I thought they did a very good job handling abortion on “Private Practice” last night. Usually on TV shows the pro-life position is written as a straw man that can easily be knocked down but the “Private Practice” writers looked at it from the aspect of a fertility doctor who puts a high value on life who has to deal with the fact that an abortion was going to take place in her practice for the first time even though she’s against it (she’s overruled by the doctor running the practice). She understands that life begins at conception because she sees it every time she fertilizes an egg. It’s reasonable for her to be against abortions because they devalue the life that she values so highly. At the end of the episode when she says that a baby died there today, you can understand her pain because you know that she works so hard to facilitate life, not destroy it.
And what made it even better was that they didn’t bring in the religious aspect at all, there are non-religious reasons for valuing life and I think this episode demonstrates that. She’s Catholic and was probably against it for religious reasons as well but that aspect wasn’t brought out that much in the episode (only one mention of God in passing).
If you missed it, you can watch it here. You don’t have to know too much about the show to watch the episode.