The character who becomes pregnant in "Dirty Dancing" is Penny, Johnny's friend and dance partner. After Penny's so-called boyfriend abandons her, Johnny's cousin lines up an illegal abortion — which goes horribly wrong. Baby must fetch her father, a doctor, to save Penny's life.
"We saw someone who was hemorrhaging," Grey told The Los Angeles Times. "We saw what happens to people without means — the haves and the have nots. I love that part of the storyline because it was really a feminist movie in a rom-com."
She explained to Entertainment Weekly that under the guise of being light and frothy, the movie very sneakily shone a spotlight on serious issues related to feminism, class, healthcare, and social justice. "Even though Penny was a white woman, she was a working-class white woman who did not have access to good healthcare," Grey said. "It's a feminist movie, but it's very stealth."
Right before "Dirty Dancing" was released, screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein was asked by producers to remove the illegal abortion from the storyline, to appease a potential sponsor who feared backlash. Bergstein described to Gender Across Borders that Penny's abortion was woven so tightly into the plot, that it couldn't be cut without the entire plot falling apart, so the abortion stayed. "Not many people talked about it, except that we got a very, very big feminist audience," she recalled.
