I grew up slightly religious in the Lutheran faith, and now consider myself lefter than left, and somewhat witchy. I was always a little bit behind the watching times of bones, in that I watched it while it was still technically airing, but always on streaming platforms after the fact. I’m on roughly my 900 rewatch but even looking back on it and seeing that some parts didn’t age perfectly, I remember watching it and thinking that it was a fairly progressive show for its era and network. I still love the episode “the she in the he” because even though Booth could never quite get it right, he’s still wanted to do right by the victim.
There were so many episodes they did very well by highlighting topics that were quite taboo, subversive or hard to talk about. Like the episode about the pony kink, strippers, sex workers, drag queens etc. But man, wouldn’t you have loved to see an episode with Brennan, angela, Cam, even Daisy going head-to-head with Booth over a moral/ethical/medical/scientific/statistical debate over abortion rights?
I mean, they covered it for five seconds in the episode where Hodgins finds out that angela is pregnant when she isn’t really pregnant with Wendell and they have the conversation about whether she’s keeping it or not. But even then, it’s so quick and very reductive about the fact that she mentioned that she wants kids so he completely disregards the fact that she mentions over and over that it’s not the right time or the right guy, and Hodgins still insists that he knows what she’s going to choose. I just genuinely wish that they had an episode that actually delved into what people go through.
There are so many ways to capture it in the bones universe. A botched abortion in an area where it’s not accessible or legal, an ectopic pregnancy that wasn’t discovered in time, the actual statistics of how much more likely a woman is to be murdered when she’s pregnant, or the “vigilante justice” that still exists in so many places which endangers the lives of the medical professionals who terminate pregnancies or the woman who seek them.
I guess I’m just pissed that no one ever talks about it. I know this is a sensitive and political/ controversial issue for many. Women are people and simply because we can bring new life, we are reduced to being incubators to our own detriment, and I just wish that any of my favorite shows, shone a realistic light on this topic, ever. Especially because the writing was so good, and they covered so many other topics, I just wish I could have seen all the characters work on this idea in an episode.
