AMC earned its reputation as a groundbreaking soap unafraid to tackle controversial issues when it decided to show television's first legal abortion less than a year after Roe v. Wade. Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) was a model who was married to Dr. Jeff Martin. When she became pregnant with Jeff's child, she grew concerned that the pregnancy would ruin her career. Before she even told her husband she was expecting, Erica had the pregnancy terminated. Amazingly, the show's ratings increased during this storyline, and it inspired several other soaps to write abortion-related storylines, though very few female characters to this day have actually had one. This fact shows how courageous AMC was to tell that story more than 35 years ago.
AMC earned its reputation as a groundbreaking soap unafraid to tackle controversial issues when it decided to show television's first legal abortion less than a year after Roe v. Wade. Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) was a model who was married to Dr. Jeff Martin. When she became pregnant with Jeff's child, she grew concerned that the pregnancy would ruin her career. Before she even told her husband she was expecting, Erica had the pregnancy terminated. Amazingly, the show's ratings increased during this storyline, and it inspired several other soaps to write abortion-related storylines, though very few female characters to this day have actually had one. This fact shows how courageous AMC was to tell that story more than 35 years ago.