A History of Onscreen Women and Abortion

On the sitcom Maude, Bea Arthur played the first character to have an abortion on TV in the euphemistically titled episode "Maude's Dilemma." Yet she was not some young girl in a bind: Maude was a 47-year-old "liberal" on her fourth husband. The episode aired two months before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1972.