Pregnancy on Fringe: Tash Take It

The top two reasons I find Faux-livia's pregnancy to be epic fail:

1. Birth Control

What agent worth her salt doesn't have birth control? Especially if this agent already has a fairly good sex life with a respectable partner? Especially if she had no immediate plans to become a mother?

But even barring that - if she's on assignment to get cozy with the enemy on the other side, why the hell would she want to risk having a child with someone who was, at first anyway, an assignment? And even if she did actually fall in love with Peter, why would she go off birth control?

It just irritates me that in a fantastic (in both meanings of the word) show where science reigns and weird creepy stuff is per the norm, the very idea of "birth control" seems like an absolutely foreign idea that is totally unaddressed. And that is just - unbelievable.

2. Abortion?

I'm pro-choice. I believe that if a woman finds herself pregnant then she should have all options available to her whether that means keeping it or aborting it.

And it peeves me the hell off that nobody even mentioned abortion. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the elevated levels of Pure Creepy-Crawly-Skeeviness when Walternate was essentially seeing Faux-livia as a pod-mom for his future grandchild (making her officially part of the Bishop family and blah), but that no one mentioned it? That they didn't depict Faux-livia at least making a decision one way or the other instead of passively accepting what happened?

Unfreakingbelievable.

I understand that there is a lot of controversy over abortion that a network trying to make a profit would be reluctant to bring up. But the fact is, abortion does exist - has existed. To not even bring it up is a gross error that ruins the authenticity of the narrative.

I personally believe that abortion is not the first choice - that it would be better not to get pregnant at all. Which is why it irritates me that in the mainstream/networked shows like Fringe, they show people having willy-nilly unprotected sex.

Sometimes a show (not Fringe in this case) might depict a used condom, but the connotation always seems negative to me because they're usually found in parking lots or skeevy hotels where shame seems to be the message instead of safe and responsible sex.

However, I still can't think of a show (of Fringe's genre/calibre) where the pill has been directly mentioned or seen in context with safe sex. I don't think that it should be beat over the viewer's head, but simply showing Faux-livia pocketing a disk of bc and maybe even a package of condoms or something would have been nice.

But no. Instead, we get this traditional perspective of sex that everything must be so hush-hush and secretive. We know they're having it, but instead of showing that they're mature enough to have protected sex, we'll just have Faux-livia get pregnant.

Because that's what happens when you have sex.

Unprotected sex, at least.

Because women shouldn't be having sex for the pure enjoyment of it. Else we'll punish her by having her get pregnant.

And, I know that sounds like a way over-reaction, especially since I mostly think the pregnancy is a misguided attempt to force the story into a certain direction instead of a commentary on confident women like Faux-livia, but I can't help but think it was Faux-livia that got pregnant. Faux-livia who is definitely a non-traditional female, a woman who enjoys and even exudes sexuality. While Olivia is just - not as obviously and blatantly comfortable in her body as Faux-livia is.

Granted, this rather-admittedly-stretched theory of mine cracks a little in light of last week's episode which showed Olivia guiding Peter by the hand upstairs to the bedroom into a fade to black moment.

But again - I have to wonder if this sex they're about to have is protected or not.

I don't understand why it's okay to have obvious characters obviously having sex, but why there seems to be such stigma/shame/reluctance to show them practicing safe sex - as if having condoms or the pill somehow makes it less worthy, more dirty somehow - when the very opposite is true.