Showrunners send abortion-protection letters to Hollywood execs

Recently, more than 400 TV creators and showrunners—all of them women (including Shonda Rhimes, Issa Rae, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Natasha Lyonne and Ava DuVernay)—sent letters to top executives at Hollywood studios demanding that specific safety protocols be put in place for pregnant employees in states where abortion has been outlawed, or soon will be, Variety noted.

Now, letters of support signed by 594 men—including J.J. Abrams, Jordan Peele, Greg Berlanti, Donald Glover, Aaron Sorkin, David E. Kelley, Taika Waititi and Ryan Murphy—have been sent to the same companies.

The text of the letter is short, simply saying the undersigned stand with their “female, trans & non-binary showrunner colleagues in demanding a response from our employers regarding the imminent crisis” at hand. It was delivered by replying-all to the first letter, and was sent to Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Apple, NBC Universal, Amazon, Lionsgate and AMC.

The letters have deemed the issue an “emergency” for employees in states such as Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, which have or soon will have anti-abortion laws on the books after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The full article is at http://variety.com/2022/tv/news/male-tv-creators-writers-showrunners-abortion-letter-safety-protocols-1235329886/.