I just watched an episode of another one of my favorite TV shows- House (the episode was 3×17 if anyone cares).
The episode dealt with a pregnant woman whose fetus was killing her. Once the medical case was solved to realize the problem was in the fetus and not the woman’s body, House became adament that the best course of treatment was termination of the foetus. However, Dr. Cuddy would not permit that – the patient was a woman in her 40s who had repeatedly experienced miscarriages and fertility problems.
House accuses Cuddy of being unable to be objective because of her own fertility problems. In the end, however, Cuddy takes medical risks that House will not take, and the patient (and the foetus) survives.
There are a few interesting things in the episode. For one thing, fertility issues have been front and center on top TV dramas lately (see also Addison Montgomery on Grey’s Anatomy’s 2-hour special episode). It appears that fertility problems are becoming mainstream- a big enough social issue that they are showing up all over TV.
What was even more interesting to me personally than the fertility issues was how the episode portrayed the issue of abortion. House at the start of the episode pushes termination and refuses to call the foetus a “baby” (in contrast to both the patient herself and Cuddy). However, to fix the problem with the foetus, “open fetal surgery” had to be performed. During the surgery, the episode recreated one of the most well-known pro-life images: the “baby” reached its hand out of the uterus and gripped Dr. House’s finger.
To make matters worse, he became speechless as he watched the “baby” and had to be called back to focus on the surgery. After the procedure, he started calling the foetus a “baby” in conversations with Cuddy and the patient. Showing that transformation, and the pro-life image, rubbed me (as an ardent pro-choice advocate) the wrong way. I thought the produces/writers might be trying to make a political statement about abortion by showing House’s change of heart. Or they might be trying to make House more relatable, but to do that they chose to make him appear more pro-life.
Perhaps with the recent “partial-birth abortion” decision by the Supreme Court, pop culture is moving towards the right. The religious right has gained political and cultural capital in recent years, so perhaps pop culture is just catching up… either way, I don’t like it.
