2007: Year of the Pro-Life Movie?

By Jason Byassee

My interlocutor had just read my glowing review of Knocked Up. He was concerned, not so much about the movie’s raunch level, as about its hot-button politics. “Isn’t that movie pro-life?” he asked hesitantly.

Indeed, Christianity Today proclaimed 2007 as the year pro-life went Hollywood with movies like Knocked Up, Juno and Waitress.

Juno presents a teenager who carries a difficult pregnancy to term; it also includes a sympathetic portrayal of an abortion protestor. She holds a misspelled sign, chants “all babies want to get borned,” and is ethnically Asian—a point that somehow makes her more believable and likeable. At first she fails to stop Juno from her trek into the clinic; she reminds Juno that her that her baby has a beating heart—a standard protestor line. But then she shouts, “Your baby has fingernails!” and Juno is stunned. “Really?” After an unpleasant experience with a gnarly receptionist who offers her a boysenberry condom, Juno sprints for the parking lot while her victorious opponent gives thanks for a little miracle.

Director Jason Reitman also made the fantastic Thank You for Smoking, with which Juno shares some features—profanity, an ultra-postmodern dish of cool, and a stealthily conservative worldview. Thank You pilloried liberal do-gooders who pass laws to make the rest of us behave. Juno suggests you can be as hip as the next kid and also be against abortion. There’s nothing wrong with art pushing a worldview, of course, especially when it’s genuinely good art. Social conservatives have long argued that politics follows culture, rather than the other way around. How much more effective is it then, long-term, to make a film depicting the beauties of a problem pregnancy carried to term than to press for laws to change things?

Waitress is a bit more problematic. Keri Russell’s lead character is in a problem pregnancy thanks to her self-absorbed husband. Her problems increase when she begins to visit the gynecologist more often than necessary. This pie baker in small-town America gradually gains a feminist self-assertion, flicking off both her barbarian husband and her heartthrob MD as she fiercely embraces her baby and singlehood. Sure enough, a woman has a baby she’d not planned and wasn’t—at first—happy about. But the adulterer-turned-divorce-initiator-by-way-of-feminist-self-assertation is hardly a poster child for the sort of family-friendly social policy the above commentators fear or praise.

Bella barely deserves mention. It was packaged by Catholic bishops as an antiabortion movie, and so is hardly representative of a cultural groundswell. Wittingly or not it smells like propaganda. The CT article also includes Children of Men, the terrific sci-fi apocalypse with the impossibly long camera takes and Clive Owen’s unbelievably cool demeanor while saving the world. Perhaps P. D. James’s book was more plainly anti-abortion, but the film makes clear a scenario in which absolutely everyone would be pro-life: if there are no more babies, the plotline goes, then the birth of one would be survival for us all. Margaret Sanger herself would block the clinic door.

The problem with “the year of the pro-life movie” storyline: none of these movies even begins to suggest that laws should be passed to make abortion more difficult, let alone illegal, and that’s what it means to be pro-life: not to have a difficult child yourself, but to legislate that someone else should have a difficult child as well.

Comments

[Jess]

I agree completely. Nearly all of my pro-choice friends certainly don't think that abortion is a "good thing," and similarly most of them think carrying the baby to term is an admirable thing. Despite pro-life stereotypes (have you ever noticed that pro-lifers always refer to the opposition as "anti-life" and pro-choicers refer to opponents as "anti-choice"?), I don't know anyone who would try to convince someone to get an abortion unless it would really, seriously mess up her life in a big way. It's about having the option open, not about having everybody take the option.

[guy m williams]

"The problem with “the year of the pro-life movie” storyline: none of these movies even begins to suggest that laws should be passed to make abortion more difficult, let alone illegal..."

Would that fact not be a critique of your broad-brush assessment that what it means to be "pro-life" is no more robust that being interested in legislating the behavior of others?

[Jess]

But, guym, that *is* what being pro-life means; I think the definition is wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade. People who want to cut down on abortions without making them illegal are considered pro-choice. There's a reason they call themselves pro-*choice*, not pro-*abortion*.

(Me, I'm firmly on the fence. I want to do whatever will cause the fewest abortions possible (with the exception of when it would seriously endanger the mother's life), but I honestly don't know what will be the most effective at achieving that goal. If I come across a convincing argument that leaving it legal will actually cause fewer of them to be performed (I've seen arguments for this but no incontrovertable ones), then I would consider myself pro-choice.)

[Jason Byassee]

Guy I don't understand your comment enough to respond, but am certainly aware I could've made a mistake here (or anywhere else for that matter!)--can you clarify?
Note: at the end I'm not saying being pro-life is right or wrong, just that it's a higher bar to clear than being suggested in CT.
I also sense the vast majority of people I talk to think abortion is too readily available in this country (it's much more restricted in much more irreligious and liberal Europe), but they don't want to see it criminalized. So I think the categories are restrictive, precisely as Jess suggests.

[taylor]

Jason, this is a really helpful observation. It seems that the over-simplification with which the CT article treats the issue (and the "arguments" or "affirmations" of the movies/moviemakers) is reflective of the way the whole issue (and the debate around it) is oversimplified. (Did that make sense?)

I haven't seen all of these movies, but the ones I have seen--and the fact that such movies are being made in the first place--point,instead, to the complexity of the issue. The fact is, when a woman becomes pregnant under any circumstances (wanted, unwanted, planned, unplanned, married, unmarried, etc.), no matter what action is taken or what decision is made, the result will most certainly be a complicated, messy one.

(Parents everywhere are shouting, "Yea, verily!")

:)

[Suzy]

Yea, verily!

Except, I don't think those portrayals point to the complexity of real-life issues. Sure, there's some "messiness," but it's pretty easily dealt with. We don't see people living in lifelong poverty. We don't see terrible physical abuse of children who don't "belong" to one of the partners in an all-too-temporary relationship. We don't see children growing up with people who really, really didn't want to be parents and who blame the children for all that's wrong in their lives.

No doubt it's very tempting to suggest that most abortions are, in the end, matters of convenience, and once the morning sickness and labor pains are past, everyone settles down to live happily ever after. Yes, some people — many, no doubt — should just grow up, already. But healthy families are not always the result, as we can see from the generation of children now in our schools.

No matter how pro-life we are, we won't make much progress until we acknowledge that some of those women face very hard choices indeed. Big-screen sugarcoating is fun, but as Jason said, there's a lot more to being pro-life than that.

[guy m williams]

Hi, Jason, sorry for the lack of clarity. Thanks for your clarifications. I understand that you're not getting into a value judgment here but commenting on the CT piece and the definitions of the categories "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

It seems to me that defining the category "pro-life" so narrowly as to be only or principally about enacting legislation to make abortion more difficult or illegal and "not to have a difficult child yourself, but to legislate that someone else should have a difficult child as well" has made it hard to reckon how these films could be deemed "pro-life" (or rather, this year the "year of the pro-life movie") since they are not confined to the definition.

Seems as though you're using the definition to assess the article's "year of the pro-life movie" narrative as deficient.

But it seems to me that it can go the other direction as well and that the definition might be deficient based on an apparently larger vision of what it means to be pro-life operative in the article's narrative.

Am I making any more sense?

By the way, I'm not making judgments about whether or not you or other commenters are pro-life or pro-choice and if that is right or wrong, only seeing a narrow definition of "pro-life" in the face of broader understanding of "pro-life."

[guy m williams]

Hi, Jess,

You said: "But, guym, that *is* what being pro-life means; I think the definition is wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade. People who want to cut down on abortions without making them illegal are considered pro-choice. There's a reason they call themselves pro-*choice*, not pro-*abortion*."

I disagree. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the terms and the term "pro-life" is so narrow as to apply only to passing of legislation. But that doesn't square with everyone I know who, like myself, considers themselves pro-life but does not find themselves on the far Right politically.

I think I hear the distinctions you are making between being "pro-choice" vs. "pro-abortion." Actually, that lack of differentiation between terms is prevalent in both the self-identifying "pro-life" and "pro-choice" camps.

But I would argue that one can be pro-life and not think the only or best political strategy consists in putting all the eggs in the pass-laws-to-make-it-illegal and appoint-conservative-justices baskets. Democrats For Life, for example, looks at other issues that relate to persons choosing an abortion to, as you say, "do whatever will cause the fewest abortions possible." The take a different approach but would hardly consider themselves pro-choice.

Thanks for the conversation; is this helpful?

[Jason Byassee]

Yes Guy, thanks for your clarification, I may be drawing the lines too narrowly. It's a nice illustration of why the demarcated camps seem arbitrary. I do think abortion is an act of violence that Christians should avoid, an encourage others to avoid, in Cardinal Bernardin's 'seamless garment of life' sort of way. And, as I say in the post, I think social conservatives are wise to the fact that if they're winning at the polls but losing in the broader culture they lose--hence these movies do fit that agenda (though Juno fits it better than Children). Finally, I have had the experience of laying out my views to pro-life friends and being told I'm not one of them because I'm not ready to commit to an all-out ban (I'd be happy with one at viability, which most European countries have). It is hard to disagree with their point that 1+ million a year is outrageous.

[guy m williams]

Thanks, Jason.

I think we're on the same page. Though my gut response was to draw the lines less narrowly, it certainly remains that a strong group, probably the dominant group, who self-identify as "pro-life" narrowly define the pro-life project as legislative and more all-or-nothing. So, though I think your definition was too narrowly defined, I'm now thinking that I'm as much frustrated that that narrow definition fits persons far too often. Again, that's what I appreciate about Democrats for Life--serious enough about pro-life to include more tactics than merely the all-or-nothing approach common to political conservatives. In that vein, one thing that has frustrated me about conservatives is that the all-or-nothing approach (a) leaves some measures behind like addressing issues that contribute to persons choosing an abortion, and (b) is all to convenient for electoral strategy--yep, keep electing me, we haven't beaten the other side on abortion yet, nevermind that we're not working to reduce abortions in the meantime while we're trying to eliminate them.

Thanks for conversation on this issue.

[Jason Byassee]

I have on good authority that whoever's the Democratic nominee is going to endorse the abortion reduction bill in Congress and so make that a priority in their campaign. It's a far cry from when Democrats for Life couldn't get on the DNC website and Bob Casey wasn't allowed to speak at the 1992 convention. My worry now is Democrats will bandy the cause around and do nothing about it, just as Republicans have done for 35 years (aside from pulling it out at election time, and, arguably, appointing judges on those grounds).

[Bromleigh]

Of all the unrealistic things about Juno (which I loved), the thing most appropos in this conversation was the availability of an abortion to a minor in a small town. The title character, in a conversation with her best girlfriend, suggests that there are two places in town to go, one where parental consent is required, one where it is not. If I recall (and maybe I don't), the movie is set in PA, one of 34 states that requires by law that minors have parental involvement in their decision to seek an abortion... even though studies consistently prove that such legislation places an undue burden on the health and welfare of affected minors (a sidenote: a majority of teens involve at least one parent in their decision anyway, the ones who don't have compelling reasons not to, usually fear of violence). Also, 87% of U.S. counties lack any abortion provider, rendering it extremely difficult to obtain an early and safe abortion, particularly to those women who are under-resourced in other ways.

I don't love the idea of abortion, but it seems early and safe ones are better than later and more dangerous ones.

There are an awful lot of abortions in this country -- but it is a myth that all who "need" them can get them easily and readily... if Juno is anti-abortion (which I didn't get at all), it may be in perpetuating this misconception.

[Bromleigh]

On second reading, I shouldn't say, "studies consistently prove...." But lots of research studies "consistently demonstrate..."

[guy m williams]

"My worry now is Democrats will bandy the cause around and do nothing about it, just as Republicans have done for 35 years (aside from pulling it out at election time, and, arguably, appointing judges on those grounds)."

I'm with you on that.

Did think that Casey the younger unseating Santorum in that Senate race should send a message to the DNC as a whole. Not that it was everything, but the neutralizing of the abortion issue made it well worth noting.