On Nov. 14, 1972, Maude Findlay, a 47-year-old woman living in suburban New York with her fourth husband found herself unexpectedly pregnant. It was a year before Roe vs. Wade was passed, and like many women in America, Maude wasn’t interested in having another child and found herself weighing an abortion. The dilemma played out over a two-episode arc of “Maude,” a hit CBS sitcom that was produced by Norman Lear, who was no stranger to taking on hot button issues in the “All in the Family” media empire he had built. But even Lear struggled to get this story on the air.
“We did the first part of the two abortion episode, and then we were told that we would not be filming the second half until we premiered. If our numbers were not good, we wouldn’t even film the other one,” remembers Adrienne Barbeau, who played Maude’s daughter Carol on the show. “There was a lot of pressure.”
When the episode did air, multiple stations in the South refused to air it. But the numbers were strong enough to convince CBS to let Lear wrap up the story. Maude ultimately opted to go through with the procedure, with abortion portrayed on the program as a safe medical option for women who didn’t want to have a baby. Lear could have had Maude suffer a miscarriage, but he ultimately decided that doing so would be a “cop out.”
