That being said, this season has been refreshingly solid.  Aside from the atrocious “Let’s prosecute Cheney!” season premiere, each successive episode has been vintage “Law & Order.”  The most recent episode (“Dignity,” October 23) bordered on spectacular.  *Spoiler alert*

It did not begin auspiciously.  The opening sequence set the stage for yet another warmed-over episode wherein an abortionist is murdered, and the rest of the program consists of detectives trying to determine which anti-abortion nutter did the deed.  The show’s writers usually permit one character to utter a single token pro-life line (“Just because you might disagree with abortion doesn’t justify this violence!”), while the oh-so-reasonable pro-choice characters get the last word.  Having seen this template before, I almost flipped channels.  It seems as though at least one of the L&O spinoff series airs a “new” abortion-doctor-murder episode every year.  One wonders if more abortionists have been slain on this fictional television franchise over the past 20 years than in real life.

But last week’s episode marked a dramatic departure from the familiar, biased trope.  After detective Bernard makes a few forceful pro-life points in an impromptu squad car debate with his partner, ADA Cutter jumps into the fray. He professes his pro-life views and refutes a condescending response from his pro-choice colleague (Rubirosa) by citing the “turning tide” of public opinion and mentioning that most Americans now consider themselves pro-life.  Apparently Mr. Cutter’s been checking the latest Gallup stats. Rubirosa replies by pointedly referring to those who share Cutter’s views as “anti-choice,” at which point the reliably liberal District Attorney, Jack McCoy, mentions his own daughter’s change of heart on the issue.  She was staunchly pro-choice, he explains, prior to seeing the image of her unborn child in an ultrasound.   End of scene.

Jaw-dropping stuff.

Later in the episode, it’s revealed that the victim was performing illegal, post-birth abortions–more commonly known as murder–at his clinic.  A whistle-blower nurse informs the DA office that she left the deceased doctor’s practice after witnessing a failed abortion result in a live birth, and then a callous killing.  (For those who follow the abortion issue closely, this story may sound familiar.  It also raises an issue that was used to highlight the radical pro-abortion record of a certain post-partisan Messiah during the 2008 campaign). On the stand, the nurse testifies about the repugnant practice, explaining that the baby’s corpse was discarded as “medical waste.” This revelation horrifies both Rubirosa and the jury.

Later in the trial, another witness describes her decision not to abort her severely disabled child.  Her story moves the jury to tears.

The prosecution then calls an expert witness–a doctor–who testifies that his murdered colleague was doing good, medically necessary work.  Upon cross-examination, he’s exposed as a pro-abortion zealot; willing to perform third trimester abortions for any reason, no matter what the law says.  His contempt for Christians and pro-lifers is palpable, and turns off the jury.  The prosecutors are left wringing their hands about how poorly he performed on the stand.

Again, stunning.  I kept checking the channel guide–this really was “Law & Order.”

As the episode drew to a close, ADA Rubirosa offers the following admission:

“I grew up thinking Roe v. Wade was gospel.  That a woman’s privacy was inviolate.  But after hearing that woman on the stand talk about her baby dying in her arms, I don’t know.   I don’t know where my privacy ends and another being’s dignity begins.”

Cutter (the pro-life one, remember) tells her that in the current case, the distinctions are pretty black and white, and that it’s their job to put away the bad guys.  To which Rubirosa replies,

“I’m glad it’s so clear-cut for you, Mike.  Unfortunately, I can’t leave my soul in the umbrella stand when I come into work in the morning.”

You can watch the scene described above here.  In case you were curious, the trial ends with the abortionist’s killer being convicted.  (A verdict that all true pro-lifers would applaud).  ”Dignity” provided viewers with a nuanced, layered depiction of a hot-button social issue that did justice–and then some–to the conservative position.

To the writers and producers of “Law & Order,” Bravo.

(Curtain. Possible is alone on stage when Mr. Patronus enters.)

Possible: Who are you?

Patronus: My name is Mr. Pratronus. I’m sorry to suddenly intrude like this, but I’ve been assigned as your STO.

Possible: Stow?

Patronus: STO. Your Survival Training Officer. Your birth time is approaching and I’ve been sent in to train you in a few techniques that might increase your chances of surviving the next few days.

Possible: Survive what? My birth? My understanding is that medical technology has advanced far enough that childbirth has become — well, if not quite routine, at least considerably less dangerous. Why would I need eleventh hour special training just to undergo an event where a wealth of state-of-the-art material and a number of trained medical professionals are dedicated to seeing it through without incident?

Patronus: Unfortunately I’m not here to address a failing of medical technology or training. Medicine is as advanced now as it ever was in all of human history. That much is true. Instead I’m here to address a certain condition of philosophy and law. We’re a bit worried because some of your parents’ recent behaviors have raised a number of red flags. For example, this late into the gestation process they haven’t begun to discuss potential names for you. That’s one of the bigger danger signs that will get our attention every time.

Possible: But I already have a name. I’m Possible.

Patronus: I’m sorry but that’s not your name. Not really. It’s more of a title. A description of status. It’s the name every pre-born child, until his parents choose an actual name.

Possible: So I’m in danger, but of what? You said it had something to do with philosophy? I have to confess, I’m a bit confused.

Patronus: According to the culture in which you’re about to be born, assuming our efforts to insure your birth are successful, you aren’t yet a human being. You aren’t a person.

Possible: Are you kidding me? If I’m not a person, what am I?

Patronus: By definition of law, aided by a truly insidious twisting of language, you’re currently nothing more than a bit of extraneous and non-viable biological material.

Possible: Nonsense. I already have every evidence of personhood. I have thoughts and feelings. I have hopes and dreams. I’ve experienced joys and sorrows.

Patronus: None of which matters, according to the law.

Possible: I don’t believe that. Who could possibly believe that I’m not yet a real person?

Patronus: Well, that’s one of the truly frustrating aspects of this struggle, because no one does believe that — not your mother, or father, or the legal and medical people who’re determined to define away your humanity. Even the powerful social-political organizations created to bring about your destruction, without legal or social consequences, don’t actually believe you’re nothing more than a lump of waste tissue. But that’s what they need to claim. That’s the fiction they need to perpetuate in order to justify their overall agenda in general, and the all-too specific actions they may be contemplating where you’re concerned. Oddly enough, the more tenuous the agreed-upon fiction, the more desperate and vicious its proponents become in not allowing any reasonable examination of it.

Possible: That may describe those with an agenda to perpetuate. Some people just turn out bad and broken. But I can’t believe people as a whole could be so cynical. How could a wise and educated society possibly vote for such an obvious sham?

Patronus: I’ll let you know, should people as a whole ever get the chance to vote on it. This is a condition almost entirely imposed by the courts. On those rare occasions when people do insist on voting on some aspect of it, the results are routinely overturned by judicial fiat.

Possible: And the people just accept that?

Patronus: Not all of them do. Some are working hard to restore a better world, starting with a more rational and obvious definition of life and when it begins.

Possible: Some, but not all?

Patronus: I’m not sure what to tell you. Perhaps many stubbornly confuse language with reality. Define someone as a non-human and that person has indeed become a non-human, in fact, as well as convenience of labeling. I know that seems insane, but that’s the world you may be about to join.

Possible: And maybe the one I’m not about to join. You’ve mentioned danger and destruction. You’re scaring me, Mr. Patronus. I think it’s about time you told me exactly what you’re here to do. What do you hope to train me to survive?

Patronus: During your birth the medical people in attendance might be there to make sure you survive it, or they may be sure to make sure you don’t.

Possible: Oh please. Get serious.

Patronus: I assure you, Possible, I am deadly serious.

Possible: You expect me to believe that a doctor and an executioner happen to be the same profession?

Patronus: Under a very special set of circumstances and with the consent, or at the insistence, of your mother — yes.

Possible: And I have no say in the matter? Despite the Hippocratic oath, or all of the myriad protections of life written into the law?

Patronus: All of which only protect human life, which is why the tortured redefinition is so vital.

Possible: And there’s nothing I can do? My fate’s entirely in their hands?

Patronus: Almost, but not entirely. I’ve been sent in to teach you a few physical techniques to help you survive the ordeal. For example, there’s some twisting and turning maneuvers you can use if they send in some clamps and other devices in an attempt to dismember you while you’re still inside the birth canal. Most of all I want to teach you how not to resist the birth. Even if your mother has decided to kill you, the physical birth process is a mechanism of the ages, designed to deliver you whole and alive, with her instinctive physical cooperation, if not her desire. That’s one of the few things working in our favor.

Possible: Why? It seems it would just be easier for them to destroy me after I’m outside of my mother’s body.

Patronus: True, but that’s where this madhouse gets truly bizarre. As long as any part of you is still inside your mother, they are legally free — in fact obligated — to do all they can to dismember and kill you. But, if by some stroke of fortune, you’re able to get completely outside of your mother, then by a miracle of advanced rhetoric, you instantly cease being a lump of disposable tissue and become a person in full, with all of the rights and protections therein. At that moment, those same medical professionals that were trying to kill you will then have to switch roles and immediately do everything within their powers to preserve you. That’s why I want to train you to do whatever you can to get out as soon as possible — to strive towards the light, no matter what they attempt to do to you along the way.

Possible: Crawling desperately towards the very people trying so hard to kill me seems counter-intuitive, Mr. Patronus.

Patronus: Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land, where up is sometimes down, wrong is sometimes right, and what’s true today can’t be relied upon to be true tomorrow.

Possible: Let’s say I do pass whole and alive through this gauntlet. What then?

Patronus: Then they have to protect and preserve you, or they’d be in all sorts of legal trouble.

Possible: And I assume that will include taking me away from my mother.

Patronus: Uh… no. You’ll go on to live with her and be raised by her, unless she decides to do something else with you.

Possible: But, assuming your dire warning is true, she will have just tried to have me killed, and the only reason I would still be alive by that time is that they somehow blundered in their attempts to bring about my horrible death.

Patronus: Yes, but the law presumes that at the instant you become a person, she will no longer want you dead, but will be magically transformed, in that same impossible instant, into a loving and nurturing woman, who only has your best interests in mind.

Possible: That’s insane.

Patronus: You’ll get no argument from me. So, shall we begin your training? We’ll start with some of the things you already know how to do — twisting, rolling, kicking and turning, to deflect or avoid the grip of their instruments.

Possible: No, I don’t think so. I don’t mean to call you a liar to your face, but I don’t believe you. I can’t. No civilized society would allow such a barbaric practice such as you describe.

Patronus: I suppose not. I’m not enough of a philosopher to debate what does and doesn’t constitute a civilization. As I said, I’m basically a self-defense instructor. But I assure you, these are the dangers you’re facing.

Possible: And I repeat that I can’t bring myself to believe that. Even if it were all true, why would I want to survive to enter such a charnel house world? I don’t think I’m interested in your training, Mr. Patronus.

Patronus: Suit yourself.

Possible: You seem easily resigned to my decision.

Patronus: Only because I’ve been doing this for awhile. Too long. A significant minority of my assigned charges make the same decision you just did. Convincing a rational but innocent human being that they’re about to enter such a vastly irrational world is difficult to the point of near impossibility. You don’t yet have the experience to find me credible. As saddened as I am by your choice, I’m not surprised by it.

Possible: I can’t choose otherwise and still be the person I am. I have to believe in a good and rational world. The one you describe defies credulity.

Patronus: I’ll leave now. I have too many other appointments to keep. I hope you turn out to be one of the lucky ones, despite the warning signs. I hope your mother already loves and wants you, or at least allows you to live long enough to give you away to someone who can love and care for you. But if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, if they do try to destroy you when the time comes, then fight. Fight with all of your heart and soul and abilities. Even without my training, you’ve a chance to defy their instruments of cold steel, and confound their sinister designs. I’ll be honest and tell you that chance is slight, but it’s happened before. Good bye, Possible, and good luck.

(Mr. Patronus exits. Curtain.)

Funny isn’t it, how the party of acceptance is very unaccepting of an opposing view. They cling to the mantra that those who believe in protecting the unborn are religious nuts, uneducated and ignorant. It’s a great place to hide, but I believe that as time goes by they are running out of hiding places.

It was brilliant when you referred to the statement, “abortions should be rare.” Why would they say that when it’s a safe and legal “procedure” enjoyed by thousands every day? No big woop. Have abortion parties to celebrate saving the whales, lie in the stirrups and get a pedicure. No big deal, right?

There have been so many studies done about post-abortion trauma that will never see the light of day. I for one suffered. I murdered not one but two of my own children in the womb. In both cases I waited until the deadline at the end of the third month. Back then, in the early seventies, I didn’t have the convenience of “Roe V. Wade” or “Doe. V. Bolton.” So it was back alley, and I have to say categorically that in both cases I knew that it was not a blob of tissue.

Call it a mother thing, but you KNOW it’s a life. Would I have changed my mind had I been able to see an ultrasound? I don’t know. I was a teenager. I know I disliked children and decided to never have one. What difference could one life make anyway?

Six years later, in 1977, I was pregnant again. Yeah, I know, but I had bought into the free-love culture. Well, this wasn’t love and it didn’t make me free, but this time I knew I couldn’t murder again and was blessed with a healthy boy.

When my son was about ten, I remember when we joined a large group holding signs in front of a religious based hospital to protest their purchase of sophisticated equipment to perform second trimester murders. The signs simply read, “Abortion Is Murder.” I was busy talking to some moms when I turned around and saw that my son had written on the back of his poster: “I’m glad my mom didn’t abort me.”

Quietly, I sobbed.

I have since told him everything, about how I was part and parcel of the extermination of his generation. To say he’s pro-life is an understatement. In July, he will have his first child. My grandchild will be born because I grew up, was honest with myself and chose life.

The scars from having an abortion do not go away when you finally have a child. As a matter of fact, I was an angry parent until I found forgiveness, forgave myself and grieved the loss of those two lives. This was the result of a spiritual awakening.

Today I am appalled at the ignorance that is wholesaled by the lunatic proponents of casual murders of convenience. I am an actor from Chicago who meets all kinds of people and I can testify that it is widely believed that abortion is only allowed in the first trimester. When I tell them it ain’t so, they accuse me of reciting pro-life rhetoric. Read “Doe v. Bolton,” and Gary, as you mentioned, partial birth abortion … don’t get me started.

I will close with this. Don’t think for a moment this nation will not be judged for the millions of murders we embrace. The earth is soaked with the blood of the innocents. And I believe that our greatest defense on their behalf is the plain truth clearly seen and heard invitro — a beating heart.

Thanks again, Gary,

Maggie Malone
Chicago, Ill

“What the hell is Graham on about now?? What momentous, screeching rant is he conjuring up now; can somebody put him on a stupid TV show so he’d shut up already??” – Your name here.

No. I’m going to say it. I’m going to say what millions know in the front of their brains, and many, many more millions know in the depths of their hearts…but won’t allow themselves to think it, much less feel it. And believe me, I know I’ll be hated for saying it, I’ll be hated by people who don’t know me, have never worked with me, have never golfed with me, had a drink with me, shot the shit with me. They’ve never met me, don’t want to meet me…but they will hate me. I’m going to say it anyway: Abortion is murder.

Screams, bomb blasts, machine-gun rounds rip through plaster, I duck, but the copper-tip spears tear into meat, I run, the fire sears flesh, more screams, are they coming from me, or are they my head being torn from…my…

In the sixties and seventies I was a proud part of the peace generation. Long-haired hippies, rocker-lovers, lover-rockers, music festivals, drug explorations, peace not war, and there’s this cute piece right next to me, I’ve got a sleeping bag, would you like to get warm, and there’s a little hash left, you’re so pretty… Hey don’t laugh, we thought we were changing the world. Free love, baby, do it if it feels good, don’t look back, power to the peeps, and do your own thing. Wow, really? You mean you can be cool, have a lot of sex…and save the world all at the same time? Damn this is so f*cking bitchen! Ooh, my hair’s getting really good in the back… (Brown shoes… don’t make it! — F.Zappa)

But wait – I’m in college. I’m on a fast track to jump into the business world. I’m going to be some stick-up-the-butt loser in some establishment straight-ass job, when I really just want to party. Oops, I mean… I want to help save the world! Through drugs, sex and rock and roll. All right, we don’t really have a solid business plan made up yet…but we’re working on it. Of course I’m a Democrat! Duh!

End of flashback.

I have been on all sides of this issue for most of my life, and I can simply not escape the logic. That fetus a pregnant woman is carrying inside of her, regardless of the gestation stage, is a living, breathing human being. Yes, breathing – the amniotic sac forms 12 days after conception, and in the second trimester the baby is actually breathing the amniotic fluid. It’s not an ‘unviable tissue mass.’ Not a wart, a mole, a skin outcropping, a boil, or a bundle of uncoordinated cells. It’s not just a ‘fetus’.

It’s a baby. Not fully developed, true. Like an infant is not a fully developed and mature adult. But it’s a baby.

And the first time I got a girl pregnant, I would have wrestled you to the ground for saying that. How f*cking dare you? You don’t know what you’re talking about! You piece of crap, you don’t know!

Well I do know. And I stand condemned. I’ve paid for three of them and was responsible for probably several more, I’m not really sure. But it breaks my heart. Because I’ve been convicted in my soul. It took years after the fact, but I was shown the Truth. And not to get mumbo-jumbo, oogly-boogly on you, but it was a spiritual awakening that did it. It happened unexpectedly, and it threw me to my knees in sudden tearful epiphany of what it meant for a man to be with a woman, what sex was really designed for by our Creator and… what abortion is.

And up until that point, I was completely ‘Pro-Choice’. I had bought the whole ‘women’s rights’ thing, completely agreed with ‘the constitutional right of a woman’s freedom to choose’…and I was just fine with that. Sure took the pressure off of me, a guy, interested in sex who had been raised in the era of, “Hey, you get a girl pregnant, you marry her!” But times had changed. Now abortions could be had legally if a doctor determined the life of the mother was in danger. Girls in college told me what a joke that was. They’d go in to see a doctor, tell him they’re pregnant, and the conversation went like this:

Doctor: “You’re feeling suicidal?” (hint hint, wink nudge.)

Girl: “Oh. Yeah… suicidal. I’m feeling suicidal.”

Doctor: “All right, then.”

Abortion as a method of birth control became the norm. I knew a few girls who had had as many as five of them by the time they were twenty-five. And they seemed fine on it…mostly because everyone around them was telling them that they should feel fine about it.

So this abortion thing was pretty damn convenient for a guy. And for a time, I was quite the Lothario. I kept a roster of seven girlfriends. Why seven? I don’t know…maybe Lucky Number 7 (yeah maybe)…or seven days in a week (more likely). But I would meet someone new, and I would simply go through my list…and kick one girl off. I would simply stop calling her. And to my great shame…this was my chosen method to ‘decathect.’ In retrospect, I wish I’d had the balls of utter honesty in my early relationships; but I was a drug-addled, post college idiot and that was the best I could muster. This was my m.o. and I knew I wasn’t alone…not by a long shot. We were proud products of the Love Generation.

Jump forward thirty years and Nancy Pelosi tells us yesterday that ‘family planning’ is now a fiscal responsibility to ‘reduce costs.’ Her defenders will say that NO, she’s talking about condoms and sex education. But anyone with a mind who’s been around for a while knows that ‘family planning’ is code for abortion. She is asking for 200 million dollars for Family Planning Services to ‘expand the economy.’ These are taxpayer dollars, dontcha know. Your money. She says states are in terrible fiscal crisis and it’s ‘part of what we do for childrens’ health and education’…” I’m trying to figure out how ripping an unborn child from it’s womb is aiding in it’s health or education, but maybe I’m missing something here.

I’ve heard it argued that a fetus is not a baby because it could not survive outside the womb on its own. But what about three-day old baby? Or even a two week old baby? If you set it down on the floor and leave it alone…will it survive on its own? Or will it die? So what’s the cut-off for determining whether it’s a baby or not?

It really comes down to this: when does life begin? When is it a baby? At the point of conception? First trimester? Third? At the point of actual delivery? When the umbilical cord is cut? Two weeks afterward? When?

I’m telling you, once you draw that line and say this is the moment it’s a human being…you’ve lost the argument. Because it’s arbitrary. On this date it’s a baby, but yesterday it was just a bunch of cells…this blob of a nothing and you can do anything you want with it, it’s okay. Babies have been born premature in the second trimester and lived. Happens all the time. So please, somebody tell me how is taking a baby and delivering all but the head, then plunging a tube into its skull and sucking the brains out…how is that not murder? This is what happens in partial-birth abortions, and unfortunately, this happens all the time, too.

And we as a nation…as a people…are all right with this?

I understand the hate that is leveled at someone like me who reminds people of this. To contemplate the reality is daunting. The act is horrendous and made more tragic when you consider the numbers of babies that are being disposed of every day.

Our willingness to tolerate such a holocaust says volumes of how our entire culture has been coarsened. How life itself has been cheapened. We are told to have sex any time we feel the urge. Condoms are handed out in grade schools. Promiscuity is not only condoned, it’s tacitly encouraged. Illegitimacy has enslaved an entire underclass of our citizens, relegating them to government assistance for a lifetime, bankrupting cities, and holding an entire subculture down in dependent despair. But if you should get pregnant and it’s just not a ‘convenient’ time for you, don’t worry, there are Family Planning Services, funded, thanks to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, by your tax dollars. That inconvenient fetus can be surgically ripped from its uterine moorings, ground up and tossed into the trash like so much garbage. Problem solved, and the mother can resume her egocentric lifestyle. But the scars on that woman’s soul will never quite heal. I’m a man, but I’ve got them on mine.

I’ve heard from liberals the following quote: “We want abortion to be legal…but rare.” And I ask, Why rare? What’s wrong with abortion, that you think it should be a rare occurrence? I’ve had moles removed from my skin. Doctors don’t tell us that a mole removal should be rare. So what’s with this ‘rare’ business? Or is it a tacit agreement that abortion…is plain wrong?

And in the double-standard department… Will somebody tell me how it is that Scott Peterson gets convicted of a double homicide – his wife, and his unborn son – and yet it’s not murder if a doctor does basically the same thing in a clinic? Explain it to me; why is it murder in the one case, and totally acceptable in the other? You tell me, “HEY! It’s my body, I’ve got the right to do whatever I want with my body!!” Well, no you don’t. You don’t have the legal right to prostitute yourself (Nevada excepted). You don’t have a right to pick up an axe and lop off your boyfriend’s head if he gives you lip. You don’t have the right to murder. And your anger will bring you back to the its-not-a-baby, it’s-my-body mobius.

Illogic without end.

Try this exercise: Every time you hear someone use the phrase “…a woman’s right to choose…” mentally complete the phrase with the following words – “…to kill her baby.” That’s what the argument’s about. A woman’s right to kill her baby.

In the extreme cases of incest…rape…severe birth defects. Hey, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. That’s a tough one. But there has got to be a better way than abortion. Adoption comes to mind. With all the thousands of couples out there unable to make a baby…doesn’t it seem the right thing to do…to give birth and give the unwanted baby up for adoption into a loving family?

Just a thought.

I saw my daughter’s ultrasound when she was at four weeks. All I saw was this little pulsating cylinder about the size of my little fingernail. Each little vibration was a heartbeat. Yes, a heart barely formed; cells still differentiating into form and function…but her little heart was just wailing away. I burst into tears. And I realized… I was beholding an utter miracle. The miracle of life. And I also realized that from the very first merger of cell into cell, and the first divisions…that the whole miracle of life was from that point on struggling against all odds to become a fully-realised human being.

I don’t mean to preach. I’m just telling you what I have come to know, and that I know that I know. The unborn fetus is a baby in development…and to end that life prematurely is to murder that life.

I truly wish that I had had this conviction way back when…when I was only concerned about my selfish convenience of the day. But I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconvenient to think about it.

How ironic that the ‘Love’ Generation should spawn such a culturally accepted abomination as abortion.

May God have mercy on us all.