If These Walls Could Talk.

• Author: Moore, Anne Elizabeth

Of all the unmentionables on T.V. and in film, abortion ranks highest. Gay marriage? See Friends. Child rape? Showtime's Bastard out of Carolina. Murder? Spare me--where haven't we seen murder lately? And yet, of all these, abortion is the most common experience.

Even anti-abortion groups concede that at least one woman out of four has an abortion, but you would never know that by watching T.V. As Katha Pollitt remarked in The Nation, "Women have abortions only in docudramas, usually after being raped, drugged with birth-defect-inducing chemicals, or put into a coma." The standard technique for doing away with unwanted pregnancies on screen is the serendipitous miscarriage--even the controversial new satire about the abortion wars, Citizen Ruth, ends up taking the easy way out when Ruth miscarries.

Back in 1972, before abortion was legal in the United States outside of New York and Hawaii, the popular sitcom Maude featured two episodes in which the aging main character terminates her pregnancy. The show's producers and writers told Newsweek, "We're trying to break the mold of situation comedy.... So what the hell, let Maude have four husbands and a divorced daughter with a young son. People in real life do."

Such openness is almost unthinkable now. The strength of the Christian right inspires fear in the hearts and wallets of Hollywood. Even back in Maude's day, the Christians were in an uproar. Conservative authors Robert B. Buesse and Russell Shaw, in their book America, claim to trace the episode back to the Population Institute and, in particular, to a fateful luncheon with executives from ABC, NBC, and CBS, as well as the chairman of the Commission on Population Growth John D. Rockefeller III, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations George Bush, and the Oregon Senator then known for his strong opinions on population matters, Robert Packwood. This meeting led to the union of population issues and television, leading, in turn, to an abortion on the television screens of America. Thanks, John, George, and Bob. Is that on your resume?

Since the Maude episode, a number of soap operas, Murphy Brown, 90210, Roseanne, Melrose Place, and many other shows have all approached, then backed down from, abortions. The pro-lifers are winning the public-relations battle, even on "liberal," "pro-choice" T.V.

Conservatives have no such squeamishness. They flaunt the imagery of the fetus. An ad ran in Chicago during the otherwise invisible campaign...