Don't know about you, but I'd sure approach a Fox News documentary on abortion with extreme caution. Would the Red State Network slant the perspective - and reporting - so far to the right that by the time you're done watching, you'd feel so relentlessly clobbered with anti-Roe-v-Wade-right-to-life doggerel that you couldn't even get up from the couch? One assumes - heh,heh - that Fox likes to play to its audience, so why trust it on this incendiary topic?
So much for MY fair-and-balanced perspective: Fox has, in fact, proven that it can undertake a subject of this emotional magnitude and handle in a manner that's both intelligent and sensitive, and as proof, check out tomorrow night's hour-long "Facing Reality: Choice" at 9, hosted by E.D.Hill and produced by Rachel Feldman. (Of course no one expects you to sit home and watch it, so at least set your DVR or whatever to the program.) It's good, and FNC can be faulted for just two major defects - the Saturday burial ground time slot and the blunt fact that one hour (really, just 44 minutes) is an absurd amount of time for a subject like this. (Why not stake a claim, FNC? CNN is draping itself in green - YOU can drape yourself in coverage of a story that's one of the most important in the forthcoming election. Go ahead, FNC - you can do it. I know you can.)
"Facing Reality" explores the stories of three women - each white, each living in Bible Belt Country - who got pregnant and had to decide whether they should get an abortion. There's no narration or commentary; the camera follows them - really follows them, including one instance right through the procedure itself. The result are portraits that aren't quickly sketched, but deeply drawn, because each woman struggles at various times with different emotions, and shifting circumstances.There's Jeanne - drug addict, keeps getting pregnant, declines abortion, puts some up for adoption; Brooke, struggles to get pregnant, finally does with a baby with a fatal chromosomal disorder; and Kayla, aspiring cosmetician, gets pregnant, has non-supportive boyfriend. Their stories are not set up as "representative" - just stories, and well-told ones at that.