LIFENEWS — Netflix’s Soundtrack is a charming musical telling the story of the interracial relationship between musician Sam (Paul James) and artist Eleanor “Nellie” (Callie Hernandez), partly through flashbacks. The show’s charm, however, is ruined by the character’s selfishness centered around an abortion.
The first hint the show gives about an abortion is at the end of episode 6, “Track 6: Joanna and Eleanor,” when Nellie has just found out she’s pregnant. It also conveniently comes at a time when she and Sam are at an off-point in their relationship. “Whatever you decide I will support you, because it will be your choice,” says her mother, Margot (Madeleine Stowe).
When Nellie says she has something to tell Sam in the car, whatever it is is interrupted by a terrible accident. Viewers may presume that Nellie was telling Sam about the pregnancy, but we discover that she’s already had the abortion when going through her medical history at the hospital, Margot mentions “she recently terminated a pregnancy, surgically last week.”
Nellie’s father, Frank (Campbell Scott), assuming that Sam surely must know, let’s the abortion slip, which is how Sam first hears of it. Not only has he gotten into a car accident, the mother of his child had an abortion without any of his input.
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What’s glaringly and completely absent from the show is any support for what Sam’s decision would have been. Any shock and disappointment Sam might be feeling is dismissed by his cousin Dante (Jahmil French) who visits him in the hospital.
