Following last June’s Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was overturned, with a group of more than 400 female, trans and nonbinary showrunners leaping into action. She wrote to nine major studios and streaming platforms demanding protections for pregnant workers of productions in anti-abortion states.
Within days, the coalition more than tripled its number as additional showrunners, producers and directors joined the effort to implement comprehensive safety protocols and advocate for access to reproductive health care in Hollywood. Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, Donald Glover, Ava DuVernay, Natasha Lyonne, Issa Rae, JJ Abrams, Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer and Damon Lindelof are among the A-listers who spoke.
“In a sense, it was a way of channeling all the anger and frustration that is a natural consequence of taking away an important human right,” one of the listeners involved told TheWrap. (The listener chose to remain anonymous to avoid drawing attention to any individual member of the coalition.) “In this job, for the people, for their health, their well-being, their professional life, their emotional state. You have a deep responsibility for, for their creative impulse. Recognizing that responsibility and being prepared to protect those who trust you is an important part of this job. I think the people who do that. Having been in the situation, they felt that we have no option but to join the alliance.”
The group is now over 1,500 people strong and has raised $3 million for the National Network of Abortion Fund. When a consortium of studios — including AMC Networks, Amazon Studios, Apple TV+, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery — responded to the letter in vague terms without addressing any specific demands After all, the showrunner group hit back with a second letter that more clearly portrayed the dangers facing pregnant women in abortion-hostile states, this time sent directly to the studio heads.
To date, several studios have pledged to work with the Coalition to establish a 24-hour reproductive health protection hotline and develop employee protections in states such as Georgia, Texas and Alabama where abortion access is prohibited. (In August, Lionsgate, which was not one of the studios the group reached out to, pledged to mandate new policies and protections for employee abortion care.)
Going forward, the coalition members said they would focus on holding the studio accountable for the commitments they made. And they are clear about how rough the road ahead can be. “It’s incredibly complicated. And that’s one reason we never said, ‘We can come up with an answer,'” the showrunner said. “The answer may well be that the cast crew staff, other individuals There’s no way to keep it safe in an abortion-hostile situation.”
It’s a bleak prospect, to be sure. But that won’t stop the 1,500 people dedicated to ensuring reproductive rights. As he did at Variety. said in a full-page ad last month“This isn’t the last you’ll hear from us.”
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