April 17, 2016

TV Shows Its Conservative Side on Abortion Issue

“Maybe the makers of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ don’t watch ‘Meet the Press.’”

Maybe the makers of “The Big Bang Theory” don’t watch “Meet the Press.”

Hillary Clinton got into a bit of trouble earlier this month when she told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd that “the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”

Clinton was merely noting that some restrictions on abortions are permitted under the law. But the real kerfuffle was over the idea that a person can exist in America without any rights — or that fetuses are people at all. The International Planned Parenthood Federation cautions activists to avoid the “p” word. It’s not a person until it’s born or, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) once suggested, until you bring it home from the hospital. Until then, it’s a fetus or “uterine contents.” Planned Parenthood advises that activists don’t say “abort a child,” preferring “terminate a pregnancy” or some such.

Clinton is rarely that blunt. She usually likes to use the term “women’s health.” That way she can claim that people who are against abortion-on-demand are against “women’s health.”

Anyway, it was hardly a big controversy — more like a Twitter dust-up. That’s probably why the writers of the hit CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” missed it.

One of the characters, Bernadette, recently got pregnant. In the episode that aired April 7, Bernadette, her husband Howard and their friend Rajesh use a home ultrasound kit. When they hear the unborn baby’s heartbeat, Rajesh exclaims, “You guys made a person!”

Howard replies, “We did!”

This highlights a phenomenon I’ve written a lot about: On some issues, Hollywood can be downright right-wing. From the value of guns in “The Walking Dead” to the honor of police in countless dramas to the importance of family in most sitcoms, there is a lot more conservatism, broadly understood, on TV than conservatives or liberals ever notice.

And so it is with abortion. With the exception of “Maude,” an awful left-wing 1970s TV show (along with some “edgy” HBO series), there have been no major sitcoms in which a character has had an abortion.

Why? Well, one reason is abortions aren’t funny. There’s no reason to write a storyline in which a character gets pregnant only to decide later not have a baby. That’s not a punch line, it’s a tragedy. Even the very liberal Mindy Kaling, star and producer of “The Mindy Project,” says the show won’t touch the issue of abortion — and Kaling plays a gynecologist!

Maybe you could write a funny scene where a woman goes to the doctor to get a mammogram or deals with some other aspect of “women’s health.” I don’t know. But you really can’t write a knee-slapper about a woman deliberately terminating an unborn person’s life.

Sometimes the pregnant character agonizes about her choice (and occasionally there’s a miscarriage), but the moment Rachel from “Friends” or Murphy Brown or Bernadette chooses to keep it, the “it” stops being an it, and becomes a he or she.

Emotionally, that’s how it works for many, perhaps most, people. When a woman wants to keep her baby, it becomes a baby long before it’s born. No father speaks to a belly full of “uterine contents,” and no mother thumbs through a book of baby names for a fetus she is going to dispose of anyway.

That’s how a lot of public policy works, too. Under federal law and many state laws, if you murder a pregnant woman, you can be charged with two homicides.

The White House is asking for a lot of money to fight the Zika virus. “I think Democrats and Republicans in Congress are interested in making sure that pregnant women and unborn children in this country can be properly protected,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in February.

Unborn children? Yes, both parties want to protect unborn children from disease-carrying mosquitoes. But that bipartisanship falls apart when it comes to Planned Parenthood.

This emotional parsing is understandable. The problem is that emotion isn’t the best foundation for law. In the past, emotion led lots of Americans to think blacks weren’t persons either. Logic, science and, finally, moral reasoning said otherwise. If over here an unborn child is a person but over there it isn’t, and the only thing distinguishing the two is someone’s feelings, we’ve got a problem. And it’s not just a problem of language.

© 2016 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.