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04th Feb 2019

‘Call The Midwife’ tackled the harrowing issue of illegal abortions on last night’s episode

Amy Nolan

Viewers praised the show for how it dealt with the subject.

We love tuning into Call The Midwife on a Sunday evening, tucked up with a cup of tea. It’s witty and vibrant and transports you back to 1960s England. It also touches on some serious issues, however.

Previously we’ve seen the show explore topics such as domestic violence, the Suffragette movement and last night, illegal abortions.

The most recent installation of the popular BBC One show highlighted the devastating ramifications of what can happen when women are denied bodily autonomy.

The moving storyline centred on Jeanie, a woman with two kids and a loving husband. The beginning of the episode showed a blissful family that were saving in earnest to buy a house. When Jeanie started to have some symptoms and suddenly felt unwell at an exercise class, it became obvious that she could be pregnant with a third child.

Jeanie had this suspicion confirmed by a doctor and was deeply dismayed as she did not want more than two children and was using contraception to try and prevent this.

Dr Turner tried to assuage her worries and told her to tell her husband. He assured her that it would “start to feel like good news” in no time.

With her husband disapproving of a termination and having been turned down for one by Dr Turner, Jeanie took matters into her own hands, with tragic consequences.

The poignant subject matter struck a chord with a lot of viewers and people took to Twitter to thank the show for directly addressing it.