From Joe Diliberto
Daisy's latest saga came to a climax today on GUIDING LIGHT when the families involved learned that she had — well, exactly what? Setting aside everyone's personal opinions about the emotionally and politically volatile issue of abortion, I wanted to comment on the lengths to which the soap went to avoid using the A-word as much as possible. The year 2007 is drawing to a close, and the word is so taboo that a TV program is afraid to even use it. One might think the year is 1952, when I LOVE LUCY's Ricky was forced by society to say Lucy was "'spectin'" when she was "in a family way" — even though she was married! Today's conversations used tortured verbiage that strained credibility. Reva informed Natalia, Harley and Buzz that Daisy had the legal medical procedure by saying, "She made the decision to end the pregnancy." The code words were out in force: Although Harley used the A-word while arguing with Reva, she also told Cyrus that Daisy "made her choice." The language barrier also extended to sex and pregnancy. When Daisy mentioned their night of passion to Rafe, she called it, "the night we...y'know." And instead of saying she got pregnant, she simply looked at him with sad eyes and said, "I never thought this could happen to me." When she told him the measures she took, Daisy tap-danced around it. "I'm not pregnant anymore," she said, adding, "I had to choose," before clarifying with, "I ended it." (Keep in mind that on a soap this could mean she tumbled down a flight of stairs.) Although Daisy didn't say it, a confused Rafe used the dread word when he asked, "Daisy, you had an abortion?" An annoyed Rafe later snapped at his mother, "I know what she means." Which is my point exactly — if everyone knows what she means, what's the value of avoiding the word? This is a front-burner storyline, so it's not like GL was interested in avoiding the issue. Again, without taking a pro or con stance, does the word itself have to be verboten at the expense of credibility?

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