Law and Order discusses abortion
A recent episode of Law and Order has apparently provoked quite the controversy amongst the pro-abortion movement.
In the episode, Detectives Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) are investigating the murder of Dr Walter Benning, an abortion doctor killed while attending his church.
Dr Benning is clearly a stand-in for Dr George Tiller, who was murdered earlier this year while attending his own church.
Eventually, they identify Wayne Grogan (PJ Sosko) as their suspect. Grogan is defended by Roger Jenkins (Richard Thomas), who also acts as the legal advisor for a Crisis Pregnancy Centre.
He defends Grogan with a justification defense. They argue that, as Grogan was -- in his own mind, at least -- acting in defense of a single viable unborn child set to be born with a medical condition that would render her skin fragile, although she could survive the condition.
Based on the survivability of the condition, the judge in the case allows Grogan and Jenkins to present their justification defense.
The battle lines over the case are clearly drawn between the characters. Bernard is fervently anti-abortion, Lupo is pro-abortion. Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) is anti-abortion, and Assistant District Attorney Conny Rubirose (Alana De La Garza) is stridently pro-abortion.
Despite the fact that both Bernard and McCoy oppose abortion, they pursue Dr Bennet's murderer to the fullest extent of their ability. McCoy even helps suppress knowledge that Dr Benning had apparently finished an abortion after a child was born live during a partial-birth abortion.
Oddly enough it's Rubirose, who is so strongly in favour of legalized abortion that she refers to the anti-abortion movement as "anti-choice", who discloses the matter to the defense.
While the pro-abortion movement is decrying the episode as presenting "almost every deranged anti-abortion talking point can be found in the episode — comparing anti-choicers to the civil rights movement — with little or no pro-choice rebuttal," they're overlooking the fact that virtually every argument of the pro-abortion movement is presented.
Numerous women in the episode note that seeking an abortion is the most difficult decision they will ever face, and many women display the emotional distress that many women feel after the fact. Even witnesses on the stand who oppose abortion agree that doctors such as Dr Benning provide a necessary medical service for the women who need it.
In the end, Grogan is quite rightly convicted. Even if Dr Benning was performing illegal abortions, Grogan's act was still an act of terrorism, and had to be treated accordingly.
What individuals like JJ are really outraged about isn't that the anti-abortion case was presented without pro-aboriton rebuttal, but rather that it was presented at all.
It's one thing for pro-abortion protesters to show up at an anti-abortion speech and disrupt the event so that the presenter cannot speak. It's entirely another for the pro-abortion movement to attempt to barge into the living rooms of every home watching Law and Order and prevent them from watching the show because it presents sides of the abortion debate that they don't want to be heard.
They can accomplish one of these things -- they cannot accomplish the other, and it seems to positively embitter them that the anti-abortion message has (although not unopposed within the episode itself) found a medium that they cannot silence.
(Although the producers of Law and Order may want to watch out for this lunatic sitting behind them in church.)
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