The creators of Bump+ would like to address several errant media reports. Headlines around the world have said Bump+ trivializes the issue of abortion. Fox News has suggested that Bump+ is an “abortion game show.” It is not. We take the stories of our characters and the choices that lie ahead of them seriously and would never trivialize those choices by putting them to an audience vote. To be clear: There is NO VOTING on our show.
Real life isn’t that simple.
Denise, Hailey and Katie (fictional characters portrayed by actors) will make their own decisions at the end of this series. The creative team behind Bump+ will shape those decisions based upon the advice offered by viewers in the form of STORIES submitted on this website.
We welcome the extraordinary and to our knowledge unprecedented outpouring of stories already offered by hundreds of viewers who have fully grasped how the show works. We don’t believe that anyone carefully observing the discussion unfolding here could call it trivial. It is the conversation we hoped to start. Thank you for participating in it and proving that it is in fact possible for us to reach across the distance between us with compassion and respect.
To Our Audience -
Bump+ The Show has come to an end – but the conversation it has sparked is just beginning.
As word about Bump+ spread to 64 countries across the globe, controversy and criticism from people on both sides of the debate followed; but instead of listening to them, you found the courage to listen to each other. Six weeks and more than 125,000 site visits later, your responses not only to our characters, but also to each other has proved to the world what we suspected all along – we were right to trust in the goodness and intelligence of our audience. We are intensely humbled by the stories you’ve shared and the respect you have shown to each other. Your partnership has challenged us to see this debate in new ways, and reminded the world that we don’t have to agree to listen and respond with compassion. Thank you for that gift.
Comments on individual episodes have now been closed in order to preserve what was The Bump Experience as it unfolded. A new comment thread has been opened here to keep the conversation going. Please visit this link to share your story and join the conversation.
Sorry Kris, the legalization of abortion is not at all about property rights and the embryo/fetus is not considered the mother’s property. Abortion is legal because women have the right to be able to control their own bodies, not because children, babies, fetuses, or embryos are slaves or property. Pregnancy permanently changes her body, it has a significant risk of life-altering injury or death, it can create undue financial stress, and it can create incredible emotional stress if a woman is not prepared or does not want it. I believe Roe v. Wade was specifically based on a woman’s constitutional right to privacy and the restrictions on what the state can compel someone to do (14th amendment). The court found that compelling a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term violated those rights.
For the purpose of illustration, think of it like organ donation. Imagine the government passed a law that said if you were a match, you would be forced to donate organs that you’d probably be fine without in the future (a kidney, for example). Sure, there’s a risk of permanent injury or death in the surgery, but with modern techniques it is fairly small. Oh, and there would also be few or no benefits or job protection for the time you would have to take off to recuperate. Yeah, it involves risk and can harm you financially and it’s a violation of your right to control your own body and make your own medical decisions, but it would give someone else life…probably, as long as their body didn’t reject it or a million other things go wrong. Would you find that to be an acceptable law?
Pro-choice advocates see forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term the same way, except the risks and hardships are arguably worse for an unwilling mother. That is also the basis for its legality–a woman should not be forced to use her body to support another potential life.
Also keep in mind that there are many schools of thought with scientific basis about when what we can consider human life begins. Sure, an embryo (which is the stage most abortions are performed at, not the fetal stage) has the potential to be a human life if nothing happens, but its brain hasn’t developed to create those thoughts and feelings we usually consider to separate ourselves from animals, who most people have no problem killing for food and sport or just because they are a nuisance. Late term abortions, by the way, are pretty much irrelevant to any discussion of whether abortion should be legal because no one gets them just because they don’t want to be pregnant. There are only a handful of doctors in the US who can perform them, they’re risky and expensive, and they’re only really performed when the mother’s life is in serious danger if she continues the pregnancy or when the fetus has a birth defect where it will not survive outside the womb–basically situations where the baby will almost certainly die and the mother very well might as well, so unless a person is arguing that abortions should never be performed even to save a woman’s life they’re irrelevant. I know you didn’t bring those up but I figured I’d mention that as they seem to be pretty controversial when they really shouldn’t be. Many people, myself included, don’t see the insentient clump of cells that is an embryo to be the same as a baby. It could be one day if allowed to grow and if none of the million little things that can go wrong happen, but it isn’t a person yet, just like a fertilized egg not implanting isn’t the same as a baby dying of SIDS. I love babies and would not support killing them for any reason, and I wouldn’t even support late term abortions when the unborn child is viable or very nearly so outside the womb if they were done just because the mother didn’t want it anymore (again, that doesn’t happen), but I don’t have a problem with abortion and most pro-choice people I know feel the same way.
If you’re against abortion, then rather than pushing to make it illegal (which doesn’t work, they still happen it’s just the women frequently die as well), you should follow the examples of countries with low abortion rates and work to make pregnancy and parenthood reasonable for single parents and people with low incomes. That means, push for universal health care so they can get the care for themselves and their children they need, increased benefits and a living wage (ever tried to support kids on $7 an hour?) so they can live a decent life and actually parent their children combined with increasing programs to get single or low-income parents real job training so they can eventually make a decent wage on their own, requiring employers to provide paid maternity leave at all jobs, removing the social stigma on unmarried mothers which can be very severe in some parts of the country, increasing access to birth control (and making it affordable) and education about it (that means no abstinence only!) so that women don’t get pregnant accidentally in the first place in most cases…that would be a good start. In other words, things that most pro-choice people support, and ironically most pro-life people seem to be against. Seriously, this has been studied and tried and it works.
Sorry for the short novel, but you seem fairly uninformed about the pro-choice stance so I figured I’d explain it.
more people have been burdened by abortions then they have by pregnancies.
Sorry, AK, but I cannot “think of it like organ donation”, and am frankly surprised that you would actually compare the two!!! I think likening an abortion to an organ donation might be closer to the mark, though we are still talking about a human life here, and not just an organ of the body. Abortion has many risks, and is hard on a woman, both physicaly and emotionally. Pregnancy, on the other hand, is a perfectly natural process. Certainly it has it’s risks as well, but it is what a woman’s uterus and body were designed for. And that’s my two cents on the matter.
Nicholaili,
I disagree when you say that no one should feel ashamed ever. Shame is a gift to guide us in what is right or wrong. Everyone should have healthy shame for things that they have done that are not right. I believe that abortion is the taking of a human life and, like anyone else who takes a human life unjustly so mothers who abort their children should have a healthy shame. This is not putting them down in any way, this is simply stating that people should react to their decisions. It’s okay to be ashamed of things you’ve done in the past and I think it puts a heavy burden on women when you tell them that these feelings of shame are wrong or unnatural.
I agree. Although I think that there are women out there that feel relief above all after an abortion, there are women out there that do have an abortion and then feel ashamed. There is nothin unnatural or bad of her about this, in either case. The point is that measures should be taken so that someone like my sister, a diabetic who has a very tiny body and could very well die during child birth or even the third trimester, or suffer seriosu health damages afterwords, should not have to feel ashamed for going through with a medical procedure. Nor should a teenager, who was raped or otherwise coerced to have sex or for whatever reason, feel ashamed to have an abortion. What ever life she has lead or whatever he reasons were for having an abortion, such as my Jewish friend (I’ll call her D for her anonymity) who was conflicted because her faith teaches her that sexuality and “fornification” lead to consequences that one should have to deal with no matter what. Needless to say, this messes a woman up pretty bad when she is faced with the decision. Luckily, since then, there has been a Rabbi that helps with feelings of guilt and inner conflict. Although a person is not bad for feeling shame, and should not be chastised for those feelings, I also agree that there should be programs and therapists and doctors who help women during these times, and to take preventive measures by talking to the woman to help her make the choice she is most comfortable with, because no woman SHOULD feel ashamed. I can not imagine what I would do if the several loved ones I know who have had abortions still felt ashamed to this day, that’s just not fair.
good point! Although this is an restatement of the obvious, (Another body -notjust her body), its verbage I dind’t have tell now. THANKS
It’s my understanding that legally the child is considered the mother’s “property”, which is why she is allowed to dispose of it. Hence, the relationship to slavery, where humans were considered property to be bought and sold by their owners. But even then, I don’t think they were allowed to kill their slaves, but maybe they were.
Sadly, people don’t seem to understand that, while very serious, and life changing, this show is not real! These are people acting out a story that is being shaped by the viewers. NOT real people who are pregnant, who are going to keep or kill their child depending on how many people text yes or no to 86753.
This is a serious issue that women need to know about. They need to know their rights, their options, and most importantly, they need to know that no matter their decision, they should never feel ashamed. EVER.
Hopeully more people will start using (better) birth control and less abortions will have to happen, but regardless, it is “her” body. She and she alone should decide what happens to it.
I don’t wish this decision on anyone, but to anyone who ever has to go through it…. good luck <3
If it was really just ‘her’ body, as you say, there would be no reason for an abortion, would there? The main ‘problem’ is that there is another body growing inside her body.
I’m sure if you watch Discovery Health, you found it perfectly fine for doctors to remove a girls twin from her so she’d survive….
That “parasitic twin” was a person too…. and NOBODY complained when she was killed. It had a face. A partial body. It cried when the “healthy” twin was asleep. It was a human being, out of the womb. Months old. It was murdered. I say “it” because they never named her. A fetus of three or four months can not survive outside of the womb unless hooked up to technology. This child survived until the parents had it cut off of their other child. I’ll say it again. Noone complained.
Think about that a while.
I never watched that. Strange situation. How do you know no one complained? So, either they both die, or one is “removed” so the other can live? I don’t think this show is about situations like that. Surely you can separate a situation where two people are doomed to death, or it is possible to save one, from the situations most people face, like on this show.
My above comment was simply to point out the fact that the only reason people consider abortion is precisely because there is another body growing inside the woman. We have to start the discussion based on facts, not fiction. I think many pro-choice people just want everyone to forget about the baby and only think about the mom. Pro-life people can’t see it that way at all.
To Kris (7:32 pm).
I don’t think I understant. So it’s okay to save a life when it is one baby who would survive if another one was killed, but it is wrong to kill a baby to save a mother/woman’s life? I think Nicholaii makes a great point. Noone complains when something is done for the sake of the baby, but women are undervalued in comparison. If a woman dies during childbirth, it is sad, but people rejoice the new life. If a child is aborted to save the woman’s life, she is shunned rather than having HER LIFE celebrated.
I think babies are a wonderful gift to the world, but a woman has the right to live too! And more importantly, she has the right to control whether or not she reproduces in her life. Childbirth is extremely painful, no law should dictate whether a woman goes the whole 9 yards or not.
(My apologies, not a story, but I feel it is sad that people are making these arguements, especially considering they probably wouldn’t make them if people honestly HAD heard all the arguements made about abortion… either than or they have a problem with an emancipated woman).
At best it’s a matter of competing rights. Otherwise, there’s be no debate. Who has the right to do what? Which right trumps which? Is it really up to the government to decide?
That’s why there is a pro-life group called ‘Right to Life’. In our constitution we are give the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In an abortion, a child with no voice in the matter loses his/her right to life.
And the government does decide our rights. For instance, aside from abortion, and I suppose removing a brain dead person from life support, no one in this country has the right to take another person’s life (outside of a law enforcement situation or self defense).
And the government has made the abortion debate about property rights. Legally, the unborn baby is considered the property of the mother, and she has been given the right of life and death over her child. Right?
Umm, reading some of these posts is almost surreal. Childbirth is painful, of course, but the pain is not so terrible as to kill someone. We live in a society of instant gratification without consequences. If we teach our children that there are consequences to their actions (ex. sex=babies) possibly the lesson may stick.
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