‘Power’ loss: TV show protests Georgia abortion law by leaving U.S. state

X Facebook Email Flipboard Pinterest Print Reddit

By Kate Ryan

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – “The Power”, an upcoming TV series produced by online retail and entertainment giant Amazon, will no longer film in Georgia, following the state’s near ban on abortion that was signed into law earlier this month, director Reed Morano said.

Morano, who won an Emmy Award for her work directing “The Handmaid’s Tale” – a TV show set in a dystopian world where women’s bodies are under strict male control – is now directing a series in which women are the dominant gender.

“It felt wrong for us to go ahead and make our show and take money/tax credit from a state that is taking this stance on the abortion issue,” Morano wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.

“The Power,” an adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s science fiction novel, follows teenage girls who discover they can electrocute people with their hands and use their abilities to hurt aggressive men and shift power dynamics between genders.

Amazon did not immediately comment on the move.

Other production companies, including David Simon’s Blown Deadline, creator of TV show “The Wire”, announced they also would no longer work in the state.

Georgia’s law bans abortion after a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks, before a woman may be aware she is pregnant.

Abortion foes say the bills are intended to draw legal challenges, in hopes that a case will land before the U.S. Supreme Court.

There, a majority of conservative judges could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

“I realize that some may challenge it in the court of law, but our job is to do what is right, not what is easy,” Governor Brian Kemp said when he signed the bill into law.

“We will not back down.”

The film industry in Georgia employs nearly 100,000 people and generated billions of dollars for the state in 2018, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

(Reporting by Kate Ryan, Editing by Jason Fields ((Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)