Written By Patrick Harbinson
Directed By Peter Leto
A sixteen-year-old girl is found badly beaten in a hotel room, and subsequently disappears from the hospital. The investigation reveals that she is a runaway from a small town in Virginia, and also that she came to New York seeking an abortion.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Syntax: Once the detectives realize Lauren ordered Wayne to beat her, Olivia's confused why the witness heard her yelling, "Stop, don't!" Lauren admits she was screaming, "Don't stop!"
- Artistic License – Medicine: Lauren reveals she discovered she was pregnant "about 13 weeks later when I missed my third period," then explains, "I tried to buy the abortion pill, but the pharmacist wouldn't sell it." This seems to be the all-too-common error of fiction mistaking Plan B (which can be bought over the counter but only to prevent pregnancy if used shortly after having sex without protection or where protection failed like the condom breaking and will not cause an abortion if taken at any point during a pregnancy) for the 2-pill abortion pill regimen (which requires a prescription, which her father — whose insurance Lauren is presumably on — would have known about, and which are only approved for use up to 10 weeks, meaning Lauren would have been outside the window to have ever gotten a prescription for those).
- Bystander Syndrome: Other residents of the fleabag hotel in the start of the episode hear screaming, but refuse to deal with the source.
- Everyone Has Standards: In the episode, the nurse was okay with using the fake abortion clinic ruse when they used it to talk to the women and try to convince them not to terminate, but draws the line at the head doctor of her clinic trying to force pregnant women to keep their babies by promising the procedure and then deliberately delaying their appointments until it's too late for them to abort.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Defied by Lauren, who tries every legal option she can think of to abort before finally resorting to persuading Wayne to help her beat the fetus to death. None of the squad judge her for the abortion, they are however understandably alarmed by the solution she ultimately took.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: The prostitute at the beginning of the episode who in spite of being in the middle of a job, overhears the victim and comes to her rescue. She even tells her client to get lost when rendering aid to the girl.
- I Have No Son!: Lauren's father immediately disowns her when he finds out what she and Wayne did, but Stabler talks him out of it. He had previously done the same to his older daughter for getting pregnant, which is why Lauren was so terrified of telling him about the pregnancy.
- Just Eat Gilligan: The entire plot could have been avoided if Lauren had just gone to a different abortion clinic after the first one told her to come back another day.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Lauren got pregnant on her first and only time with Wayne.
- Ripped from the Headlines: References the controversy over abstinence pledges and crisis pregnancy centers.
- Teenage Pregnancy: Lauren, which is why she came to New York. It's later revealed that her older sister also got pregnant as a teenager and their father threw her out, hence why Lauren was terrified of him finding out.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Lett, the anti-abortion doctor who tries to force pregnant women to keep their babies. He publicly advertises his clinic as an abortion clinic to lure in pregnant women, then delays their appointments for weeks until it's too late for them to have an abortion under New York state law. His clinic was the last resort for Lauren, who had tried every other method of abortion available, and when he refused to give her the procedure, she resorted to having her boyfriend Wayne beat her with a lamp until she miscarried. As he's being arrested at the end of the episode, he yells, "I'm saving innocent lives!"
