Seinfeld had an episode that touched on abortion. The sitcom generally didn’t get political, which makes it more rewatchable than a lot of today’s fare, but it did mock opponents of abortion although it did also portray Elaine and militant abortion supporters as a bit unhinged.
Interestingly enough, Michael Richards, who played ‘Kramer’, described in his recent memoir, ‘Entrances and Exits’, being nearly aborted by his mother. His mother, who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, had made a plan to travel to Mexico to obtain an abortion with another woman. That woman died during the abortion. Richards’ mother went to see some Catholic nuns who convinced the Italian-American actor’s mother to have the baby and give him up for adoption, which she did, but proved unable to go through with it and reclaimed him from the adoptive parents.
Seinfeld, as most people know it, wouldn’t exist if abortion had been legal in California in 1949.
Whatever one thinks about abortion, it’s interesting to ponder that portions of our world simply wouldn’t exist if it were easy for mothers to kill off their babies. Seinfeld is just one of them. Steve Jobs, the co-creator of Apple, is another.
Conversely, it’s troubling to think of what’s missing from the world once abortion was made casual and easy.
What discoveries were never made, what stories were never told and what people were never born, and world might we be living in if we hadn’t lost so many children who were killed off before they could be born?
