Critical Choices

Although this made for TV movie reads as an ordinary take on the pro choice pro life debate over abortion, the teleplay does add dimension to the characters which changes them from being polemic representatives to flawed humans. Setting the crisis over the last abortion clinic - here called a women's health co-op - in the state at Easter is a nice touch. Statistics are included in the dialogue to an acceptable degree, and there are funny lines. To the pro lifers - "Their notion of life begins at conception and ends at birth". And a chant at the clinic battleground of "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries". There is also a parallel made between church wine and recreational wine, and the irony of the intolerance of the Christian Fundamentalists - who crack the hackneyed Adam and Steve line twice - is shown. Performances from pros like Pamela Reed, Diane Scarwid, and Betty Buckley - who has a lesser role - are all good.