Over the weekend, Nixon posed in a boat wearing a red cap that read: ‘Make Abortion Great Again.’
Season three of the television series And Just Like That (a sequel to Sex in the City) features a lesbian tryst between Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda and a character played by Rosie O’Donnell.
Warning: There are spoiler alerts in this post.
Miranda, a Human Rights Watch lawyer, hooks up with Mary (O’Donnell) at the end of a night of striking out at a lesbian singles bar. Mary is an out-of-towner, from the Winnipeg area. She’s in Manhattan for the World Conference for the Compassion of the Unhoused. She’s seemingly on the shy end — if you don’t count the fact that she invited a stranger to her hotel room for the night. By morning light, we learn that not only is her night with Miranda her first sexual experience, but Mary just happens to be a Catholic nun — causing Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw to dub her “the Virgin Mary.”
When Sr. Mary keeps texting Miranda, inviting her to tourist spots throughout the week, Miranda worries she made a nun fall in love with her. Sr. Mary did, after all, describe their night together as “electric.” O’Donnell’s character, however, just after seeing Wicked on Broadway, explains that she is “married to God” and has no intention of breaking that commitment beyond that one night of exploring her sexuality.
And Just Like That has been praised for its portrayals of women and aging. Nixon’s character Miranda doesn’t appear to require too much acting on the actress’s part. A loud-and-proud lesbian, she unsuccessfully ran against Andrew Cuomo in his gubernatorial days. She has let us know that most of the young people in her life appear to be trans — including her own child. At a New York City Democratic Socialists of America rally earlier this year, Nixon said:
I’m here as a longtime New Yorker, and I’m here as a person who loves my city and my state. Most importantly, I am here today as the mother of a proud trans man. I am here today as the aunt of a proud trans man. My best friend’s kid is trans, and my kid’s best friend is trans.
My wife and I, our lives are filled with the most amazing, beautiful, brave trans people, young and old, but especially young.
And just this past weekend, we saw Nixon on her Instagram account lounging in a boat on the water with a MAGA-like cap that declared: “Make Abortion Great Again.”
Leave aside the question of why a lesbian, and one beyond childbearing age, needs abortion. (I’m reminded of speaking on a panel at the Lincoln Center once and having an elderly secular Jewish woman come up to me and tell me to leave my rosaries off her ovaries — it turned out that her ex-husband was a National Review reader; our conversation got better.) Even some of the commenters on Nixon’s post recoiled at the “Great” business. There is nothing great about abortion — most women who have had abortions, who are not invested in making an ideological point, will tell you as much. Remember when even the Clintons — Bill and Hillary, both — talked about wanting abortion to be rare? Most pro-choicers aren’t waking up in the morning wanting to expand abortion in America or shouting their abortions. Abortion is miserable. Even when it’s viewed as a necessary evil, including among people who support it as a last resort, it’s seen as unfortunate, tragic, or, yes, even actually evil.
But a woman wearing a “Make Abortion Great Again” cap wants abortion to be available as birth control. That’s also the attitude of the British singer Lily Allen, who recently admitted she doesn’t know how many abortions she’s had. It’s an obnoxiously callous, absolutist approach to abortion that requires it on demand, with no need for justifications: abortion for any reason, any time.
As a relatively small cultural matter, when abortion came up on the original Sex in the City back in the day, there was a somberness to the discussion. And Just Like That, on the other hand, is so beyond parody in some respects it could have easily had Rosie O’Donnell’s Sr. Mary wearing Cynthia Nixon’s faux freedom cap in the “ladies’ bar.”
And just like that, at the end of the episode Rosie’s nun goes back to Canada. Perhaps if Donald Trump figures out a way to conquer Canada, Miranda will leave her BBC-producer girlfriend and get back with Sr. Mary to make abortion great again — when in reality it wasn’t even great on arguably the most promiscuous series on TV, Sex in the City.
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