Pregnancy Is Not the Public's Business

So, here we go. Just so you know, I'm already up to speed on some major no-go's. Not if I'm too young. (Covered!) Not if I'm too old. (Oh, no worries! Apparently it's too late -- when you're over 30, even your eggs fly the coop.)

And here come the more wobbly proscriptions of our modern era: Not -- prepare the crimson "S"! -- if you're single. (See: "Not in the best interests of the child".) Not if you're amicably separated. (Unless you're prepared to be seen as a damsel-in-distress by the entire Western world.) Definitely not when the father of your baby is currently married to someone else. (Here, as far as I can see, mainly because people won't be able to differentiate that choice from the choice to have the affair.) And not if Sen. Scott Brown is anywhere in the vicinity. (Witness the man who used his victory speech to auction off his daughters give a moral-police snort at our president's mother's connubial status when she gave birth -- which, as it happens, was married.)

But even these are just offshoots of our culture's favorite debate about women: how much you need a man, and how bad a person you probably are if you don't have one. Children simply up the ante, because it's generally agreed that children fare better in stable households, and it's easy for the moral police to fudge "stable" to mean "mother and father." (Don't be insensible to the powers of such fudging. Well-meaning people tsk-tsk'd about my probable psychological damage as the daughter of one black parent and one white parent my whole life, and Loving v. Virginia only overturned the laws against it six years before I was born.)

But only so many people have enough free time to subjugate women and second-guess other people's parenting on a daily basis. (More than you'd like, but only so many.) Despite the perennial political football Roe v. Wade, the majority of Americans irritatingly persist in thinking other people's child-bearing and child-rearing choices are basically their own. So what's a media stalled on Rielle and John's sex tape and "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" to do?

If the last few weeks are any indication, it's to release a veritable Grand Guignol of mother-in-waiting stories, each more grotesque -- and engrossing -- than the next.

First, Lifetime aired "The Pregnancy Pact," the real-life story of 17 girls at a Gloucester, Mass., high school who allegedly decided to get pregnant en masse. Animated only by the presence of an intent and smart Thora Birch, it leaves the viewer feeling queasily sympathetic for the expectant subjects. (Our culture that says you're too young to have sex at 16 and too old to give birth at 30. Can you blame them for getting a head start?)

Next, "Bump" hit the Web. A faux documentary in which actors portray three women choosing on camera whether to end or keep their pregnancies, the crowd-sourced, Web-based series defies easy definition. (Mockumama?) The innovative aspect comes from the hundreds of commenters, who are allowed to direct the choices the women make next.

In this, one must be truly grateful for the highly hokey performances. (Especially the moodily intense Andray Johnson, who appears to be going for the Oscar as the series physician.) If the actors didn't seem as if they'd just swanned in from a mouthwash ad, one might mistake them for real women -- some commenters do -- who've turned their quandary over to a swarm of digital strangers like a snapshot for "Hot or Not?"

That casual abandon is implicit in the MTV series "16 and Pregnant," which welcomes you to the site with an info box that says "Got a question? All About Pregnancy Prevention." The exploitation here is also implicit (if they're too young to get pregnant, they're probably too young to suffer for it on-camera). But TLC's newest baby series, "I'm Pregnant And . . ." in which, each week, the ellipsis is replaced by another difficulty -- bipolar, homeless, 55 years old, addicted -- takes exploitation high-volume.

Everyone is familiar with the tabloid H-bomb of "John & Kate Plus 8," in which the couple went from hashing out breakfast-table conflicts to a very public split that had them trading barbs on Us magazine covers. "I'm Pregnant And . . ." is part of a cottage industry of TLC's parenting shows, following recent supersized family series, "Table for 12" and "19 Kids and Counting." These specialize in a patented mix of sanctimony and TMI, participants courting controversy mainly by professing how ordinary they are. (The Duggars, welcoming another into their brood of 19 -- appeared on People this week under the headline, "How Many Kids is Too Many?")

But "I'm Pregnant And . . ." -- unlike "Jon & Kate," "Table for 12" and "19 Kids" -- had the potential to be truly illuminating. (Those couples chose to make themselves grotesque by bearing enormous families -- and selling the story to the world.) The subjects of "I'm Pregnant And . . . " haven't chosen to be bipolar, or 55, or homeless, and the decision to have the pregnancy doesn't necessarily make for a good People story.

But rather than focus on the particular difficulties of each case, and how a pregnancy complicates already serious matters, TLC chooses to trade on the disabilities themselves. A recent episode found a bipolar mom-to-be attending a community support group in which, as a trust-building exercise, members wrapped their fellow attendees in toilet paper. (No, I couldn't make it out either.) Adding a rippling overlay, the camera panned back and forth over the woman's terrified face, following her outside as she stuttered how difficult it was to be touched in her condition. Bipolar? Pregnant? I'm neither, and I can't imagine I'd be thrilled to be wrapped in toilet paper either.

But the question of the public pregnancy is currently writ largest in the controversy surrounding the Tim Tebow ad, in which the player's mother, Pam Tebow, discusses keeping her son despite a dangerous illness that threatened her life. Funded by the evangelical group Focus on the Family, the ad drew the ire of NOW, which called on the network to drop the ad. (Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richard's wisely answered with a more crowd-friendly video featuring the Gold medalist Al Joyner and the NFL's Sean James discussing the power of choice.)

In our reach-across-the-aisle era, it's very easy to make the argument that putting pregnancy under the spotlight helps us open up the discussion about choice. But as these portrayals grow like their own little breed of Duggars, I'd like to have a conversation about why we have to have one. After all, if you've got to expose your choice to an audience to have the right to make it, you've already lost the battle.

The producers of "Bump" may think allowing viewers to determine what women will do about their pregnancies through their own chattering stream is a novel convention. But strangers chattering on the most private of choices have been around for quite some time. So far, the flurry of bump-related exposes has given us the means to gawk, judge, condemn, pick over. They're apology, sanctimony, exploitation and exhibition. But so far, the last thing they're here for is to start a conversation.