A Grey’s Anatomy star was deeply affected by one storyline that has stayed with her long after it was filmed.
Camilla Luddington plays Dr. Josephine “Jo” Wilson in the medical drama on ABC, which first aired in 2005 and is now in its 21st season.
She opened up on one of her favorite storylines to film after getting a question from a fan during her podcast Call It What It Is, which she co-hosts with another Grey’s Anatomy star, Jessica Capshaw. Capshaw played pediatric surgeon Arizona Robbins for 11 seasons until 2018.
“I do have to say that Jo performed a D&C, so an abortion, on the show that and we did it step by step and we talked through it, and I thought it was a very important storyline, especially right now,” she said on Thursday’s episode.
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A dilation and curettage (D&C) is a medical procedure used to clear the uterine lining, often after a miscarriage or abortion.
Abortion became a central issue in the November presidential election with one expert warning President-elect Donald Trump could “eliminate” access to abortion without the approval of Congress.
Kate Shaw, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, said one way Trump could clamp down on abortion once he was in office was by invoking the Comstock Act, a 19th-century “anti-vice” law enacted to prohibit the mailing of any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used in an abortion.
“If you decided that the pills and devices used in abortions are essentially the kinds of immoral goods or devices that this, again, Victorian-era statute prohibits sending through the mails, then they might try to target people—again, physicians, providers, drug manufacturers—under the Comstock Act,” Shaw said during a November issue of the podcast Stay Tuned With Preet.
Luddington and Capshaw regularly open up about their experiences working on Grey’s Anatomy, including recently when the former admitted feeling “traumatized” from a plane crash storyline.
In the final two episodes of season eight, a plane carrying a group of characters to assist with the surgery of conjoined twins at a hospital in Boise crashed and killed Dr. Mark Sloane (Eric Dane).
“When I started the show, I heard that, um, because you had just left, right? We don’t like to talk about the plane crash episode because everyone’s traumatized,” Luddington said on a December 9 episode of their podcast.
“But I came on after and I thought, ‘This is a crazy way to come on because we’re losing such iconic characters from the show, this is a little bit scary.’ And everybody talked about how truly incredible you were as a cast member.
“And we’re talking about like—crew always know, crew on TV shows, your reputation really sits with the crew because they see you every day. Not every actor sees you every day but the cameraman does, the makeup artist. Everyone could not say [….] they were just like, in love with you, and so sad you were leaving.”
