Netflix Silent as Calls for Boycott Over Georgia Abortion Law Grow

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Georgia State troopers keep watch as a crowd of protestors against HB 481 rally outside of the Georgia State Capitol building following its signing on May 7, 2019.

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On Tuesday, after weeks of suspense-less delay, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a six week abortion ban into law as he’d long promised. The bill, slated to go into effect in January 2020, includes an incendiary provision declaring “unborn children are a class of living, distinct person.” The impact of those words, as laid out by Mark Joseph Stern at Slate, is far-reaching: it would effectively criminalize — with penalties including life in prison and death — any woman who seeks an abortion or even one who miscarries in the state. That’s a staggering thought, considering that one in four women will have an abortion before the age of 45.

The implications are serious enough that the day Kemp signed the law, Wire co-creator David Simon, who runs Blown Deadline Productions, declared on Twitter that his production company would not consider the state as a location for any upcoming projects. “I can’t ask any female member of any film production with which I am involved to so marginalize themselves or compromise their inalienable authority over their own bodies. I must undertake production where the rights of all citizens remain intact,” Simon tweeted.

But, by and large, the outrage over Georgia’s law and the potential impact on women who live or work in the state has been surprisingly mute from the entertainment industry, which brought an estimated $2.7 billion to the state in 2018 while filming some 455 productions there.

The silence is particularly deafening from Netflix, which is currently filming more projects in the state than any other company, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. While some of its marquee talent — including actress Alyssa Milano and producer Mark Duplass — have called for a boycott of the state, the streaming behemoth has not commented on the law. A Netflix representative directed Rolling Stone to an anodyne statement from the MPAA, which said that it was “monitoring” the situation in Georgia.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/netflix-georgia-boycott-over-abortion-law-832632/