{"id":3702,"date":"2015-11-20T17:23:06","date_gmt":"2015-11-21T00:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3702"},"modified":"2015-11-20T17:23:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T00:23:06","slug":"abortion-and-olivia-prison-has-many-forms-and-so-does-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/20\/abortion-and-olivia-prison-has-many-forms-and-so-does-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion and Olivia: Prison Has Many Forms and So Does Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vnd7OxpRxN8\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We watched Olivia Pope have an abortion right in front of us, with <em>Silent Night<\/em> playing in the background;\u00a0it was unsettling,\u00a0right? \u00a0Not just for the irony of the\u00a0Christmas soundtrack, but also because the song&#8217;s &#8220;mother and child&#8221; were themselves unwelcome. \u00a0There&#8217;s more to these sorts of moments\u00a0than pretty, sort of symbolic, Christmas music. As usual with Olivia, the truth is complicated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Family is the only thing that has kept you alive here.&#8221; Huck tells his captive, Olivia&#8217;s father Eli. \u00a0But Eli argues that family doesn&#8217;t save us, it&#8217;s an &#8220;antidote to greatness.&#8221; \u00a0&#8220;Family doesn&#8217;t complete you, it destroys you&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>For Olivia though, destruction is the inevitable outcome of\u00a0the the stolid White House life, the outfits\u00a0entombed in\u00a0the Presidential bedroom, the so-called fairytale life of a First Lady, her very real prison. \u00a0We see she manages her performance\u00a0well; we need to know that for her choice to make sense. \u00a0No she wasn&#8217;t leaving because she wasn&#8217;t good at First Lady-ing. \u00a0A\u00a0bird (even a successful one) in a gilded cage is still locked up.<\/p>\n<p>We always knew (and some of us hoped) that she&#8217;d go. \u00a0Fitz&#8217;s questionable worthiness, not withstanding, she had to get out o there!\u00a0\u00a0 Her life, however twisted, said so much to all of us and taught us this &#8211; that this is possible: \u00a0<em>Olivia Pope doesn&#8217;t do shotgun, she drives the car!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even so, a woman of such stature who had surrendered so much, couldn&#8217;t walk away without an amputation &#8211; metaphorical &#8211; but real too. \u00a0Alone, telling no one, she chooses to end a pregnancy that no one knows exists. \u00a0It&#8217;s hers. \u00a0Hers to keep, or not. \u00a0Hers to speak about, or not. \u00a0And so as she leaves her pregnancy behind her, so too she leaves a life that has been confining almost to the point of trauma.<\/p>\n<p>As fiercely pro-choice but also a baby addict,\u00a0I find I surprise myself as I write this. \u00a0I feel, I see, I <em>know<\/em> that sometimes choices I&#8217;d fight not to have to make\u00a0myself are life and soul-saving for another.<\/p>\n<p>Eli&#8217;s meditation on family is either a counterpoint or a validation of his daughter&#8217;s decision. \u00a0Like the decision itself,\u00a0it depends on who&#8217;s watching. \u00a0From over here where I am, she made the right choice (because, after all, she <em>had<\/em> a choice) the right way. \u00a0Would that every women\u00a0had the power, and the money, and the access, to do\u00a0the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We watched Olivia Pope have an abortion right in front of us, with Silent Night playing in the background;\u00a0it was unsettling,\u00a0right? \u00a0Not just for the irony of the\u00a0Christmas soundtrack, but also because the song&#8217;s &#8220;mother and child&#8221; were themselves unwelcome. \u00a0There&#8217;s more to these sorts of moments\u00a0than pretty, sort of symbolic, Christmas music. As usual &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/20\/abortion-and-olivia-prison-has-many-forms-and-so-does-freedom\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Abortion and Olivia: Prison Has Many Forms and So Does Freedom<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,42,7,1917,9,97,29],"tags":[3586,1125,349,3417,3585,969,3421,928,3584],"class_list":["post-3702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-life","category-nablopomo","category-politics","category-television","category-women","tag-3586","tag-abortion","tag-choice","tag-family","tag-first-lady","tag-love","tag-nablopomo","tag-scandal","tag-shonda-rhimes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-XI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3706,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions\/3706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}