In the course of a conversation, an acquaintance recently mentioned that the TBS comedy “The Detour” had been renewed for a fourth season. It was odd because I don’t watch the show and also because I’m sure he had no idea I had once written about an episode which (we are told by the website) is “created, written and executive-produced by Jason Jones and Samantha Bee.”
Bee, of course, is the hyper pro-abortion, hyper-foul mouthed “comedian” whose hatred for President Trump had plummeted to new depths. I had been directed to “The Road” by a terrific post by Katie Yoder of Newsbusters.
Yoder explained that the episode begins
with a flashback where Robin (Natalie Zea) held a positive pregnancy test while sitting on the toilet.
“We don’t have to decide right now,” she calmed Nate (Jason Jones). “We’ll weigh the options and I will make the decision.”
The show then flashes forward years later to present time. Daughter Delilah (Ashley Gerasimovich) and son Jared (Liam Carroll) are the back seat of their car.
“What decision?,” Jared asks.
Long pause and Robin and Nate look at each other. “You brought it up, not me,” Nate says.
“I’m really confused right now. You were pregnant. So what was there to decide?” Delilah asks.
“Well, I had to make a choice,” Robin begins. “I had to make a choice, uh… about whether or not I was gonna keep you?”
“You were thinking about giving us up for adoption?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Well, who was gonna be our mom and dad?”
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The way “out” for Robin is to try to find a euphemism for abortion.
“I had to, uh, make a choice about whether or not I wanted to take a-a trip to the… um, Europe.”
And then Robin’s oblique explanation/ justification:
“See, the – they’re a lot of women, who, um, find themselves in a position where they feel like they have to choose between being a mom and going to Europe, and – and it’s a – it’s a very, very serious decision and one that should never be taken lightly. And make no mistake, every woman deserves the right to choose… Europe, if she so desires.”
Without acknowledging what she’d almost done, Robin says with heartfelt emotion, “But just know this. Every time I look at you, I am so thankful that I decided to stay in Syracuse.”
Nate tells the kids that their mom gave up a trip to Europe and he gave up a hockey career “and we both made the right choice.”
So, Jared asks, did his mom ever “go to Europe”?
“Just once,” Robin says. “Last year of high school.”
Nate looks at her quizzically and, perhaps, painfully?
“Is that too much truth?” Robin says.
So Ms. Bee has it both ways in “The Road.” The story affirms that not only could Robin have had an abortion, she did. But we do not learn this until after she sincerely tells Delilah and Jared that she is so, so grateful she didn’t abort them (take a “trip to Europe”), as she had her first baby.
The episode does a truly exquisite job of showing just how impossible it is to tell children they could have been aborted. (When former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards finally acknowledged she’d had an abortion, she told interviewers her kids were just fine with learning that. Personally, I don’t believe that for a nanosecond.)
And while the story line does allow Bee to advance her “pro-choice,” ideology, it also leaves another possibility: that Robin could and would have loved that lost baby.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
