Much has been made of 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy depicting the first pregnancy storyline in American television. However, CBS censors deemed the word "pregnancy" to be too obscene for American audiences even in the context of married characters who also happened to be married in real life. CBS opted to go with the euphemism "Lucy is Enceinte" to avoid upsetting American sensibilities of the time.
My question is: why would pregnancy be considered obscene to the average American audience when pregnancy is generally considered (to the best of my knowledge) the least taboo and most celebrated aspect of reproduction. Especially when pregnancy occurs within the traditional confines of a marriage.
What need in American society was this censorship fulfilling?
Lucille Ball had already had one child but prior to filming season 1 of I Love Lucy (she was 6 months pregnant filming the unaired pilot but it wasn't shown until 1990). After the first season ended she was pregnant again, but CBS, Biow Agency (the ad group) and Philip Morris (the sponsor) insisted that the show could not show a pregnant woman on television.
This led to an extended argument with the creators of the show; Biow tried to offer a compromise of only doing one or two episodes.
Desi Arnaz (Lucille Ball's co-star) sent a letter to Alfred Lyons (chairmen of Philip Morris) that I Love Lucy was the number one show on television and explained they had previously had creative control, and that if they were going to tell them what not to do they also had to tell them what to do (and given a cigarette company was not filled with TV creatives, any negative consequences to ratings were their own).
Allegedly, this led to Lyons sending a private memo through the company
Don't ---- around with the Cuban!
although I'm unclear if the blank was filled in or not. All objections from Philip Morris stopped.
CBS still had the directive that the word "pregnant" couldn't be used, and the writer Jess Oppenheimer came up with the idea to have each of the "baby" scripts approved by a priest, a minister, and a rabbi, and the writers would remove anything that was objectionable. (This is not a regular protocol, although the 2016 movie Hail, Caesar! about the 1950s movie industry has a similar event in the plot, likely based on the I Love Lucy situation.)
This idea won the CBS executives over, who felt like this would be sufficient shielding for them offending anyone.
This led to a seven-script series starting with Lucy Is Enceinte, followed by Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable (*), and finishing with Lucy Goes to the Hospital, where Lucy Ricardo finally gives birth; it aired the same day Lucille Ball gave birth. (This was coordinated as she knew she was going to need a caesarean -- her first had to be for medical reasons, and the same reasons applied.) This led to an estimated 44 million viewers for the episode, beating the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower the same week (only 29 million viewers).
(*) Yes, the episode name contains the word pregnant! The name is not showing during the episode and in the episode itself there's a dialogue swap with the line "expectant women are unpredictable".
...
Let's step back just a little, to the 1930s; you can expect the CBS executives were in that frame of mind. From a 1937 handbook for film writers (applying in general, not just to CBS):
Pregnancy, or expected "blessed events," should never be discussed as such in screen stories. Most censor boards not only frown upon, but almost always delete any such references. Any direct or crude reference to pregnancy in films is considered out-of-place exactly as it would be in any normal society where children are present. It is entirely acceptable, of course, to refer to the baby that is expected, but any reference to conception, child-bearing, and child-birth is considered improper for public discussion.
Essentially, there was a strong enough avoidance of sex that the implication that sex had occurred was also to be avoided.
But, again this was guidelines carried from the 1930s: what about the real world of the 1950s? By this time the culture had evolved. If you recall the three clergymen from before, they not only had no issues with any of the scripts, they even commented on the "pregnant" word situation:
What's wrong with the word pregnant?
By the 1960s, the taboo was entirely dead: the word "pregnant" occurred in a wide variety of shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Virginian, The Defenders and Star Trek.
...
Ball, L. (1997) Love, Lucy. Penguin. (This is her autobiography.)
Oppenheimer, J. Oppenheimer, G. (1999). Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse University Press. (The most authoritative source about the show.)
Martin, O. (1937). Hollywood's movie commandments: a handbook for motion picture writers and reviewers. H. W. Wilson Company. (If you want to get into the CBS frame of mind.)
Sanders, C. Gilbert, T. (2011). Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Dey Street Books. (A solid biography written with the help of family members.)
Also: did this taboo extend outside of fiction and entertainment? Would people avoid saying the word in everyday life?