On Dec. 28, MTV aired a special spin-off of its popular 16 and Pregnant program. Titled No Easy Decision, it focuses on a 19-year-old girl—pregnant for the second time—as she decides to have, and goes through with, an abortion.
The girl, Markai Durham, had been featured on 16 and Pregnant in the past, opting then to give birth to a beautiful daughter named Za’karia. Since then, she graduated high school and moved into a house with her boyfriend, James. They’d been using birth control, but it failed them. For Markai and James, the decision to abort came down to doing what they thought was best for Za’karia, and wanting to give her the security that neither Markai or James had as a child.
We, as a society, talk a lot about abortion. For more than 40 years, Americans have quarreled and shouted and protested and legislated. We’ve expended billions of words on the debate. And yet, this is the first reality show I remember that tackled the issue head-on—even though (according to host Dr. Drew Pinsky) one in three women will get an abortion during their lifetimes.
We all have something to say about abortion, and yet it still leaves us speechless.
After watching it, I’m not quite sure what to say about No Easy Decision, either. So for the moment, let me let the show speak for itself:
When Markai calls an abortion clinic for information, we hear the conversation—hear the woman on the other end describe Markai’s options: how a chemical abortion will expel the “pregnancy tissue,” and how a surgical abortion uses “gentle suction to remove the pregnancy.” We hear her tell Markai that, physically, she should feel normal again 24 hours after the abortion. Emotionally, she admits, it’s harder to say. Markai begins crying. She can’t even say goodbye to the woman on the phone.
We hear Markai’s mother tell Markai to pray. “This one, you’re on your own,” she tells her. “Mommy can’t help you.”
After the abortion, Markai tells James that the clinic told her to think of the fetus not as having “10 fingers and 10 toes. Think of it for what it is—a little ball of cells.” James tells her that’s what he’s been encouraging her to do—to think of the fetus not as a baby, but as a “thing.” Markai gets angry.
“You will never feel my pain. You weren’t in the surgery room. I was there. A ‘thing’ can turn into that!” she says, pointing to Za’karia. “Nothing but a bunch of cells can turn out just like her.” And she cries again.
She wonders whether she made the right decision.
“I don’t think God would’ve given me something I couldn’t handle,” she tells James.
“God gave us a brain so we can make our own decisions,” James answers.
No Easy Decision is a compelling, sometimes powerful show that lived up to its name. But among all the voices we listen to, we never hear one—the voice of a prime player in this drama, a voice that couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything in its own defense. Its voice is gone now, gone in a short procedure and a cluster of cells.
It’s a silenced voice that should be mourned. Grieved for. And in some ways these women do that. At the end of the show, Dr. Pinsky interviews James, Markai and two other women who’ve had an abortion. One, who says she was relieved once she actually had the procedure, cries about it two years later. Another, who, as a teenager, went to a judge to keep her parents from knowing about her pregnancy and abortion, said she’s proud of what she’s done. “Sometimes it’s a responsible choice,” she says. Markai, too, says she knows she made the “right” decision … but when I listen to her, I’m not sure if she believes it. Not truly.
“No one is pro-abortion,” she says. “No one puts abortion first—no one with a heart, at least. But you have to do what’s right.”
It hurts to transcribe that. In my life, I’m surrounded by wonderful people who live now because their birth parents, under similar circumstances, chose to either keep their babies or give another set of parents the chance to adopt them.
Abortion can never be “right.” But abortion is reality.
Many will say that this TV show should never have been aired—that it will make abortion, in some viewers’ minds, more permissible, and thus easier, more justifiable. In the words of one of my respected colleagues, “I find the idea of the program deeply unsettling, as if there is some entertainment value in this tragic situation.”
They’ll have a point. Any movie, any television show, can’t help but humanize those wading into this all-too-common decision. It’s natural—and I’d argue, right—to feel empathy for the men and women involved.
But because abortion is reality, I wonder whether shows that deal with it on this gut-check level might not just help those who support abortion, but also those of us who so strenuously oppose it. Perhaps they might help us better grasp the humanity of this life-altering reality … to help and support not just those who face such a decision, but have carried it through to its tragic conclusion. No matter the motives MTV might have for presenting such a show, I personally walked away from it still absolutely convinced of abortion’s inherent wrongness, if you will … its inherent tragedy. But it also made me want to better show God’s love … even in dark, murky situations like this.
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