In many shows, pregnancy is a simplistic and glossed-over story line, a plot device that comes nowhere near to a realistic depiction of a woman’s experience. How many times have you seen a woman in a television show or movie throw up and know: She’s pregnant! Then you see montages, baby bumps, pregnant women behaving like silly pregnant women, birth, happiness. The end.
In five seasons on the air, Friday Night Lights featured at least three characters who had to make difficult choices about pregnancy: Erin, Tami Taylor, and Becky Sproles. (Mindy Collette is another character who struggles with pregnancy in the show.) We’ve published pieces about Friday Night Lights before, but I want to talk about the show’s excellent handling of pregnancy and abortion in regard to these three particular characters.
 |
| Tamara Jolaine as Erin |
Erin
When Jason Street has a blind date with a woman who has an odd fetish related to men in wheelchairs, waitress Erin comes to his rescue–giving Jason a hiding place and telling his date that he left the restaurant. Jason and Erin hit it off, spend the evening together, and end up having what she believes to be a one-night stand. At this time Jason thinks he’s sterile due to his injury, and the two throw caution to the wind and have unprotected sex.
When Erin turns out to be pregnant, she tells Jason and he immediately pressures her, saying that this may be his “only chance” to be a father. Erin, a very minor character who isn’t even given a last name (as far as I know), nails him on his attempt at emotional manipulation:
You need to stop … You do not get to put that on me. I’m not some experiment for you to prove your manhood, Jason. This is my body. I am going to make the ultimate decision.
Erin pinpoints the way women’s bodies are so often used as battlegrounds for men trying to advance an agenda, personal or political. Jason’s injury has made him so desperate for a chance to be strong and important and yes, masculine again, that he loses any sense that she is a person, too. Jason can’t control his own body, so he wants to control hers.
While Erin does decide to carry the pregnancy to term, and later marries Jason Street (after he experiences a string of improbable successes), it isn’t without debate and discussion. We don’t see much of Erin’s pregnancy, but Jason seems to be a supportive partner in the matter. While happily ever after for these two isn’t the most realistic storyline, the way the unplanned pregnancy is handled isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it’s not too bad for a network show supposedly about small-town high school football.
 |
| Connie Britton as Tami Taylor |
Tami Taylor
In the final episode of the first season, an already-frazzled Tami (dealing with an impending move for her husband’s job, among other things) fears she might be pregnant. She enters a Planned Parenthood clinic and asks for a pregnancy test. Though she doesn’t have an appointment, nurse Corinna Williams sees the distraught woman, takes her back, gives her the test, and tells her, in an excited voice, that she is, indeed, pregnant.
“How pregnant do you want to be? Because you’re extremely pregnant.”
When Tami looks less than happy about the news, Corinna asks her, “Do you want to be pregnant?” A teary-eyed Tami responds:
Do I want to be pregnant? Do I want to be pregnant? I don’t know. […] We planned it, like, thirteen years ago. And then twelve years ago, and then eleven years ago, and then ten years ago.
Even though Tami is financially stable, married, educated, has a job as a guidance counselor, and already has a teenage daughter–is
the example of success and stability in the community–her answer to Corinna isn’t an unequivocal
yes. Why? Because choosing to have a child, when it’s unplanned, is always a difficult decision. Tami struggles to even have the conversation with her husband, busy as he is with the state football championship. The pregnancy affects the entire family, too, something else for which
FNL deserves praise.
The show skips most of Tami’s actual pregnancy (it occurs during the break between the first and second seasons), but picks up the story and closely follows her experience as a new mother, even if it is her second time around. With all her privilege and advantages, balancing work, family, and her own personal life is still a challenge. Her teenage daughter proves less than supportive, her husband is largely absent due to work, and she certainly could have benefited from some on-site childcare when she returns to her job at the school. Overall, Friday Night Lights does an excellent job of portraying a family that believed it was complete dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and a new baby.
 |
| Madison Burge as Becky Sproles |
Becky Sproles
In season four (my personal favorite), Becky, a 10th grade girl who has a one-night stand with football star Luke, chooses to have an abortion. This is the only abortion featured in the show, and was one of
the few on network television since Maude in the 1970s (
Roseanne took on abortion in the 1990s, too). That alone is a bold statement about choice, but the show also handles the story line very well. Becky tells Luke, and seeks advice from Tami (who at this point is the principal of East Dillon High). In a most careful and professional way, Tami lays out Becky’s options, mentioning support available for teen mothers, adoption, and, only when Becky mentions not wanting to give birth, some pamphlets available for that (she doesn’t speak the word “abortion”). Becky’s decision is deeply personal, and she chooses to go through with an abortion with the support (one could argue pressure) of her mother, a single woman who gave birth to Becky when she was a teenager.
Becky struggles with her choice, and goes back and forth with her decision, wondering if she could actually care for a child. The show allows her to
explore her conflicting feelings and emotions; in another talk with Tami, Becky says:
We don’t have any money. I’m in the 10th grade, and it’s my first time. And I threw it way, and I don’t want to throw my life away. It’s just really obvious that my mom wants me to have this abortion. Because I was her mistake and she has just struggled and hurt everyday, and she wanted better and I knew better. And then I was just thinking, you know, forget what she wants, like, what do I want? And maybe I could take care of this baby, and maybe I would be good at it, and I could love it and I would be there for it. And then I was just thinking how awful it would be if I had the baby and then I spent the rest of my life resenting it, or her.
The women face a mandatory waiting period at the clinic, which forces Becky’s mother to take another day off work–the only overtly political commentary on Becky’s own experience. The ripple effects in the community, however, quickly turn political. When Luke’s mother finds out about Becky’s abortion and Tami counseling her on the decision, she starts a chain of events in the community that ends in the call for Tami to leave her job as principal. In her
analysis of the women in the show, guest writer Lee Skallerup Bessette says:
Those around her (her mother, the mother of the baby’s father, the community) seem more upset and emotionally reactionary than Becky herself. It also seems that the extreme reactions of those around her affect her more than the abortion itself […] Abortion, it would seem, is not the issue; the hysteria surrounding it is.
Decisions surrounding reproductive choice are difficult and emotional enough without state-mandated barriers and interest groups pressuring women to carry all pregnancies to term. While Friday Night Lights had a majority of its pregnant characters give birth, and some story lines were more convincing than others, the show was careful to depict each one as an individual choice, and give the women dignity and autonomy.
