She was a 47-year-old grandmother with a dilemma: an unexpected pregnancy. It was 1972, the year before Roe vs. Wade made abortion the law of the land.

Even though she lived in New York State, where the procedure was legal, the decision on whether to carry the baby to term wasn`t easy. She thought her husband wanted the child; he thought she did. Then they realized that, at their ages, they didn`t want to raise a second family.

Twenty years ago this month, Maude Findlay, the lead character on one of TV`s most popular shows, chose to get an abortion.

Today, Maude`s decision stands as a watershed in TV history, an event that brought the battle over choice into the prime-time arena.

In the current political and economic climate, with the networks besieged by pressure groups and afraid to lose even more of their viewers to home video and cable TV, Maude, like Murphy Brown, would probably have the baby. But

''Maude`s Dilemma,'' the two-parter that presented the abortion question, took a more controversial tack-although, ironically, the program wasn`t conceived with abortion in mind.

''The funny thing is that initially we weren`t even thinking abortion,''

Rod Parker, producer of ''Maude,'' said in an interview. ''The group Zero Population Growth announced they were giving a $10,000 prize for comedies that had something to do with controlling population, so everyone came in with ideas for vasectomies.''

''Maude,'' starring Bea Arthur, was in its first season. It was the latest entry from producer Norman Lear, who had already changed TV with the ground-breaking ''All in the Family.''

With its large, loud protagonist and her messy family life, ''Maude'' was presented as a realistic contrast to the perfection of such TV mothers as Donna Reed and Harriet Nelson. It was also a perfect vehicle to explore the burgeoning feminism of the era.

Population planning seemed to fit perfectly into this scheme. At first, the show was about the pregnancy of Maude`s neighbor Vivian (played by Rue McClanahan), leading into a discussion of contraception and whether Walter, Maude`s husband (played by Bill Macy), would get a vasectomy.

But after reviewing the first draft of the script, Lear said in an interview, he thought ''the wrong woman is funny''-Maude herself would become pregnant. Lear also decided a false pregnancy would be a copout and a miscarriage was out of the question because Gloria Bunker (Sally Struthers)

already had lost a baby that way on ''All in the Family.''

''The more interesting story seemed to be, what would this 47-year-old woman really do in her life,'' Lear said. ''And the conclusion we reached was that her family would be thoroughly involved in the deepest concern about all this.''

''We knew where the daughter would be on all this,'' Lear said, referring to Maude`s daughter, Carol (played by Adrienne Barbeau), a committed feminist who first brings up the idea of abortion on the show, ''and that Maude would be absolutely torn, but that she`d come down on the side, given her age, of not having a child.''

Maude was not the first TV character to have an abortion. In 1964, a woman on the soap opera ''Another World'' had what was referred to as an

''illegal operation'' that left her unable to bear children. But Maude`s abortion was the first by a leading TV character. It represented a

breakthrough for prime-time TV and served as a lightning rod for enormous criticism.

The two-part ''Maude`s Dilemma'' was broadcast Nov. 14 and 21, 1972, although not without some network trepidation.

''They were very nervous, to say the least,'' said Parker. ''The thing we had going for us was that `Maude` was a hit, so the network said OK. But they requested we give another side, so we (wrote) in a neighbor who had a lot of children and was very happy.''

Despite the compromise, the network developed cold feet at the last minute: CBS refused to pay to tape the episodes. But Lear told network executives that if the shows were not taped and aired, they would have to find another program to fill ''Maude`s'' timeslot. (A secretary for producer Fred Silverman, who was head of CBS programming at the time, said he was ''too busy'' to be interviewed for this article.)

Huge audience, loud protests

The first showing of ''Maude`s Dilemma'' was carried by all but two of CBS` nearly 200 affiliates, and attracted nearly 7,000 letters of protest. By the time the shows were repeated, in August 1973, a campaign against them had been organized by the United States Catholic Conference.

The reruns were broadcast, but nearly 40 affiliates chose not to air them, not one corporate sponsor bought commercial time, and CBS received more than 17,000 letters of protest.

''The amount of mail was incredible,'' Bea Arthur said in an interview.

''I can`t call it hate mail, although there were a few that said, `Die, die,` but most were intelligent people who were deeply offended, and very emotional about it. I think the problem was I had become some sort of Joan of Arc for the middle-aged woman.

''People were saying it was so refreshing a woman came along who was a real woman, not like Donna Reed, and I think when I came out with this, it was almost treasonous, a personal attack.''

Despite the protests, the shows attracted a huge audience. In an era before cable TV and home video, the episodes averaged 41 percent of the viewing audience. Not only were they No. 1 in their time period, but they also catapulted the series into the Nielsen ratings Top 10.

CBS estimated that as many as 65 million people watched at least one of the episodes, either first-run or in rerun. That figure represented nearly one-third of the American population.

Changing times

Twenty years later, it is doubtful a similar show could be broadcast on network TV.

In 1972, the word ''abortion'' was used exactly twice on ''Maude`s Dilemma''-once on each show. Nowadays the ''a'' word has practically been purged from the prime-time vocabulary and is heard almost exclusively on talk shows and some daytime soaps.

A handful of programs-''Hill Street Blues,'' ''St. Elsewhere,'' ''Cagney and Lacey''-have tackled the issue, but for the most part, a major character`s having an abortion is not even considered an option on network programming.

These days, prime-time pregnancies usually result in a false alarm (a 1990 episode of ''Roseanne''); a decision to have a baby, followed by a tear- drenched recitation of a previous abortion (a 1985 episode of ''Cagney and Lacey''); or an affirmation of the right to choose even while deciding to have the baby (''thirtysomething'' and this year`s controversial episode of

''Murphy Brown'').

In the rare case that abortion actually occurs, it is usually on a program without sponsorship-the 1989 TV movie ''Roe v. Wade'' reportedly cost NBC $1 million in lost advertising.