Regarding the Everwood episode, I watched that episode thinking I would want to yell at the TV screen after it was over, but I was dumbfounded at how “life-affirmiing” it was. The “liberal” doctor who declined to perform the abortion gave a wonderful little spiel that he had done abortions in med school, but then when he did his first surgery on an unborn baby with spina bifida, he said that the “fetus” became his “patient” and “it” became a “she.” He finished it with “I don’t know when life begins, but I know when it ends.” That was a powerful, unambiguous line.
Furthermore, after the girl went through with the abortion, she was crying and confused, unaccompanied by the father who insisted that she have the abortion but was too cowardly to go with her. She certainly was not skipping out of the clinic enjoying her freedom of choice.
Finally, the episode ended with the “conservative” doctor entering the confessional and uttering “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
It was not a perfectly “pro-life” episode, but if I were a member of NARAL, I would have been livid at the insinuation that abortion meant death or was a sin. If nothing else, it is a sign that attitudes are definitely changing.