Several years ago, a dialogue like this one, from the episode “One Day, One Room,” arguably would not have taken place on television. The pro-choice view would have been most likely taken for granted, as it was when my generation was growing up. From Maude in the seventies to Everwood in the first part of this decade, abortion on TV was something that just happened without anyone having the right to sit in judgment. Having an abortion might have been rare on TV, but arguing against one—or even saying so much as “True. It’s a life”—was seen as insensitive at best. Unblinking honesty about abortion, from either side of the debate, was simply not in good taste.

But meanwhile, a lot was happening offscreen. Ultrasound technology was developing in leaps and bounds and becoming more widely available. The first “baby pictures” posted on a refrigerator were often fuzzy images of little black and white blobs with vaguely visible heads, torsos, and limbs. And then the images became less and less fuzzy and more and more like babies, the body parts sharper and clearer. The pro-life movement, finding this technology especially effective in reaching abortion-minded women—and more effective with the general public than the pictures of tiny burned and scarred corpses that had stirred such anger against the movement—quickly latched onto it.

Science had always played an ill-defined, even confusing role in the abortion debate. While the pro-lifers appealed to science with arguments about the early development of fetal brain waves and heartbeats, it was true that, as House observed, those who made such arguments were more often than not coming from a religious point of view. And those who ignored it tended to be those who, like House, saw science as the be-all and end-all of existence and made no room for religion.

Now, the very scientific worldview on which they relied was turning the tables on them.

By 1995, staunchly pro-abortion feminist Naomi Wolf would shock pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike when she wrote in The New Republic, “Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die. But it is never right or necessary to minimize the value of the lives involved or the sacrifice incurred in letting them go. Only if we uphold abortion rights within a matrix of individual conscience, atonement and responsibility can we both correct the logical and ethical absurdity in our position and consolidate the support of the center.”

In one breath, Wolf was arguing that the fetus is indeed a human life and that we must recognize it as such to be able to speak about abortion with the honesty the subject requires; in the next, she was still insisting that there are certain circumstances under which it is necessary, even right, to take that life.

Wolf’s ideal solution—to keep abortion legal while acknowledging the humanity of the fetus, and encouraging post-abortive women to deal with their grief openly through personal “acts of redemption”—was unconvincing to either side. But her article was an important milestone nonetheless. It showed the straits in which the pro-choice movement found itself. With the evidence for the truth that they had denied or ignored—the fact that the entity in the womb is indeed a child—now glaringly obvious, they were forced to switch tactics. But how could they bring themselves to do this when the tactics to which they were being driven, as outlined by Wolf, could hardly be called appealing?

It’s a question that they have not yet been able to answer. And the ambiguity and precariousness of their position are making themselves felt in the most surprising places.
THE POWER OF AN IMAGE
Viewers of House were deeply divided over “One Day, One Room,” in which the patient Eve is allowed to make strong arguments against abortion, but still ends up having an abortion after facing and talking out her own pain over the rape she experienced. While some pro-lifers appreciated the honest and thorough discussion of abortion, in which House speaks very much in the Naomi Wolf vein and, along with Eve, lays the issue out in all its uncomfortable clarity for inspection, others were put off by what they saw as a cop-out of an ending.

Reaction to “Fetal Position,” airing several weeks later, was quite different. At the climactic moment of the episode, the doctor and his team are performing fetal surgery to save the life of both their patient, Emma—who has refused to abort—and her child. House makes a cut in the mother’s uterus. And then, as he continues to work, a tiny hand emerges from the opening and grasps his finger. For just a moment, all activity halts as the doctor stares, mesmerized, at their joined hands.

Then, being House, he tries to blow off the moment with a quip: “Sorry. Just realized I forgot to TiVo Alien.”

But an impression has been made. Jump forward a scene or two. Emma, her life and pregnancy saved, thanks House for everything. House pauses on his way to the door and answers, “Don’t thank me. I would have killed the kid.” At least for now, the word fetus has gone missing from his vocabulary. The episode ends with House staring at his fingers where “the kid” touched them, rubbing them slowly together—and then a flash-forward several months to Emma picking up her healthy baby boy from his bassinet.

As many will remember, the scene from the TV show was directly based on a real-life operating-room incident—one so powerful that a picture of it was shown all around the world, and not one but two TV shows ended up borrowing from it (the comedy Scrubs aired a similar scene this season). In House’s case, the scene was especially poignant, as the atheist, pro-abortion doctor found himself literally shaking hands with the being whose existence he had thought possessed no particular value just moments before.

Why does all this matter? Why spend time rehashing the way the abortion debate plays out on a TV show? Because TV is not just a mirror to society, but also a shaper of it. Just as we saw early portrayals of the pro-choice movement reflecting that movement’s own self-righteousness back to it, and encouraging more of the same, we are now seeing TV reflect the shift in the debate. From House and Scrubs to CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under—all popular, mainstream primetime shows with apparently little religious influence—TV is dragging the issue it once glossed over out into the open. After HBO’s Six Feet Under aired some scenes that at least suggested a fetus might be a human being with a soul, Radley Balko wrote in National Review Online, “Again, the writers leave it to us to decide what to ultimately make of the scene. . . . That we’re even offered the opportunity to make such a decision—that the concept that aborted fetuses might have become real kids with bodies, voices, and opinions was ever delivered to us—is a welcome but aberrant gift from Hollywood.”

But it is becoming less and less aberrant. And people are watching. Our blog, The Point, here at BreakPoint, was collecting comments like these:

“Wow. Just, wow. . . . I am just in awe. . . . It’s nice to finally see a show willing to have this discussion; to utilize creativity to show this story rather than just tell it through lengthy diatribes and talking points.” (“Taj,” owner of the blog Quadrivium)

“Kudos to the producers for tackling a controversial subject with class. This was without a doubt one of the most thought-provoking dramas I’ve seen in a while.” (Tom Parsons)

And Douglas Minson of Family Research Council’s Witherspoon Fellowship wrote in an e-mail, “House’s disregard for the baby was more than matched by the assertion of humanity. In fact, it made the contrast that much more stark and all the more prepared us to see it.”

These were from pro-life viewers, but the really astonishing thing was that pro-choicers were by and large in accord. A reader of the message boards at Fox’s House website immediately after “Fetal Position” aired would have noticed something fascinating happening. “One Day, One Room” had inspired fights between pro-life and pro-choice viewers, with some pro-choicers angry that pro-lifers were daring to use the episode to make political points. “Fetal Position,” on the contrary, seemed to draw everyone together in marveling over the power of the moment between House and the unborn child. This time, when one pro-choice viewer raised objections to the portrayal, others on that person’s own side promptly shot the person down.

It seems that one picture really is equal to—or stronger than—a thousand words.

House and the other shows matter because, if only for the sake of art, they are honestly reflecting the changing face of abortion in our society. And they can show, in a way that all the debates in the world cannot, exactly what that face—or in this particular case, a hand—looks like. Like ultrasound images, TV shows have the power to create moments that linger in people’s minds long after political speeches have faded.

Perhaps, after all, the pro-life movement will win the battle for the unborn by capturing not the government, but the culture—by turning people’s very hearts against abortion. That we should be aided in this effort by Hollywood, of all communities, is a proof of the greatness and grace of God that even Dr. House would find hard to refute.

From July Breakpoint WorldView Magazine – Gina R. Dalfonzo is a writer for BreakPoint and the editor of The Point blog. She is also a graduate student at George Mason University and an occasional contributor to the online publications Boundless and National Review Online.