Hey Film Industry: "Abortion" is Not a Bad Word, Mmmkay?

re: Hey Film Industry: "Abortion" is Not a Bad Word, Mmmkay?

ranbi — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:52:46 GMT

Nice post - but I'm pretty sure we've seen this one before about a year ago, back when this was relevant.

re: Hey Film Industry: "Abortion" is Not a Bad Word, Mmmkay?

cbroo — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:18:06 GMT

i'm an american living in germany. my roommate and i have a romanian friend who comes over about once a month for a movie night. he brings the movie. it's usually something romanian or eastern european and he doesn't tell us what the movie is about beforehand. for our last movie night, we watched "4 months 3 weeks and 2 days" -- brilliant movie, difficult for me to watch...because i had just had an abortion exactly a week before.

while it didn't make me feel grateful for "frothy movies", it most certainly made me feel really (reallyreallyreallyreeeeeallly) grateful that i'm currently living in a country where not only does the government give assistance to the people who want to keep the baby, but they also make pregnancy termination available, making both decisions (keep vs. abort) far less stigmatized (than in states, not to mention under the romanian dictatorship).

re: Hey Film Industry: "Abortion" is Not a Bad Word, Mmmkay?

LydiaSarah — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:48:01 GMT

Sounds really interesting--but I disagree with your interpretation of Knocked Up. Why does the main character's choice to keep the fetus have to be interpreted as an attack on abortion rights? (although maybe I'm misunderstanding your objection.) And yeah, most 20-something women with goals might not be up for a stoner baby-daddy, including me, but there are those that would go through with it too, and they're not all picketing abortion clinics. I know some of them. Personally, I think it's nice to see a movie that deals with a road less taken without being anti-abortion. It's refreshing to see a point of view between the two that are generally available to us--those two being "Smart, liberated women must always terminate their unplanned pregnancies or otherwise they're just selling out to the patriarchal conservative norm" and "No woman must ever terminate a pregnancy EVER, otherwise she is a murderous jezebel!"