A Culture of Life in the Walking Dead

In the series’s most recent season, however, I was surprised to glimpse within this nihilistic landscape something of a pro-life consciousness. The first narrative thread is the revelation that one of the main characters, Maggie, is pregnant—and intentionally so. Glenn, Maggie’s husband, admits to another character, Abraham, that they weren’t using contraception; they’d “talked about it” and decided to leave themselves open to the possibility of pregnancy. Abraham is initially baffled, even disturbed. He’s having sex, too, but with a healthy dose of dystopian pessimism. He makes sure to double up on the condoms (which apparently remain readily accessible and reliable post-apocalypse) to ensure that his fleeting moment of pleasure has no lasting repercussions.