Misremembering Dr. Tiller: How Law & Order Got It Wrong

It's never a good idea to look to primetime television for a fair and accurate depiction of the abortion debate. Without fail, TV writers stretch the facts for dramatic effect, oversimplifying choices. Last Friday's Law & Order episode was no exception. The show's "balanced and thought-provoking" take on abortion -- based on the murder of Dr. George Tiller this past spring -- was both damagingly trite and dangerously wrong.

Salon writer Kate Harding got it right when she pointed out earlier this week, that the issue of abortion is not nearly as simple as the NBC show portrayed. The show's character, Dr. Benning, provides abortions later in pregnancy, like Dr. Tiller, and was shot in his church after surviving a prior shooting, also like Dr. Tiller. With that, the similarities end.

Enter instead a parade of caricatures: the pro-life character whose his own mother didn't want him and attempted to self-induce. The pro-choice female character who suddenly tosses out her lifelong beliefs and leans pro-life. And another doctor who provides abortions and ultimately reveals on the stand that he's a raving extremist. None of these narratives have anything to do with the lives of women. Nor do they remotely penetrate the everyday experiences of the doctors and clinic staff who provide abortion.

We recently conducted research investigating the challenges abortion providers face merely to do their jobs, chronicling the appalling circumstances in which providers operate, including regular death threats, dead animals being left at their front doors, break-ins at their homes and offices, and physical assaults by protesters. They live in fear of violence.

One doctor in Pennsylvania who has been extensively protested at his residences told us that he now takes an inordinate amount of precautions. He parks away from the clinic to prevent the tracking of his address through the motor vehicle registry. He has an unlisted phone number. He owns a bulletproof vest. He feels that he is being stalked, as he moves from town to town followed by protesters. He has notified the local police, but the authorities have said there is nothing that they can do as long as the protesters do not trespass or become violent.

Abortion providers face an ongoing barrage of restrictive laws that severely limit existing doctors' ability to exercise their profession and even provide services. These restrictions serve no medical purpose. And they run the gamut from the cruel -- forcing clinic staff to provide biased or misleading information to patients -- to the inane -- requiring clinics to make renovations such as higher ceilings or manicured bug-free lawns.

Dr. Tiller endured this legal, political, and physical intimidation and harassment for over two decades. Those actions included an assassination attempt in which he was shot five times, and his clinic was vandalized. He was also dragged into court numerous times on trumped-up allegations spurred on by anti-choice zealots. Each time, he was found innocent of any wrongdoing.

None of this reality was portrayed in the show. On Law & Order, no one questions the ludicrous accusation by a nurse that Dr. Benning killed a live baby following an accidental delivery, appearing to suggest that these actions are a common or acceptable medical practice. Yet the law is very clear that a delivered baby may not be injured, nor would any doctor do what Dr. Benning did.

By the same token, the stories of the fictional women patients in the "Law & Order" episode are simplistic, if not non-existent. We hear more from the father who doesn't want his daughter to get an abortion than from the daughter herself. And the sole female character who has had an abortion on the show slams her door in the face of a detective and refuses to answer any questions.

Rather than grapple with trying to portray the complicated decision of having an abortion later in pregnancy, the writers dodge it altogether in the name of drama. As an organization that represented Dr. Tiller's patients, we've heard women talk about the moment their doctors told them that their fetus has no chance of survival or the hours after the appointment when they're forced to envision watching their babies die after delivery.

One of our clients was pro-choice and her husband was pro-life. They learned that their fetus had massive amounts of water on the brain and would likely die before birth. Even if the baby beat the odds and survived, he would be in a vegetative state. As the husband explained it to us, "I was forced to re-examine, and truly understand my beliefs on abortion." His child "would never toss a ball, never go to school, never know his parents or have friends, never be able to do anything but breathe and digest food."

After seeking advice from their pastor, the couple chose abortion because it was "the compassionate thing to do--not for us--but for our son." Before all of this happened, the husband said he thought abortion was wrong except in very rare instances, such as if doctors were certain that a pregnant woman would die from childbirth. "I considered other cases to be very much in a grey area. Now we were in that grey area and my beliefs were being tested."

While no one expects a television drama to painstakingly relate the whole truth, it remains a sad commentary on the state of the abortion debate that a mainstream show like Law & Order could so badly distort the facts related to an actual, and quite recent, murder of a medical doctor.

As we have seen in our work with women and their families, a clear understanding of the complexities of these issues is all too often lacking in the policy debates that surround abortion. Yet such an understanding is essential - because breaking through all the noise to see the truth, as Dr. Tiller did, requires both compassion for women and their families and an unwavering respect for the choices they make.

 

 

Comments

[mooklyn]

To those who would say, "It's just work of fiction, Folks.":

By that logic, "Triumph of the Will" was just a movie and "Mein Kampf" was just a book.

However fictional the story is, it is still a real attempt by its creators to place a judgment and social value on a very real and current event. Furthermore, under the guise of entertainment, it deliberately supplants the actual event's real and complicated aspects with a distorted and heavily simplified version, in the interest of promoting a particular point of view. They know full well that those with less active minds will take this fiction and its judgments as the reality, and energize a base of ignorant and emotionally aggravated foot soldiers to their political cause.

That is the definition of propaganda, folks.

[bingvangorden]

That is so ridiculous. Your "logic" is deeply flawed. It's a TV show episode not a manifesto. This article belongs on the Entertainment section, not the Media section. If people were fooled by a TV episode into changing their opinions regarding the issue of abortion they were lost causes to begin with. Y'all pretedning this as being more significant that it really is are perpetuating the very thing you are afraid of. That people will take it as some kind of factual story. The Homicide/Law and Order tag team did a piece based on Jon Benet Ramsey and blamed the mom, something investigators have ruled out. You want to whine about that too?

[raker]

I detest "pro-choice" and "pro-life." The conflict is between people who think abortion should be safe and legal, and those who think it should be illegal. People who support the assassination of doctors who perform abortions are not pro-life. And the reasons people use to rationalize an abortion are irrelevant.

[uinsane]

Fanned.

[mbcullen]

This wasn't one of L&O's best episodes. But it is a fictional drama. It doens't pretend to try to get the facts on the incident it bases a storyline on correct. That's not the point. It's a "ripped from the headlines theme". And they've done it before several seasons ago where a doctor who performed abortions was killed standing in front of a window in front of his lttle girl. They've also had episodes of "abortion clinics" getting bombed. SVU and Criminal Intent have also had these themes, sometimes based on a real incident. Why are you looking for anwers at L&O?

I think the scene where the mother said she had her baby even though she knew the baby would die soon pretty much just to validate the baby's life. But she also admitted had she not been financially well off and married, she might not have reached that same decision. I thought that was a very fair character.

[bingvangorden]

Criticizing a fictional TV show for not being factually accurate is pretty dumb. I's F I C T I O N people, nota documentary. Calling it dangerous or a cop out is asinine.

[Vetinari]

Except the fact that I've seen several posters already citing the L&O episode as fact that pro-life is gaining momentum and pro-choice is becoming a fringe opinion

[Zyzzygowski]

It's television. It's make beleive. It is theater. Of course poetic license is taken.

It is not a documentary.

[kath1y]

TV as a whole seems to be poorly written this season. We'd noticed that all the L&O shows as well as some of the other scripted shows this year seem to have been written by amateurs. I suspect they fired all the real writers and hired a bunch of recent Liberty "University" grads.

That episode pretty well clinched it...we don't plan to watch much TV drama shows any more. We have a slew of great movies to pick from, we'll start watching those instead.

[ProperGanda]

I like SVU better. Better characters in my opinion

[Bloggerrogr]

Law & Odor gets it wrong almost all the time.
That's because it reflects the views of it's creator, Dick Wolf, a confirmed right-wing sympathizer.

Of course, it did help the career of one mediocre actor, Sam Waterston. It got him a long-term
gig with TD Ameritrade.

FWIW

[Imzadi]

My husband and I watched the L&O episode with unabashed incredulity for the very reasons you stated. It was cheap cop-out and did not focus on the real issues. We thought the writer should be dropped from L&O's roster of contributors if this amaturish product is the best they can do. It was deplorable and painful to watch.

Spot on and right to the point!

Thank you!!

[VirginiaJeff]

TV cheapens more than just the abortion issue.

I'm a liberal. I also happen to be a Christian. And I can't remember the last time a show had someone say the name of Jesus when it wasn't a expletive. If a TV character is a portrayed as a devout Christian, he will turn out to be either a con artist or a nut.

So we're agreed. Television stinks.

[bingvangorden]

You have a selective memory. I see clergymen and the religious portrayed as good people all the time. Occasionally a zealot is part of a story so that's what you remember. I see crosses on walls, scenes shot in churches and no negative context is applied. You are simply over looking them.

[WorkingClass]

Law and Order tries to present both sides and often succeeds. In the case of the murder of Dr. Tiller there is only one side. L&O should have passed on this one.

[WinterParkMom]

You know...I was pretty disturbed by that episode myself, not to mention really disappointed in a show I've watched for about 15 years. I thought that it was really, really irresponsible writing.

[TFMRadvocate]

I'd love to send the so-called "writers" of the episode a copy of the book, "Our Heartbreaking Choices," which includes 46 stories from women who have lived through the tragic experience of learning that their baby had a serious anomaly or that their own health would be threatened if they didn't choose to end their pregnancy and say goodbye much too soon. I don't expect everyone who hasn't lived through such an experience to fully "get it," but I would hope the writers would at least do a little research and try to not over-simplify these very real and complex life events in the name of entertainment.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

What do you expect.... Hollywood is run by MEN.... and they don't give a hoot about womens' roles in these very difficult issues.... they're gonna glaze it and bake it to make it look like they see it.

And THAT is why Hollywood really SUX!

[EscapeTireTube]

You're right, there are no women who are pro-life. Give me a break.

[Vetinari]

Sarah Palin is pro-life

That says it all

[sabela]

I know, after 20 years, I am no longer going to watch. That was a very dangerous episode.