpected children and the people who support them. By showing what happens after a person “chooses life,” the show offers a road map for a nation that is struggling to do the same.
Gilmore Girls tells the story of 30-something single mother Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter, Rory. When 16-year-old Lorelai discovers she’s pregnant, she decides to raise Rory on her own, without the aid of her boyfriend, Christopher, and outside the aegis of wealthy parents, Emily and Richard. Lorelai leaves home and settles in the town of Stars Hollow, where she builds a life for herself and her daughter.
It’s a radical premise to begin with: The show presupposes that a couple of wealthy, liberal high schoolers with their Ivy League futures on the line would choose not to abort or give up their child. In fact, Lorelai never even considers getting an abortion — a decision likely informed by the support she gets from her parents. Though they are old-money WASPs, Richard and Emily do not react, as Christopher’s parents do, by worrying about appearances.
Instead, they try to help the young couple and defend Lorelai from accusations that she alone was to blame for the pregnancy. They rebuff Christopher’s father’s suggestion that Lorelai abort the baby, the only time such a suggestion is ventured in the entire series. Years later, Richard and Christopher’s father come to blows after the latter once again tries to cast judgment on Lorelai.
When Lorelai strikes out on her own, she joins the legions of women for whom, as one American Enterprise Institute scholar has noted, “unexpected pregnancy is accompanied by financial hardship … housing needs, and other challenges.” But while Lorelai is no exception on this front, she is unique in that she immediately receives support from the people of Stars Hollow.
Upon arriving in town, Lorelai is given a job and a home by the owner of the local inn. The townsfolk become particularly invested in Rory, whose golden child status becomes a running bit. Humorous though it may be, the town’s dedication to Rory’s success is an important reminder that a truly pro-life community is one that supports mothers and children, emotionally and materially, well after birth.
Stars Hollow may be nonjudgmental, but it is hardly a liberal paradise where anything goes. The town is rigidly traditional, run by a council of crotchety selectmen, and populated by busybody neighbors whose eagle eyes keep residents on their best behavior. We find a similar combination of community norms that regulate and liberate (call it open-minded traditionalism) in Emily and Richard, who accept almost anything Rory does, so long as she does so while pursuing elite education.
This “small-c” conservatism that runs through Gilmore Girls is a proper political ethos for post-Roe America. Conservatives who want abortion to remain off the table will need to accept unmarried mothers and pregnant teenagers who don’t follow their decision to forgo abortion with a conversion to Catholicism or a vote for Republicans. And liberals should remember that extolling the importance of traditional education and strong family structures does not necessarily come at the expense of accepting people from different walks of life.
The show’s blend of traditionalism and free thought is best embodied in Luke Danes, the surly-but-lovable proprietor of Stars Hollow’s diner. Luke acts as a surrogate father for Rory, at one point even challenging Christopher’s attempt to claim some kind of parental authority over Rory by reminding him that fatherhood is, more than anything, about being there for a child.
Luke also steps in to help raise his troublemaking nephew, Jess, and his biological daughter, April, who first enters his life as a 12-year-old, and whom he immediately and unquestionably welcomes into his life and home. Throughout the series, he serves as a reminder of the importance of fathers and the role that all men have to play in raising and caring for children.
Lorelai’s flourishing in Stars Hollow also explains why so many of their friends and neighbors follow her down a similar path to motherhood. With one exception, every pregnancy shown in Gilmore Girls is unplanned, including Rory’s, which is revealed at the end of the 2016 revival Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life.
Though we don’t know what Rory chooses to do with the baby, Sherman-Palladino has essentially confirmed that the younger Gilmore (who once displayed a Planned Parenthood poster in her Yale dorm room) plans to follow in her mother’s footsteps and raise the baby on her own. Rory’s experience points to perhaps the most important lesson Gilmore Girls offers post-Roe America: If we want women to choose life, we have to depict women who have done so and thrived.
We can do this by building the kind of community where this flourishing is possible. But we can also do so by producing art that shows this choice in a positive light. On that score, Sherman-Palladino is ahead of the curve. It’s noteworthy that Mrs. Maisel, the first of her shows to depict an abortion or portray motherhood in a negative light, is also the only Sherman-Palladino production set in the past, not an imagined present.
As we work to figure out how to build a pro-life future, we ought to remember that the type of country we have matters as much as, if not more than, any judicial decision or child tax credit. Fortunately, we’ve already seen what a post-Roe America can look like. And it looks an awful lot like Stars Hollow.
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Tim Rice is associate editor of the Washington Free Beacon.