Lily Tomlin, Marta Kauffman Call for Greater Industry Protections at Abortion Rights Picket: “This Is a Discrimination Issue”

Katie Kilkenny
·5 min read
4
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Lily Tomlin, Gloria Allred, Marta Kauffman and top creatives called for entertainment companies to enact stronger health and safety protections for employees working in states that have banned or criminalized abortion at a reproductive health care-themed picket in front of Amazon Studios on Friday.

“Our message to the studios is this: It’s not acceptable to wait until someone dies to take this seriously. It is not acceptable to force people who are pregnant or could get pregnant to have to choose between their jobs and their lives,” said writer-producer Cindy Chupack (Fleishman Is in Trouble, Sex and the City) in a speech at the event in front of the white columns of Culver Studios. “And Amazon, maybe instead of figuring out how drones can safely fly our packages to our door, you could figure out how a medevac could safely fly our crewmembers to a hospital.”

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Added Women in Film CEO Kirsten Schaffer in her own remarks to the crowd, “The work that we do would be impossible without access to abortion and reproductive health care overall. Many, if not most of us, would not be able to do the work that we do without knowing that we have that access.”

The event was organized as a special picket within the ongoing writers strike and timed a day after the release of a “post-Roe report card” that detailed major companies’ reproductive health care policies and reproductive health and safety hotline functions one year after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The “report card,” released Thursday, found that only some studio-provided hotlines can assist their workers in helping access emergency medical care, for instance. No studios covered by the report provided “any emergency measures needed to access care” if an employee is working in a state that outlaws or criminalizes abortion and needs emergency reproductive care.

The group behind the picket, called “Showrunners for Abortion Rights,” formed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Composed of creatives including Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Natasha Lyonne and Issa Rae, the group of reportedly hundreds sought to push studios and streamers to adopt more stringent protocols for their workers in states like Tennessee, Alabama and Texas, which have banned abortions. The group has since grown to a coalition of around 1,400 creatives, including showrunners, TV creators and directors, and a steering committee of about 40 organized Friday’s event.

According to Friends and Grace and Frankie co-creator Marta Kauffman, a member of the showrunner coalition, many of the reproductive health care resources cited in the group’s report card were a “direct result of Showrunners for Abortion Rights and specifically the delegates who went and spoke to all the studios.” (Thirty-five showrunners with leverage at individual studios volunteered to serve as “delegates” and lobby those respective companies to expand their resources within the past year.)

Working with powerful creatives in the industry was a key part of the group’s strategy, explained Chupack in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: “That’s been part of our pressure on the studios, to say that your work is going to be reported out to this very influential group of people who you’re going to want to work with.”

Kauffman added to THR that she hoped the picket would convey to the industry that “we’re not going to stand for it.” She explained, “We’re not gonna stand for the women and the people with wombs, as Gloria [Allred] said, being at risk just because they want to work. This is a discrimination issue.”

Several of the day’s speakers encouraged writers present to acknowledge abortion — and barriers to reproductive health care in general — in their scripts. Lily Tomlin told the attendees, “You, the storytellers, no longer have to imagine a world like Handmaid’s Tale, because we’re pretty close to that right now. What you do have to do is tell the stories about what women are facing all over the country.” She added, referring to studios and streamers that are currently at an impasse with the Writers Guild of America over a new contract, “I hope those guys will get off their asses and let you do that sooner than rather than later, tell those stories.”

Actor Brandee Evans, who plays a character in Starz’s P-Valley who helps her daughter access an abortion, said that she personally hadn’t had reproductive health care concerns treated seriously in the past and had suffered a stillbirth. “We are here today to beg you to please make this viable and visible for everyone,” she told the writers. “That means you have to write it. That means the showrunners have to put it on their shows. Networks have to be open to letting this be seen.”

Near the end of the day’s events, high-profile attorney Allred took to the podium. She called for more action to be taken by the entertainment industry’s labor groups, and not just its employers. Acknowledging that this might be a “controversial” stance, Allred said, “I do think that SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild, the Producers Guild, the Writers Guild, the technical and craft guilds should not participate in making films in states that ban abortions. I think we should demand that our unions protect our vulnerable wombs.” In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned in 2022, several unions — including the DGA and the WGA — amplified their coverage of abortion services, though they did not take a stance against producing in specific states.

In addition to speeches, the picket featured a number of musical acts — Ella Jay Basco and The Sibs and Susanna Hoffs, among others — and food (sandwiches, cupcakes, coffee and smoothies) donated by the Ronin Project Podcast, Jennie Snyder Urman, Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom.

As the event wound down, members of Showrunners for Abortion Rights said that their advocacy will continue. The studio report card “showed all the gains that I think we’ve made in collaboration with the studios, but also what’s left to do, which is really the emergency reproductive care part of it,” said Chupack. Added Kauffman, “We’re not done.”

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Click here to read the full article.