‘The View’: The Abortion Subplot of ‘Dirty Dancing’ Comes Up In Light Of That SCOTUS Leak

Actress Jennifer Grey joined the panel on The View today, and while much of the conversation revolved around her new book, Out of the Corner: A Memoir, and anecdotes about her nose job and youthful fling with Johnny Depp, Twitter was more interested in the fact that Grey’s most famous film, Dirty Dancing, contained an abortion. When Dirty Dancing‘s abortion scene was mentioned on The View and Grey was asked her opinion on the news that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe V. Wade, Grey said that she’s “horrified that this is really on the table again,” adding, “If you don’t want to have an abortion, don’t have one. Just don’t have one. Don’t take away the choice.”

Everyone who has seen film remembers the iconic moments like Baby (Grey) receiving dance lessons with Johnny (Patrick Swayze), dancing on a log and mastering the lift. But why was Baby, a college-bound teenager on summer vacation with her parents, even learning to dance? Because the professional dancer at the resort, Penny, played by Cynthia Rhodes, needed time to recover from a botched abortion. This is a fact that seems to be blowing some people’s minds on Twitter today.

The film, which took place in 1963 a decade before Roe V. Wade was legalized, has taken on a much more politicized role today now that people are discussing Roe V. Wade. While the word abortion is never actually used in the film, Penny gets pregnant by waiter Robbie and it is implied that in order to keep her job she needs to “take care of it.” The procedure is vividly described when Penny returns in a state of shock, and it is revealed that the abortion was performed by a doctor with “a dirty knife and a folding table.”

Dirty Dancing screenwriter Eleanor Bergman explained in a 2017 interview that despite some studio pushback, she “made it very clear that we would leave in what is, for me, very purple language: references to dirty knives, a folding table, hearing Penny screaming in the hallway. I had a doctor on set to make sure [the description of the illegal abortion] was right. The reason I put that language in there was because I felt that ― even with it being a coat hanger abortion ― a whole generation of young people, and women especially… wouldn’t understand what [the illegal abortion] was.”

Bergman’s logic was oddly prescient given the nature of today’s news, and she explained in the interview that she realizes the film’s abortion theme has been embraced in the years since it’s release. Despite some people on Twitter never even realizing the abortion was in there, there are plenty who have, and who are discussing its importance today.

And you thought the movie was just about a girl who carried a watermelon.