Boston Legal, courtesy of ABC.

Given my crushing pessimism about how the topic of abortion is handled in public discourse, one of the last places I have ever considered looking for ambiguity and complexity turned out to be a surprising source of both: a network TV drama. Boston Legal to be exact. I recently watched an episode that ran two weeks ago (on Nov. 10); it focused on issues surrounding abortion, including parental notification laws and loopholes, how we talk about abortion in public and think about it in private, and even what a turnoff the subject matter was likely to be to viewers. I was impressed.

If you’re not a fan of this very quirky show, I’m not necessarily suggesting you rush to the ABC website and watch it. But if you happened to miss it, and you like your TV dramedy with a certain Hollywood-style social conscience and a dash of postmodern, self-conscious absurdity (in other words, if you were ever a fan of Ally McBeal), it might be worth a look.

The lawyer protagonists are adamantly pro-choice, yet find that their legal and moral certainties are fraying around the edges. The case is even made (albeit by the delightfully insane Denny Crane, played with giddy abandon by William Shatner) that these characters and others like them need Roe v. Wade to be kept in place because they can’t hold onto their pro-choice position on moral grounds alone–it can only be sustained with strong legal buttresses.

I understand that it will seem the height of illogic and perhaps immorality to many readers that some of us want American women to have a legal right that we fervently pray they will never exercise, but that’s about the best summary I can give of my position these days. There are few places where I feel comfortable expressing that kind of ambivalence, but it seems like such a conversation might be possible in the fictional law offices of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt. How bizarre!

Abortion isn’t the only hot topic under consideration. Last week’s episode took on the death penalty, even asking the question of how some people can be simultaneously anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. The creative team behind this show, always interested in the Big Issues, is clearly intent on going out swinging in this, their final season. I wonder what they’ll tackle tonight?

David E. Kelley, the show’s creator and executive producer, has had a tendency to insert religious characters, usually as foils, into his plots (it was a favorite device in Picket Fences, if I remember correctly). I’m intrigued by the lack of overtly religious voices in these current debates as he frames them. This man is a hugely talented writer with his finger on the pulse. Does he know something that we church-going types don’t?