How the tears flowed for CBS and its stellar producer Norman Lear when all the sponsors and 36 of 189 affiliates dropped the reruns of "Maude's Dilemma,"… as though they were tainted with plague bacilli….

What about "Maude's Dilemma"? The problem is not controversial content, but the mode of treatment; there are distinctions among the different genres. Maude is a comedy; it does not present a discussion of abortion by experts, offer the editorial position of a station, which by law must be identified as editorial and which may be answered by an opposing view under the equal time provision of the Fairness Doctrine, nor, finally, does it present a serious dramatic conflict in which a woman faces a tragic decision. Unless I am very much mistaken, any of these formats would meet only marginal objection.

In "Maude's Dilemma," abortion is not a matter of life and death; it is...