Hollywood, CA — The youth-oriented WB network confronts an issue rarely seen in prime time tonight when a character in Everwood has an abortion.
After some of its regular advertisers dropped out to avoid being associated with the issue, the network was scrambling late last week to fill commercial time for the drama about a doctor in a rural community.
A generation ago, Bea Arthur's title character in the CBS comedy, Maude, had an abortion and some network affiliates wouldn't air the program. The subject is mostly avoided in prime-time entertainment shows.
“It's quite uncommon, said Tim Brooks, author of The Complete Directory to Prime-Time and Cable TV Shows.
Abortion was debated several years ago in the Fox show, Party of Five, but the character had a miscarriage. Actress Malinda Williams' character in the Showtime series, Soul Food, had an abortion in an episode that aired two weeks ago.
The first-year series, Everwood, stars Treat Williams as a doctor who moves his family to a small town in Colorado after his wife dies. In Monday's episode, a man in the community asks Williams' character, Dr. Andrew Brown, to quietly perform an abortion on his 18-year-old daughter.
Brown advises the woman to wait three days and consider adoption or giving birth. After the wait, she chooses to have an abortion, but Brown has his own moral problems.
Greg Berlanti, the series' executive producer, said that in a series that involved a rural doctor, abortion was a subject that couldn't be avoided.
With so many teenage girls getting pregnant each year, “it strikes me as odd that you never saw it dramatized on television,” he said. He said he wanted to reflect the moral dilemmas involved.
It would be better if Everwood did this and ended with the young woman deciding to have her baby, said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition.
“There is an innocent victim now, there is a dead baby,” Lafferty said. “How many shows have they done on abstinence? How many shows have they done on the flip side of the discussion?”
Jordan Levin, the WB's entertainment president, said the network did not want to seem like it was on the soapbox for either side, and the episode achieved this.
“I think that it causes you to realize the complexity of the issue, the pain that comes with the issue, the personal impact of the issue and the unanswered questions,” Levin said.
Brooks said the WB could be trying to establish credibility with its young audience by tackling a tough subject.
The episode is running during the May sweeps, when ratings are used to set local advertising rates. But Levin said the timing was coincidental, and it was even proving problematic for his ad sales team.
He would not reveal which advertisers, or even how many, had dropped off the show. The WB is seeking replacement advertisers to fill its open commercial slots.
To this point, none of the WB affiliates have said they would not air the episode, he said.
For more on this story, go to the Associated Press.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
