TheAgitator.com
Barnett on Six Feet Under
Monday, July 28th, 2003Libertarian uber-lawyer Randy Barnett on my Six Feet Under piece:
Six Feet Under is among my favorite shows. (Another is The Wire, my new all-time-favorite cop/criminal-justice system show–which I really must review sometime soon.) I found Radley Balko’s review today on NRO accurate and insightful, both on the show in general and specifically its treatment of abortion. But I take issue with his claim that its seemingly disapproving attitude towards abortion is a new deviation from normal Hollywood TV treatments of the subject. For sometime now, years actually, I have noticed a trend on TV so consistent that I can predict the plot of TV shows 98% of the time. A woman gets pregnant, contemplates an abortion, her right to abort is somehow affirmed, and she ultimately decided to keep the child or give it up for adoption and feels good about her choice. The current moral line seems to be, abortion is the woman’s choice, but the right choice is not to abort (or at minimum that it is an option not to be exercised lightly). Six Feet Under’s treatment of abortion is consistent with this not-so-recent trend, albeit, without the affirmation of the right to chose. (Though the statement of the aborted girl that she would be prochoice if she lived might be such an affirmation.) I am not sure exactly why Hollywood has changed (trying to please both factions in its audience most likely) but it should instruct us that moral movements need not get their views enshrined in law to influence the culture in a big way. Good review. Good program.
I appreciate Barnett’s praise, and I think his criticisms are valid. And, of course, I’ve written here that my own position on abortion is that Roe ought to be overturned, leaving abortion as a police-power issue for the states (so yes, I’m against any sort of Pro-Life Amendment, too).
Barnett’s right that most shows on television today do in fact show single women choosing to have babies, and not abortions. But I don’t think that’s a reflection of shifting Hollywood values, or even of Hollywood trying to appease its audience.
I think it’s simply a matter of aesthetics and pragmatism.
First, aeshetics:
Let’s look at Friends, for example. If you’re toying with the idea of writing a pregnancy into the script, don’t you get a heck of a lot more material out of going ahead and allowing the character to carry the pregnancy to term? What’s the use in having Rachel’s character get pregnant, then attempting to mine comedy out of a trip to the abortion clinic?
Yeah, I’m stating the obvious, here. But abortions aren’t exactly a barrel of laughs.
Instead, we get a season of guessing who the father is, how the whole thing happened, and, of course, the ratings-grabbing birth episode.
“The One Where Rachel Gets an Abortion,” episode? I’m not seeing a 30 share here, gang, or much room for yucks.
As for pragmatism:
The other reason we find television characters more often carrying pregnancies to term rather than aborting them is because the whole reason for the pregnancy plot line is that the actresses who play the characters got pregnant in real life. The shows’ writers then have little choice but to script the “expectant mother” line into the plot.
Such real-life obstacles aren’t present when an actress gets unexpectedly pregnant off the set, then terminates the pregnancy early on.
Eve Kushner wrote an interesting article about this very question in “Bright Lights Film Journal” a year or two ago. You can find it at http//www.brightlightsfilm.com/29/abortion1.html
Radley.
Excellent article on my favorite program.
As a fellow libertarian, I have to ask how you reach the conclusion that the government should have any control at all over abortion. It seems to me that under the principle of self-ownership, that a woman has the right to do with her body as she sees fit, without interference by the State.
Roe v Wade WAS an improper decision and should eventually be overturned. However, when that happens, I would hope that the Court finds that it is not the business of ANY governmental entity. Isn’t that the pure libertarian position?
Larry,
If you believe a fetus is human, then it’s legitimate for government to step in and defend its right to live.
If you don’t, then the woman’s rights obviously take presidence.
My own believe is that partial-birth abortion is really no different than murder, but that a morning after pill is for the most part harmless.
It’s somewhere along that continuum that a fertilized cell becomes a person worthy of state protection.
But that’s my opinion. Yours is obviously different. But most of us I think recognize that a fetus becomes more and more human throughout gestation — that’s what pregnancy is, after all.
So government’s job is to come in a draw the line at which a fetus becomes a human with rights worthy of state protection.
Such “line-drawing” falls within the police power, which is in the purview of the states — or even better, municipalities.
That way, we can choose to live in those areas of the country where the laws most reflect our values. Pro-lifers won’t be required to pay for abortions for poor women. And pro-choicers can live in communities with unrestricted access to the procedure.
So to answer your question, yes, at some point, I do think that the government has the responsibility to step in and protect the rights of babies. Whether that responsibility begins at conception, second or third trimester, or at birth I think is a matter best left up to communities and governments on as local a level as possible.
But certainly not at the federal level.
Radley,
It seems to me that there is contention over abortion only BECAUSE OF government intervention. If there were no government involvement in the first placeâ??either funding or the capability to make it illegalâ??the contending sides (Pro-Choice and Pro-Life) would have no reason to exist. But, giving government that “line-drawing” power is not only giving our freedom away, in my opinion, but invites a continuing political battle between the two sides at each drawing of that line. It won’t stop at State lines or municipal lines, either. It won’t ever end until government is removed from the picture.
Outside of our personal lives, does it really make any difference what you or I believe about the fetus? What gives either of us the right to impose our view and our will on the other?
Larry
Radley,
The federal government is not making the decision on when life begins, it is only making sure that the decision on when life begins is left to the individual housing the ‘life’. Why do you think smaller groups of people (in the form of states or municipalities) are better equipped or more desirable to make the decision on when life begins than the individuals themselves, for themselves? For someone so against committees, why does this even need to be a committee decision?
Your friend,
Bryan
Bryan and Radley,
Aside from the fact that it is the State and not the municipality that defines murder, if any government body must decide, I like Radley’s idea of municipal decisions. Each locality would probably draw the line differently, and all manner of confusion would result. That state of disarray would probably yield the best result for individuals (i.e., more freedom).
I didn’t reach the conclusion about abortion not being the business of government hastily. I’ve been keeping up with the more sophisticated libertarian theorists on the issue (most notably Dr. Richard A. Epstein and Dr. Tibor Machan), and while they reach different conclusions than mine, it seems to me that they, like most folks, are consistently diverted by the question of “when does the the fetus become human.” And, that question can never be definitively answered.
If there is no answer to that question, why would we allow a bunch of self-serving polticos in the State government draw the line for us based on their usual standardsâ??catering to constituencies, campaign contributions, etc.?
In my judgment, there is a real absence of serious thought given to this issue by the libertarian writers and think-tanks.
Larry
I don’t know why you addressed your post to me Larry. I agree with you 100%.
Hi Bryan,
Sorryâ??I didn’t mean to imply we disagreed at all. You had made the last cogent comment and I was just keeping you in the loop.
Larry