Editor's note. Lots to talk about. I hope you hear from you at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Usually we save a smorgasbord of items for our Friday edition of TN&V. But we'll jump ahead to do a combination issue; there is just too much going on.

I knew --or at least I strongly suspected--when I read Michael Gerson's column last week that it would prompt a kind of denial from Yale President Richard Levin.

Writing in the Washington Post, Gerson discussed the American kickoff of Tony Blair's Faith Foundation which, Gerson said, "unintentionally revealed the mountain of misunderstanding the former British prime minister has undertaken to scale."

According to Gerson Yale University President Richard Levin "casually asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists. Pro-life Catholics and evangelicals? Wahhabi extremists? What's the difference?"

For emphasis, Gerson added, "Clearly, mutual religious sympathy has a ways to go in places such as Yale."

When Levin received a flurry of critical emails, he informed the Yale student newspaper that the column was inaccurate.

"I never made any such statement nor would I," Levin wrote to the Yale Daily News. "I said something to the effect that religious views impinge upon politics everywhere. For example, even in the U.S., the religious right has hijacked the foreign aid agenda."

Hmmm. Does that sound conveniently vague, as in since nobody televised the event, I can spin this pretty much any way I want?

Read the words and between the lines. Ask yourself, what does it tell you about Levin when he talks of religious views "imping[ing]" on an issue? That they oughtn't to have a voice in the first place.

Clearly, for Levin, for people of faith to be a party to the discussion in and of itself constitutes "hijack[ing] the foreign aid agenda." My guess is that Levin said something very, very close to what Gerson attributed to him.

A story out of England reports how Devbai Patel, a grandmother, had been in a coma for six weeks when, on the recommendation of doctors, her family brought her 23-month-old granddaughter, Leela, into the room. The thought was since medications hadn't roused her nor had Patel responded to her family's voices, she might respond to the little girl.

Sure enough, when Leela, frightened by her grandmother's appearance, screamed, Patel immediately opened her eyes. According to her husband, it was a "miracle."

"The doctors couldn't believe how quickly she got better once she had woke up," said Kunverii Patel. Now recuperating, Mrs. Patel said, ""I'm glad to be home."

Is it too much of a reach to draw a comparison? That we are in our own kind of coma, unresponsive to the cruelty that we casually inflict on unborn children-- and that it will require fresh eyes to see how ill we really are as a result?

Finally, I did not learn about this until after the programs were no longer available online.

Last month the BBC ran "Teen Mum High" and "Abortion: The Choice" on successive nights. This was denounced by one reviewer in hyperbolic terms. "If the BBC had set out to make a season of anti-abortion documentaries," fumed Andrew Billen, 'it could not have done much better than with the Bare Facts season currently running on BBC Two." What ticked him off so

"On Monday night in Teen Mum High we visited a school for pregnant schoolgirls each of whom was opposed to abortion and seemed to be blossoming under the twin demands of motherhood and academe," he wrote. "Last night's Abortion: the Choice showed all the emotional trauma of having a termination and precious little of the gift of life it can give back to women."

A less hostile source described the first night's broadcast as a look "at life in a pupil referral unit for school-age girls who are either pregnant or have recently become a mum." It's one of a small set of school for girls who did not (or will not) abort their babies where they get prepared for the actual delivery and motherhood.

"This insightful and touching documentary shows the work of the dedicated headmistress and staff and intertwines the girls' personal stories with their daily life at school, following some of the pupils as they struggle balancing being a teen mum with continuing their education."

As for "Abortion: The Choice," one writer who described themselves as "a staunchly pro-choice person," explained that it dealt candidly with five women who had aborted.

"Admirably steering clear of any moral examination but refusing to shirk the upsetting realities of abortion, the film instead focused entirely on the emotional effects of the process, vividly illustrating the difficulty of the choice some women face and--to be honest--making for an hour of just horribly, gut-wrenchingly sad television."

The writer added, "Unlike most TV documentaries on abortion I've seen, Abortion: The Choice really gave face to the whirlwind of conflicting emotion women face in this situation and forced you to look at your own opinion of abortion, whatever it is, in a new light."