EVERWOOD - THE DIFF BETWEEN A GREAT SHOW AND A "WORLD OF POTENTIAL"

I became aware of the WB's Everwood because so many of my twenty-something students really like it. I have heard that it is a great show that is also on the right side most often of what a healthy and holy human life should look like.

I made sure to watch the show last night because I had caught some of the promos indicating that Everwood was going to do an abortion show. Oh well. In trying to be fair and balanced, the show ended up rife with the absurb inconsistency that defines pro-choice America. The compassionate doctor describes how perfectly formed a three week old fetus is, but then hastens to add, "But IT isn't a person, of course."

Good grief. Will someone please say to these people, "If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it probably isn't a fetus." The character went on to describe the - what shall we call it? - the "womb thing", simply as a "world of potential."

Yup, that's right. It's a heart-beating, pain feeling, thumb sucking, brain wave registering, knee jerking world of potential. It's a unique, unrepeatable, indefinable, unpredictable, love bearing, love causing world of potential. But hell, it's okay to kill it if you, like, don't want to interrrupt your college plans.

At the end of the episode, the post-abortive teenager breaks into tears, even though she is sure she made the right choice. Her father, who intimidated her into making the right choice, ends up in a confessional asking for forgiveness, although we know he doesn't think the abortion was wrong. His regreat centers around the way he coerced his daughter into making the right choice, you know, killing his grandchild. Or, uh, his potential grandchild.

Again, there's that pro-choice ambivalence. One doesn't feel remorse over getting a tumor removed, or having a wisdom tooth out. Remorse kicks in when we have done something bad.

On the bright side, at least we're talking about abortion on television. Our side doesn't have anything to fear in discussion.