It has now been nearly two weeks since 411 female, trans, and nonbinary television creators sent a letter to executives at major studios including Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery, urging them to establish clear health and safety policies for employees in anti-abortion states following the repeal of Roe v. Wade. The original letter demanded studios respond within ten days. Since then, nearly 600 male television writers signed their own letter supporting the demands for safe abortion access and care for pregnancy complications. Now, on August 10, nearly 400 directors added their own names to the cause, signing a statement of support backing the TV writers’ demands for safe, subsidized reproductive health-care access.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, signatories include Alex Gibney, Alice Wu, Barry Jenkins, Catherine Hardwicke, Gina Prince-Bythewood, James Ponsoldt, Joey Soloway, Judd Apatow, Karyn Kusama, Lena Dunham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marc Webb, Matthew A. Cherry, Melina Matsoukas, Morgan Neville, and Stephen Daldry.
“We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with our writer/creator colleagues in demanding a coordinated and timely response from our employers regarding the imminent workplace-safety crisis created by the overturning of Roe v. Wade,†their statement reads. “Abortion access doesn’t only affect people who can become pregnant. It affects us all.â€
Many television and streaming series such as Netflix’s Stranger Things and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead film in states like Georgia, which has some of the country’s highest maternal mortality rates and bans most abortions after six weeks. On August 3, California governor Gavin Newsom published an open letter to Hollywood encouraging film and TV employers to stop working in anti-reproductive health-care states including Georgia and Oklahoma.