Following last June’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a group of more than 400 female, trans and nonbinary showrunners leapt into action. They wrote letters to nine major studios and streaming platforms, demanding protection for pregnant employees of productions in abortion-hostile states.
Within days, the coalition more than tripled its numbers as additional showrunners, creators and directors joined the effort to implement widespread safety protocols and advocate for access to reproductive health care in Hollywood. Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, Donald Glover, Ava DuVernay, Natasha Lyonne, Issa Rae, J.J. Abrams, Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer and Damon Lindelof are among the A-listers who spoke out.
“In a sense, it was a way to channel all the anger and despair that is a natural result of having a profoundly important human right taken away,” one of the showrunners involved told TheWrap. (The showrunner chose to remain anonymous to avoid drawing attention to any individual members of the coalition.) “In this job, you have a profound responsibility for people, for their health, for their welfare, for their professional lives, for their emotional states, for their creative impulse. Recognizing that responsibility and being willing to protect the people who rely on you is a really important part of this job. I think those who have been in that position just felt like we had no choice but to engage in the coalition.”
The group is now more than 1,500-people strong and has raised $3 million for the National Network of Abortion Funds. When a consortium of the studios — which includes 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, the showrunner group hit back with a second letter that more clearly delineated the dangers pregnant women face in abortion-hostile states, this time sent directly to studio heads.
To date, several studios have pledged to work with the coalition to set up a 24-hour Reproductive Health Safety Hotline and to develop employee protections in states like Georgia, Texas and Alabama where abortion access has been restricted. (In August, Lionsgate, which was not among the studios the group reached out to, pledged to mandate new policies and protections for employee abortion care.)
Going forward, coalition members said they will remain focused on holding studios accountable for the commitments they’ve made. And they are clear-eyed about just how rough the road ahead might be. “It’s incredibly complicated. And that’s one of the reasons that we have never said, ‘We can come up with an answer,’” the showrunner said. “The answer may well be that there is no way to keep cast crew staff, other individuals safe in an abortion-hostile state.”
That’s a bleak possibility, to be sure. But it won’t deter the 1,500 people devoted to ensuring reproductive rights. As they said in a full-page ad in Variety last month, “This is not the last you will hear from us.”
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