Positive Liberty

Thanks to Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, I discovered this Dean’s World post, which says that Friday’s BSG episode “[f]ac[ed] the abortion issue square on and in the most unflinchingly stark manner imaginable.” A commenter disagrees, though, saying “this was a grotesque caricature of the abortion issue.” But it was neither.

Well-written literature is not about politics, but about something much deeper: about human beings and their relationship to the world and each other. That’s what this episode is about. In fact, the episode bears very little resemblance at all to our own controversies about abortion. Note that there was no discussion whatsoever about the alleged rights of the foetus, which is, of course, the primary issue among opponents of abortion in America today. Roslin’s primary concern is only with population, that’s all—and that is an issue that figures only in a minor way in American debates over abortion. The Gemenese are an extraordinarily strict society, it appears, which believes that a minor is “the property” of her parents—something not even the strictest American fundamentalists believe.

This episode is not about abortion at all, in fact. It’s about Roslin being put in a situation where her own personal beliefs conflict with what she believes is right for the survival of the species, and which puts Baltar in a position to exploit that difference for sinister ends. If literature were only about politics, it wouldn’t last long, and bad art succumbs to this error all the time. Good writing focuses on timeless and universal experiences, and that’s what this episode really features. Abortion just happens to be a hook to draw the audience’s attention. In that sense, it parallels Ron Moore’s choice to use terms like “nuclear warhead” and “minutes” instead of the silly futuristic terminology of the old series like “centons” and whatnot. Moore explains that such terms separate the show from its audience, and he wanted to make the show as understandable to the emotional and intellectual sympathies of the audience as possible. This episode would have worked if it had centered around some sort of “skiffy” jargon, like “Roslin must choose to jettison the tylium supply,” or something, but it would have lacked the emotional punch. Abortion draws the audience into the emotional tone of the confrontation that Roslin faces, much more easily.

In other words, if you look at it from the abortion angle, you’re looking at it way too close, and you must step back, to evaluate the episode on the levels of character, plot, and theme.

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