A Triumph of Humanity in the House
I don’t watch Television, but this episode of TV’s House, has created quite a buzz:
In sum, Dr. Gregory House is one of television’s premier anti-heroes. This has been problematic from a moral standpoint for most of the life of this series, because this utterly despicable character always proves right and wise in the end. He may be a wretched person, but he is always to be admired for his dogged pursuit of medical salvation, never mind that he is willing to do anything, including nearly killing patients in order to find his answers, which viewers recognize are answers he often seeks to understand his own miserable condition. Some of the other leading characters are nearly as reprehensible from a moral standpoint. I had been ready to swear off the show completely after the March 27 episode in which two handsome members of House’s resident team, Drs. Allison Cameron and Robert Chase, began having on-the-job sex and made it clear that this is no-commitment, strictly recreational fun.
In Fetal Position, the anti-hero feature of the Dr. House character is turned on its head, resulting in a stunning triumph for the pro-life argument. In the story, famous celebrity photographer Emma Sloan, five months pregnant, is rushed to the hospital suffering from what appears to be a stroke. Through the usual series of misdiagnoses and process of elimination, House and his team eventually come to the conclusion that serious medical issues with Ms. Sloan’s baby are the cause of her mysterious illness and she will die unless the pregnancy is terminated. The mother adamantly refuses and finds support from House’s main antagonist, Chief-of-Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy, like Ms. Sloan a single career woman who herself has been struggling to become pregnant late in life. For once, Dr. Cuddy does not cave in to House’s pressures, but personally intervenes to take the most risky and highly unapproved methods to save the unborn baby’s life.
House angrily insists throughout the episode on calling the baby a "fetus" and not a "baby," and makes every classic pro-abortion argument possible, including that the organism in the womb is not a baby but a dangerous growth, a parasitic "tumor." But when he is finally convinced to perform lifesaving surgery on the child still in the womb, the tiny infant grasps his finger, shaking him to his core and leaving no mistake that this is a precious little human being. The extraordinary procedures save the lives of both mother and son.
Following the surgery, the mother thanks House for saving them, but he replies, "Don’t thank me. I would have killed him." The episode ends with House returning to his solitary home, gently and pensively rubbing the finger that was touched by the infant child. Meanwhile, the mother is shown some weeks or months later, playing joyfully with her baby.
It’s created quite a stir across the Internet. Did we just see what we thought we saw? A portrayal of the humanity of the unborn. Yes, indeedy. And it’s certainly not a fanciful one as Jill Stanek points out. A picture, well known among pro-life circles was taken of an unborn child reaching out during a surgery. Culture has changed where in the most unlikely of sources, we can find an understanding of the unborn’s humanity.
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