Prior to the airing of last Friday night’s Law & Order episode entitled “Dignity”, newsday.com presented it as providing an “intelligent hearing” on the late-term abortion debate. What can be determined after watching it however, is that the episode is rife with medical inaccuracies and anti-abortion propaganda. And the true experiences of women who face complex decisions of whether or not to continue pregnancies with serious abnormalities are severely undermined.
The episode began with the point blank shooting of Dr. Benning, a doctor that performed third trimester abortions, while he was praying with his wife in church. Regardless of Law & Order’s disclaimers to the contrary, this is a direct reference to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed while ushering in his church on May 31 of this year.
The dialogue of the officers who investigate the murder initially appears to reflect stereotypical pro-choice vs. anti-choice rhetoric, which seems to be the writers’ attempt at presenting a “balanced” viewpoint. But the recurring messages throughout the program are clearly anti-abortion biased.
More often these days when (it’s usually more like if) a female character in primetime contemplates abortion, she is portrayed as contemplating her own moral failure. And ultimately, she usually either continues her pregnancy or has a miscarriage – she will almost never have an abortion. More importantly, if she does cross that forbidden media barrier, she will never feel good about doing so. This is what we see here – in the character of a young woman who is denied her abortion because her father confided in a protester who ultimately murdered her doctor. In this young woman’s case, her fetus was diagnosed with a rare skin condition that is potentially fatal and requiring constant medical care. She is presented as a helpless and selfish woman for not wanting to care for a sick baby on her own, while her father is portrayed as a hero – willing to work 3 jobs and find the money to provide the round-the-clock medical care his daughter’s child would need.
The writers created an even less balanced plot by throwing in an unrealistic and medically inaccurate story of a doomed baby born alive in the process of an attempted abortion, who was then (according to the assistant D.A. on the show) murdered by the doctor. Thus the plot shifts away from blaming the anti-abortionist who murdered the doctor to placing blame on the doctor who was murdered, and suggesting that he deserved it. This throws the female assistant D.A. into confusion about her belief in the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The fact that the jury ended up convicting the man accused of murdering the doctor was completely lost in this extremely dark “Law and Order twist”.
So we are left with a message that the woman who decides to continue her pregnancy, go through labor, give birth and watch her baby die is noble and good, but the woman who ends her pregnancy when she realizes it will not have a viable life outside the womb is immoral and selfish.
There were so many opportunities for the writers to present the humane side of women faced with complicated pregnancies. But instead we see respected characters on a beloved TV series cast aspersions on women. This is deeply stigmatizing, even worse than how anti-abortion protesters shame women in front of clinics every day in this country. This show did nothing to enhance the complexity of depth of women’s true experiences and only added to the sensationalism and stigma that already exists for women facing these decisions.
NBC should be ashamed for dishonoring the memory of Dr. George Tiller, a man who embodied principles of goodness, kindness, respect, and faith; and for dishonoring the women he helped, whose values told them that the best way to honor themselves and to spare suffering to the doomed life they carried in pregnancy was to end that life. There was no dignity for either of them in this program.
Jennifer Boulanger, M.Ed., the Executive Director of the Allentown Women’s Center, an independent abortion and reproductive health care center in Pennsylvania and member of the Abortion Care Network.
If you want to make a complaint here is a place where you can lodge one.
I like this part most especially:
“More often these days when (it’s usually more like if) a female character in primetime contemplates abortion, she is portrayed as contemplating her own moral failure. And ultimately, she usually either continues her pregnancy or has a miscarriage – she will almost never have an abortion. More importantly, if she does cross that forbidden media barrier, she will never feel good about doing so.”
so true. SO TRUE.
Complaint sent to NBC.
I may be in the minority, but I actually liked this Law and Order episode. I’m a feminist to the bone and I actually worked for Planned Parenthood, but I also know several other feminists who are pro-Life and they are not anti-women in any way and would be pretty offended to be called so. Law and Order has done 3-4 episodes on abortion over the years. In almost all of them, the pro-life characters were murderers/hypocrites/sexists or all 3, so it’s about time the other side got their say. The doomed baby born alive is not inaccurate after all – I’ve heard of other cases where the fetus was expelled alive, and then disposed of.
I’m not disparaging women who have gone through the agonizing experience of wanting a child then deciding to abort due to health issues. However, I also personally know multiple cases where the woman aborted purely for non-health reasons (in 5 of them, they wanted boys and discovered late on that they were carrying girls. In one of them, she was getting a divorce and didn’t want to be a single mother. In another, she was hoping to use the pregnancy as leverage for her lover to leave his wife and he wouldn’t). Like it or not, the public tends to feel squeamish at getting rid of a late pregnancy for non-selfless reasons, especially when it involves a viable being. Europe tends to be more equal rights focused than the US, and 3rd trimester abortions are illegal in France, with extremely limited exceptions. And on the opposite end, we have the Netherlands, where parents are allowed to terminate up to 1 year post birth
Right on target, Jen. Hollywood and its descendants sugar-coat everything, especially Mom and apple pie. No hard choices for long, and never a bad outcome. You’ll never see them show the infants who have been dipped in boiling water or beaten with elecctric cords or burned with cigaretter, etc., that’s not who we Americans are, no way. At least not in public. Letter sent to NBC, thank you for speaking out.
“In this young woman’s case, her fetus was diagnosed with a rare skin condition that is potentially fatal and requiring constant medical care.”
Skin condition? I should the child was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome?
No one and I mean NO ONE decides to have a late term abortion for “convenience” reasons. Over half (60%)of women getting all abortions are already mothers. They have the moral capacity to make this decision. To disparage them is to disparage all mothers. You can’t have it both ways – sugarcoat motherhood and sing the joys of having babies if you are then going to demean these same women when they make the choice to have an abortion.
Note; I have the privilege and honor of knowing Jen Boulanger personally. She is a true champion of women.
Sterling95 said “I also personally know multiple cases where the woman aborted purely for non-health reasons (in 5 of them, they wanted boys and discovered late on that they were carrying girls…)
I call nonsense. This is such an awesome staw woman arguement – ‘oh those willy nilly ladies, suddenly deciding to get abortions in their third trimester.’ It’s hurtful to perpetuate what is clearly untrue. Third trimester abortions are very expensive and there are only a handful (at best) of doctors who perform it. So, it’s not exactly like women are strolling into PP in their 24th week and getting abortions.
Sterling95 said: “we have the Netherlands, where parents are allowed to terminate up to 1 year post birth”
Do you have source for this claim?
@akshelby: being Dutch, I can tell you that this is absolutely not true. Abortion is legal up to 21 weeks. Post-birth termination, if you can call it such a thing, is part of the euthanasia legislation, which is legal here, but under scrupulous review by a panel of doctors. Euthanasia of babies of that age is extremely rare, and happens only if the suffering of the child is unbearable.
Sterling is clearly trolling; I call bullshit on that classic “I know several women” after the protests-too-much feminist creds. If you’re so damned feminist, it should be apparent.
I cannot stand L&O, and haven’t been able to in a good long while. All the ‘twists’ are always about how evil those damned women are. My roomie loves it, but my roomie is starting to scare me, the way she laughs at rape and torture scenes in movies.
Re: Sterling_95… Where did you ever get the idea women in the Netherlands can “terminate up to 1 year post birth”??
From a friend in The Netherlands who is also a lawyer:
“No idea what she is talking about. Abortion is allowed until the foetus can survive outside the body of the mother. That is believed to be so 24 weeks after conception. In practice 22 weeks is where the doctors draw the line.I don’t understand how an abortion can be done postbirth. That is nonsense. Prior to the abortion the woman goes to see a doctor. She has to wait 6 days. Alternatives will be told to her. In the end it is the decision of the woman.”
There are so many false statements floating around the internet, it makes my blood pressure go up! In the end, it should be the woman and her doctor’s decision as to whether she should end the pregnancy.
Universal Healthcare is the true pro-life…
L –
I thought about drafting a cogent and well-thought out reply, but as you are not actually arguing but trolling, I won’t bother with that.
You are an ass, and you offend reality.
I got rid of the troll.