On May 12, ABC’s Private Practice appeared to be more of a pro-Planned Parenthood infomercial than a television show.
Kate Walsh, who stars in the program as Dr. Addison Montgomery, is, in real-life, a diehard Planned Parenthood activist. In the episode, Dr. Montgomery is pitted against pro-life fertility specialist Dr. Naomi Bennett.
Viewers are introduced to a pregnant woman named Patty who desires a partial-birth abortion procedure because a previous one was unsuccessful. Montgomery agrees to assist Patty noting, “I hate what I’m about to do, but I support Patty’s right to choose. It is not enough just to have an opinion, because in a nation of over 300 million people, there are only 1,700 abortion providers. And I’m one of them.”
Bennett later informs Patty of exactly how developed her child has become at this stage of pregnancy. Especially because of these facts, she encourages Patty to carry her child to term. Predictably, Montgomery is outraged and seeks out Patty at a local bar in order to talk her back into having an abortion saying, “She [Bennett] had no right to upset you like that…When it comes to abortion, everybody has an opinion. Everybody’s going to want to tell you what to do. If this were 1972…you [wouldn’t] have a choice. Now you do.” Clearly, as Brent Bozell argues, “This is not an offering of ‘choice.’ This is an urgent appeal for an abortion.”
Just when viewers thought Montgomery’s rhetoric couldn’t become anymore anti-life, she stated, “It’s still hard. And even after you make the most difficult and personal decision that there is, it’s still not safe. Because you have some fanatic who claims to value life who can walk into an abortion clinic and blow it up.”
Such a statement is, of course, wildly illogical. Making this point, Bozell writes, “It’s the ultimate Orwellian argument. We live in a country where 4,000 abortions are performed daily and it’s the pro-lifers who are killers.”
Unfortunately, the episode ended even worse than it began. Not only did Montgomery perform the partial-birth abortion procedure for Patty, supposedly pro-life character, Bennett, assists and exclaims, “You [Montgomery] helped that woman.”
Bozell sums up the absolute monstrosity created by Hollywood by noting, “Hollywood would never end an episode or a movie with a woman deeply troubled by her abortion converting to Christianity—even though that’s exactly what happened with Norma McCorvey, the ‘Roe’ in Roe v. Wade. They’d never have an abortionist switch sides—as did the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson. In Hollywood, the pro-lifers fold with 60 minutes. It is truly the land of make-believe.”
