TELEVISION CONFRONTS THE CONTRACEPTIVE ISSUE : ABC Sees ‘Daddy’ as an Honest, Frank Dramatization of Teen-Age Sexuality and Unwanted Pregnancy

While TV stations across the country were making headlines in recent days with their decisions to accept ads for condoms, an ABC TV-movie was quietly filming a scene showing a teen-age boy passing a condom to a friend.

“Daddy,” now in production in Los Angeles, promises to be a frank treatment of teen-age sexuality. The movie depicts the consequences of teen-age sexual activity in terms of unwanted pregnancy and deals candidly with the controversial issue of birth control.

As with other social-issue movies on TV, the producers hope to enlighten viewers--in this case teen-agers--about what it means to be pregnant, how it can be avoided, even how it happens.

“We talk about abortion, orgasm and ejaculation. We mention all types of birth control. And we deal with all the myths about getting pregnant,” said John Herzfeld, the writer and director of “Daddy.”

“Kids today are so much hipper than I was,” the 38-year-old film maker continued. “They know more, but they also know less. When I was doing research at Van Nuys High School, a girl came in wearing a rope tied around her left wrist. She told me that would keep her from getting pregnant. Ninety percent of the people I talked to believe you can’t get pregnant the first time.”

Teen-age pregnancy is not a new subject for network drama: It’s been dealt with on countless soap operas, children’s specials, prime-time series and movies for years. As long ago as 1974, ABC broadcast “Unwed Father,” a TV movie that, like “Daddy,” dealt with a high school boy facing the responsibility of becoming a parent.

What’s noteworthy about “Daddy” is the candor of the treatment and its timing--arriving as the networks are under renewed pressure from Planned Parenthood and public-health advocates to begin running ads for condoms and other contraceptives to help combat the epidemic of teen pregnancies and the lethal spread of AIDS.

Ted Harbert, vice president of motion pictures at ABC Entertainment, said the network decided to commission “Daddy” because “we feel TV drama might be the avenue that teen-agers and parents alike would be more receptive to, through the telling of a story and dispelling some of the myths about sexuality. Teen pregnancy has reached such proportions that the normal lines of communication for teens--parent-child dialogue, school-child dialogue, news media-child dialogue--haven’t apparently decreased the scope of the problem.”

But ABC denies that this attitude is in conflict with its ban on contraceptive advertising. “We’ve always made a distinction between TV programming and commercials,” explained Alan Wurtzel, vice president of broadcast standards and practices for Capital Cities/ABC Inc.

“A commercial is a message designed to sell a product or a service, and it can appear to an audience without warning,” he said in a telephone interview from New York. “If a program contains frank language or sensitive scenes, we will put on an advisory to let the audience know in advance so they can make their own decision to watch.”

“Teen-age pregnancy is a significant issue,” Wurtzel emphasized. “We want this film to be meaningful and make its point. It does not condone or condemn teen-age sexuality. A number of things will be discussed: abstinence; you can say no if you want; if you are going to have sex, you should be aware of the consequences you may have to deal with; not all teen-agers are ready to have sex.”

Does he anticipate controversy? He answered tactfully: “I can’t imagine anyone in favor of an unintended teen pregnancy.”

Robert Greenwald Productions, the company that made such issue-oriented telefilms as “The Burning Bed” (wife battering), “Shattered Spirits” (alcoholism) and “On Fire” (age discrimination), took the idea of a film on teen pregnancy to ABC two years ago.

When an earlier script “didn’t fulfill expectations,” Herzfeld said, “Bob Greenwald asked if I were interested in writing one. I saw an opportunity to stretch the margins of what’s been on network TV.”

Herzfeld’s script, which is “the culmination of a lot of stories I listened to,” is about a pregnancy that the teen-agers thought couldn’t happen, told from the daddy-to-be’s perspective. The film stars Dermot Mulroney, 23, and Patricia Arquette, 18, as the young lovers.

Mulroney said that he didn’t have to do any research for his role. “This movie tells it the way it is,” he said. “When I was in high school in Virginia, one year there were 52 pregnancies. Unplanned pregnancy is like a death. It changes your life so drastically. ‘Daddy’ is putting it all in real-life perspective.”

Herzfeld spoke highly of the support he has had from the network. “ABC really decided to go the distance on this one,” he said. “I think they’re really putting themselves on the line. Without their wanting to do this, we’d be nowhere.”

That support, he said, included allowing him “to point the finger back at television--at shows such as ‘Dynasty,’ where there’s never any discussion of protection and no one ever gets pregnant.”

ABC’s consultants on sexual matters, Philip and Lorna Sarrel of the Yale Center on Human Sexuality, made numerous suggestions that were incorporated into the script.

“They wanted to dispel the myth that condoms aren’t reliable or effective,” “Daddy” producer Heidi Frey said. “They also suggested that we show during the pregnancy that it’s common for teen-age girls to suffer from toxemia, which causes high blood pressure, headaches and depression.”

“None of what we’re saying is news to anyone,” Mulroney said, “but some of it has never been said on television, ever.” ABC’s Wurtzel disagreed. “I don’t think ‘Daddy’ is such a quantum leap from what’s been done before,” he said. “We aired an ‘Afterschool Special’ (‘Teen Father’) recently that wasn’t all that different in terms of its general reality base.” He conceded, however, that there are some normally taboo words in the movie that ABC approved “because we felt it was appropriate within the context of the program.”

One of the words to which Wurtzel was referring is rubber. “It’s the first use we know of on network TV,” producer Frey said.

“We were going to have the character refer to a condom as a ‘glove,’ but that was nixed by Standards and Practices as being too graphic. I understand there was an internal dispute on which word was more offensive, rubber or glove, “ she chuckled. “Standards and Practices opted to allow us to use rubber. “

Frey said that she has no doubt some people will be offended by “Daddy.” But she also believes that many parents will be relieved at having some of the burden for sex education lifted from their shoulders, and that some may be motivated to talk about the subject honestly with their children for the first time.

“This movie,” she said, “is about communication--having the knowledge and knowing how to use it. We’re not advocating anything one way or the other. We’re not saying, ‘Have sex and use a condom.’ We’re saying, ‘What’s necessary is communication about the issues.’ ”

“TV can do good if it raises issues (that) parents may be too embarrassed to deal with,” Wurtzel agreed, citing the network’s Emmy Award-winning “Something About Amelia” as an example. In that case, “TV brought the issues of incest and child molestation to the forefront. If it can raise the issue of teen-age sexuality and stimulate dialogue, TV will be doing as much as it possibly can do.”