After a long break, the hit NBC drama This Is Us returns to reveal that one of its major characters has been hiding an abortion she had as an 18-year-old girl.
The bombshell was dropped by Kate (Chrissy Metz) in the episode entitled “The Long Road Home,” as she unleashed the news on her husband, Toby (Chris Sullivan), both shocking him and sending him into a spate of doubt about their relationship. Kate tells Toby that she had the abortion after ending things with her abusive teenaged boyfriend, but she does not regret her decision to eliminate her fetus. She adds that she was just not ready to be a mother.
Watch below:
“It was, I mean, the toughest decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Kate exclaims. “But I don’t regret it. But I made it alone and you know I’ve lived with it alone. Wait, what are your eyes doing? Are you judging me?”
Toby, confused about why it took his wife — whom he thought he was close to — two years to reveal this painful history, especially since they had been engaged in a two-year quest to have a baby of their own.
“It took us two years to have Jack,” Toby says of the couple’s first child. “That’s two years of talking about pregnancy all the time,” Toby says in the episode.
But Kate defends her decision to keep the secret from her husband. “I was 18 years old. That decision was wrapped in the darkest, lowest, most painful time of my life. It was like the most painful relationship of my life, and all I wanted to do — I wanted to just lock it up, and I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about him. He was so cruel to me.”
Kate then exclaims that the incident “is all in the past.” This claim, however, prompts Toby to reply, “Is it though? If it was truly in the past, then why would it take you four years to tell me about it?”
Political fare from network shows like This Is Us has steady increased in recent years as many Hollywood production add story arcs that often portray abortion in a positive light. Indeed Hollywood writers, producers, and directors have enlisted the aid of Planned Parenthood in creating content. In 2019, it was revealed that Planned Parenthood was contracted as a consultant on more than 150 TV and film productions.
Support for abortion and celebration of the same is de rigueur in the entertainment community. Only weeks ago Hollywood screenwriter Merritt Tierce and executive producer Neal Baer were heard urging the industry to produce more “abortion stories” to make having the procedure appear entirely normal.
Award-winning actress Patricia Arquette is another loud supporter of abortion and recently insisted on Twitter that “The majority of suburban women want their daughters to have the right to chose and to have access to a safe abortion if they need one.”
Last year, actress Michelle Williams, used her 77th Golden Globes acceptance speech to urge Americans to support pro-choice politicians.
"When it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest. It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them."
"We are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.”
–Michelle Williams#GoldenGlobespic.twitter.com/9M9fN1rjrF
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) January 6, 2020
Along with the rampant support of abortion by industry insiders, glorification of the procedure has become more common than ever in entertainment. Indeed, a recent article in the New York Times reported that the entertainment industry has been depicting abortion at “record levels,” and abortion exposure on TV and in film has increased exponentially.
This Is Us returns after a seven-week hiatus on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
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