‘Degrassi: The Next Generation’s’ Banned Abortion Episode Changed TV
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In 2004, Degrassi: The Next Generation aired what would become their most controversial episode with “Accidents Will Happen,” which premiered in Canada in two parts on January 26 and February 9, 2004. However, the episode would not see the light of day on Degrassi’s U.S. network, The N, for another two years. This sparked outrage among Degrassi fans and confusion among the show’s stars, who couldn’t understand why, out of every sensitive topic Degrassi had touched upon, the storyline in “Accidents Will Happen” was too much for America to handle. Degrassi actor Jake Epstein, who portrayed Craig Manning, notes, “If you had told me the list of all the episodes we did, I would have been shocked that this episode was the one that was banned.” However, The N put a stop to the initial airing of “Accidents Will Happen,” as it touched on one of the most polarizing topics in the States: abortion.
Degrassi’s tagline for the show at the time was “It Goes There,” and the show never shied away from delivering episodes that pushed the limits of what was acceptable on a teen TV drama. One of the show’s most popular episodes, “Time Stands Still,” featured rap superstar Drake, then known as Aubrey Graham, as Jimmy Brooks, a high school student paralyzed during a school shooting and confined to a wheelchair for his remaining time on the show. However, The N didn’t see a problem with airing the school shooting episode, which premiered only four years after the tragic Columbine High School massacre.
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“There is no one who thinks a school shooting is a good thing, and there are people who believe that any access to abortion is wrong, so it’s a slightly different subject,” says former vice president of The N, Sarah Lindman, who made it clear she disagrees with The N’s decision not to air the episode.
In the two-part episode, 14-year-old Manny Santos learns she is pregnant with her boyfriend Craig Manning’s baby. While she contemplates raising the child with Craig and giving up on her future dreams, she concludes that abortion is the best decision for her. After all, she’s only two years into her teens and can’t fathom carrying a child for nine months while navigating high school. “Accidents Will Happen” was one of three episodes throughout the Degrassi franchise that touched on the topic of abortion. The first was “A New Start,” a 1989 episode from Degrassi High, in which the character Erica Farrell chooses to have an abortion, and the final was in 2017, when Lola Pacini had an abortion in Netflix’s Degrassi: Next Class.
While the U.S. did air Degrassi High’s “A New Start” in 1990 on PBS, the decision didn’t come without a catch. The network decided to cut the ending, so the audience doesn’t see if Erica actually enters the abortion clinic and follows through with her decision. However, the reason The N chose to ban “Accidents Will Happen” entirely is likely due to the political climate in America caused by the March for Women’s Lives in 2004.
At the time, The N was airing Degrassi a few months behind Canada’s CTV during their summer schedule. Entertainment Weekly reported that The N executive Meeri Park Cunniff found the episode too heavy for the network’s lighthearted summer schedule. However, show creator Linda Schuyler has a different perspective on the situation.
When Schuyler and Degrassi’s executive producer Stephen Stohn initially brought the episode to the broadcaster, they had full support, but things seemed to change after the March for Women’s Lives on April 25, 2004, made the controversy around abortion at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
“There was nervousness on behalf of the broadcaster if it wasn’t perhaps the right time to be airing it. We, of course, would disagree with that, but we had to respect our American broadcasters responsible for the American audience,” Schuyler recalls.
However, as Stohn remembers, while the U.S. was hesitant to discuss abortion on television in 2004, it wasn’t so controversial north of the border. “It always surprised us that it was an issue in the United States,” Stohn says. “In fact, it’s government-funded if you want an abortion [in Canada] because everybody deserves health care; it’s a matter of health care, and to us, it was a non-issue.”
Though it was certainly a touchy subject in the States, Degrassi handled the topic of abortion responsibly in “Accidents Will Happen,” with one message standing out above all. The episode was not pro-abortion but pro-choice. “Accidents Will Happen” didn’t simply justify Manny’s decision to have an abortion, but it looked into various perspectives on the topic without one being pushed as the correct opinion and the other portrayed as wrong.
“One of the best parts about Degrassi is that it never talked down to its audience, and I feel like in every episode that handled a sensitive topic, they never presented one point of view or side as this is black and white or this is right, and this is wrong,” says Epstein.
Schuyler also acknowledges the way society today, especially in the U.S., tends to force people to take sides, and if you’re not on the “right” side, there’s a lot of shame that comes with that.
Schuyler explains, “What we strove to do in our show is really have a debate, see one side, see the other, but allow for that middle ground to be explored and not just for people to stand so opinionated with one polarized view against another.”
In fact, Schuyler believes shaming others for their perspective is dangerous and could scare teenagers out of taking risks and sharing their opinions. Instead, Stohn suggests the right approach is to have an open conversation about the topic. “Let’s just have a conversation, and we can agree to disagree, but we can just talk openly about it and try and get the facts but talk politely, have a polite discourse of it, not a divisive one,” Stohn says.
Degrassi actually had several teen moms throughout its time on-air, with the most prominent being Christine “Spike” Nelson. Spike’s daughter Emma was the driving force behind Degrassi: The Next Generation as the series picked up following her journey through school with her best friend, Manny. Because Emma was the result of a teen pregnancy, she was against Manny having an abortion, understanding that had her mother had one, she wouldn’t be alive.
Simultaneously, Craig was also rooting for his girlfriend to keep the child. Craig had a pretty tumultuous journey in Degrassi, starting with the abuse from his biological father, leading to him being taken in by his stepfather, Joey Jeremiah. From Craig’s perspective, keeping the baby was his opportunity to finally have a real family, the one thing he craved desperately due to his circumstances.
Episode writer Shelley Scarrow admires Craig’s perspective, saying, “It’s very emotional. It’s from a place of need; it’s not his politics. He’s not drawing lines in the sand and saying, you can’t do it for this reason, or it’s illegal, or it’s against my religion, or I don’t believe in it. It was like, oh, I feel this way because I’m a fully-fledged human.”
Epstein is especially impressed that Degrassi went against the stereotype of the teen father wanting nothing to do with the baby and instead showed Craig ready to take on the role of a father. It wasn’t out of left field that he wanted to do it; it was totally valid based on his life experiences,” Epstein offers.
Though, in the end, Degrassi wanted to make one thing clear: It was Manny’s body, and therefore, Manny’s decision.
Though, in the end, Degrassi wanted to make one thing clear: It was Manny’s body, and therefore, Manny’s decision. In one scene, Manny frantically appears at Emma’s door, desperate for some advice from her friend’s mother, who ensures her that if she doesn’t want to follow through with her pregnancy, she doesn’t have to. This is one of the most important scenes in the episode as it solidifies the message of choice. Just because Spike decided to carry her baby to term and raise Emma as a young mother doesn’t mean she believes this is the right decision for everyone. She’s able to see past her own opinions and choices and encourage Manny to make the decision that’s right for her.
Despite Emma’s hesitance to support her best friend, she passionately tells Craig at the end of the two-part episode, “[It’s] Manny’s body, what about her?” While the ending seemed to place a lot of emphasis on the “my body, my choice” message, Scarrow admits, “I don’t know that that felt as radical at the time as it even does now. It just felt like a statement of fact, so it is interesting that that’s a question now that we’ve moved so far in other directions.”
Epstein also acknowledges that while he’s happy Degrassi kept an open mind to the various perspectives around abortion, he understands that it was much easier for Craig to accept Manny’s pregnancy than it was for her. “He’s not the one who’s gonna be pregnant for nine months, and he’s not the one who has to necessarily give up the same kinds of things that Manny gives up,” Epstein reasons.
This understanding is what Degrassi hoped society could take from the episode, but no one could have imagined that 20 years later, we’d be moving backward. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, it’s more important than ever that young women have access to information around abortion, which “Accidents Will Happen” provides. It also feels like a foreshadowing of the 2022 Supreme Court decision that 18 years earlier, the country wasn’t even comfortable talking about abortion on television.
“It’s definitely telling that an episode of a TV show that spoke about abortion when abortion was semi-legal in the U.S. was banned,” Epstein admits.
However, the current political climate in America only makes “Accidents Will Happen” that much more impactful. At the time, Scarrow confesses she “couldn’t conceive” of the impact the episode would have 20 years later. However, Lindman has a prominent memory of how the episode impacted those around her.
In 2006, The N finally aired “Accidents Will Happen,” and about a year later, at an OBGYN appointment, Lindman was reminded of how crucial it was for Degrassi to discuss abortion on television. One of the most impactful scenes in the episode occurs at the end, when Manny and her mother are sitting in the waiting room at the abortion clinic, speaking with a nurse about how the procedure will go.
Scarrow remembers writing this scene, admitting she was put in contact with multiple nurses through her friends who actually did work at an abortion clinic. With the scene, Scarrow wanted to “peel back the curtain” on what actually occurred inside abortion clinics. “It’s not a black box in there, it’s not an aquarium,” she explains. “It’s like, here are people who will respect you and take care of you and be kind to you.”
Lindman’s doctor especially appreciated this. “My OGBYN, who I didn’t think knew what I did for a living, thanked me for the episode. She thanked me for helping to normalize the conversation around abortion in the United States,” Lindman shares. “That’s where I wound up on it, that my much-older-than-me OBGYN at the time was aware of it. This fancy Upper East Side doctor was aware of it, and she wasn’t watching Degrassi, but she knew about it because it became part of the cultural conversation.”
Schuyler also points out that each time Degrassi covered abortion, they went bolder, explaining, “In the one that we did in the late Eighties, we saw Erica get to the door of the abortion clinic, and we froze, whereas in the one we did later, we actually went into the clinic with [Manny] and then we actually saw her open the door to the procedure room and go in. Then, in Degrassi: Next Class, which we did on Netflix, we did another episode on abortion, and this time, we went right into the procedure room.”
Degrassi’s unapologetic storytelling may have gotten the show censored a few times, but looking back, it was key for the Canadian television show to touch on subjects that most U.S. TV shows were too afraid to approach. Schuyler admits she does believe Degrassi was influential in the teen shows that came afterward, such as Euphoria, which aired an abortion storyline in its first season. Though 20 years later, Schuyler and Stohn say they wouldn’t change a thing about the episode, and they only hope people will revisit “Accidents Will Happen” now that it’s easily accessible on Max and various other streaming platforms.
“I hope the show can get more play. I hope that people start watching it again because they need this episode more now than even then,” Schuyler says. “Young women need to see what Manny went through and need to hear all the various points of view.”
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