ABORTION ISSUE AN ALMOST PROSAIC TV THEME

TV taboos continue to fall.

One is abortion, a former off-limits topic that’s now becoming almost routine in prime time. By the end of next week, abortion will have been a theme on three series within the last month: a recent episode of ABC’s “Spenser: For Hire,” Monday’s “Cagney & Lacey” on CBS and Wednesday’s “Hell Town” on NBC, in which a nun is raped and impregnated.

“Cagney & Lacey” is in top dramatic form Monday in a story titled “The Clinic” that involves the bombing of an abortion clinic and has a decided pro-choice tone. It’s an hour that demands to be seen, and executive producer Barney Rosenzweig is doing his best to ensure that it will be.

Rosenzweig fears that “The Clinic” may get iced Monday night by “An Early Frost,” NBC’s highly distinguished and heavily promoted movie about AIDS.

“An Early Frost” is superior TV about an incurable virus that the entire nation is talking about. And “The Clinic” is a tender and powerful gem of an hour about another of America’s most volatile issues.

Who will win the battle of AIDS versus abortion?

Well, AIDS is sizzling right now. With good reason, then, Rosenzweig is worried that “The Clinic” will get lost in NBC’s promotion blitz for “An Early Frost.” Apparently so worried, in fact, that he appears to have launched a promotion campaign of his own, spinning controversy from straw. After all, a little tiff couldn’t hurt the box office.

Rosenzweig told reporters recently that he was concerned that “The Clinic” somehow would be sabotaged by anti-abortion forces. He predicted that elements of the pro-life movement would pressure CBS to yank the episode just as conservatives coerced some CBS affiliates into not running a 1982 “Cagney & Lacey” story about a Phyllis Schlafly-type character.

Hence, Rosenzweig took no chances. He not only told his story to the news media, but also showed the episode to pro-choice groups--hoping, he said, to buffer the show from criticism.

You can’t blame Rosenzweig for trying to start a drum roll, even if it is self serving. “The Clinic” is worth the effort. But what criticism? What pressure? Before Rosenzweig spoke out, there was none, unless it was expressed in whispers. There certainly was no public threat by a pro-life group to cut down “The Clinic” before it could air.

Rosenzweig’s prediction came true, however. In going public, he drew out the pro-life opposition and sparked a controversy that is certain to swell the audience for “The Clinic.”

Calling it “pure political propaganda,” the National Right to Life Committee has asked CBS to pull the episode. And if CBS doesn’t pull it (CBS has said it won’t), the committee will ask individual CBS stations not to run it. And stations that do run it will be asked to air a follow-up half hour program titled “Matter of Choice.” And failing that, the committee says it will ask its supporters to boycott CBS programs during the remainder of this month’s critical ratings sweeps.

There was no loud advance protest against that earlier episode of “Spenser: For Hire,” in which the private-eye character played by Robert Urich learned that his girlfriend was pregnant and he was the father. Over his objections, she decided to have an abortion, but only after the couple had a dialogue that intelligently articulated both sides of the abortion issue. Well done.

On “Spenser: For Hire,” though, abortion was merely a diverting back story that was overshadowed by other plot elements and the show’s customary hail of gunfire, sluggings and chase sequences. On Monday’s “Cagney & Lacey,” abortion is the entire focus.

Written by Judy Merl and Paul Eric Myers, “The Clinic” is ostensibly about a police investigation of a clinic bombing that kills a vagrant.

During the course of the story, though, Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly) reveals that she had an abortion out of wedlock at age 19, and she and her partner, Christine Cagney (Sharon Gless), clash over the abortion issue.

Lacey is pro-choice, the Catholic-reared Cagney is on the fence. When Cagney professes to be both pro-choice and pro-life (“I don’t know when it’s murder”), she is probably reflecting the ambivalence of many Americans on this issue.

It’s ironic that the visibly pregnant Lacey (Daly was expecting her third child when the story was filmed) should be a pro-choice advocate and that the fast-track Cagney should be the one tilting the other way. It’s ironic also that a radical pro-lifer is responsible for the clinic bomb that took a life.

Though pro-choice, “The Clinic” doesn’t shrilly denigrate the other side and does allow a pro-life activist character played by Fionnula Flanagan to state her position with force and sincerity. Moreover, the episode ends with Cagney still undecided.

What a fine episode. What a fine series.

Some series are born in a toilet and stay there. Others begin strong and fade to pastel. So you have to like “Cagney & Lacey.” It began in 1982 as a scrawny cop show and--after reprieve from cancellation through an organized viewer protest--grew healthier and healthier. It is now the Emmy-winning elite of the elite, reaffirming that high standards and high ratings are not necessarily incompatible.

“The Clinic” is yet another example of the growth and maturity of “Cagney & Lacey” and how its strong female characters have achieved pertinence without becoming preachy.

Compare “Cagney & Lacey” to prime time’s other female cop show, for example, ABC’s appallingly violent and grimy “Lady Blue,” whose glamorous central figure is fearless and tough enough to snap a lumberjack’s back. She’s half-woman, half-trigger finger.

On “Lady Blue,” almost everyone on the screen gets blown away. On “Cagney & Lacey,” only the audience gets blown away.