Media

3 movies with (accidental) pro-life messages

It’s great that films like Bella, October Baby, and Doonby get made. But sometimes movies have pro-life scenes, or overall pro-life messages, without even meaning to. Oops!

Juno (2007)

In this hipster classic, Juno‘s titular character is an uber-quirky teenage girl (Ellen Page) who gets pregnant by her even more quirky, adorably awkward boyfriend (Michael Cera). She decides to give the baby up for adoption, but first, she visits an abortion clinic.

The screenwriter, Diablo Cody, has publicly stated that she didn’t intend the film to contain a pro-life message, but…well, it sort of does. Yes, the lone pro-life protester outside the clinic is portrayed as ridiculously dumb, but the inside of the clinic is worse. The workers are dead-eyed and look right through the protagonist, offering her flavored condoms and not much else. As she sits in the waiting room, sounds around her begin to coalesce into a heartbeat – like her child’s.

Intended or not, if I were a scared pregnant teenager and saw this movie, the last place it would send me running for help would be an abortion clinic.

 

Rob Roy (1995)

This biopic tells the tale of Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson), a Scotsman fighting for his land despite owing money to a sadistic nobleman (Tim Roth). When the nobleman rapes Robert’s wife (Jessica Lange), she doesn’t tell her husband for fear that he will try to fight the rapist and get killed. (That rapist is pretty badass with a sword.) But she gets pregnant, and she has to tell Rob about the baby – and the rape. In an emotional scene, she confesses that despite knowing the child might be her rapist’s, she “couldn’t kill it,” referring to the baby. To which Rob Roy responds, “It’s not the child that needs killing.”

I wrote about this scene in a piece for the Live Action blog about a year and a half ago to explain why the sin of the father is no justification for punishing the innocent. Rob Roy is not a film about abortion, but when it comes to illustrating the simple argument against accepting abortion in the case of rape and incest, this aspect of the story – and the simple, one-sentence response of an 18th-century Scottish commoner – does it perfectly.

Later in the film, as they are discussing what to name the baby, Robert MacGregor suggests the name Robert if it’s a boy, thereby claiming the child as his own. This is a more fitting course of action than the one that would be recommended as healthy and responsible today, and it makes you wonder how much more civilized we have really become.

 

Revolutionary Road (2008)

CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS!

Frank (Leonardo Dicaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) had big ideas about leading a fabulous, interesting life. Instead, they are stuck in the suburbs with two kids, and Frank’s unfulfilling job is going nowhere. At April’s urging, they make grandiose plans to move to Paris, but then they find out she’s pregnant. As the dream of Paris begins to fade, April, in an act of desperation, performs an instillation abortion on herself. There is a moment after the abortion, after she emerges from upstairs, pale and shaky, when she looks somewhat triumphantly, hopefully, out the picture window at the sunlit street. She then hemorrhages and dies. The film ends with Frank sitting alone in a park, watching his two surviving children play.

Before I knew what I was “supposed” to get out of Revolutionary Road, I felt disgusted by the ending. Yes, I pitied April, but not because she didn’t get everything she wanted right when she wanted it. I have dreams, too. Many of us do. We are given them for a reason. We are supposed to work towards them with passion and integrity. We are supposed to be creative about how we reach them, not destructive. We are supposed to see family as the whole point of life, the reason we strive for better things, our ultimate blessing…not a series of regrettable mistakes. The fact that April could see her children only as obstacles to her dream life doesn’t make me think family is repressive; it makes me think April was a sick, sad woman.

The film is supposed to be about how stifling “normal” life can be and how unfair it is to expect all women to be fulfilled by family life. We are supposed to be horrified by April’s desperate act and pray that we never return to the sad, scary, repressive days of “back-alley” abortions. We are supposed to feel grateful for Roe v. Wade and the family planning section at Walgreens so that we are never punished with babies we don’t want and stifled by a society that doesn’t let us spread our mighty wings and fly off to Paris. Hurray for condoms! Huzzah for abortions!

But that’s not what Revolutionary Road said to me. Instead, it made me even more horrified by abortion, and saddened for the women who choose it.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/ruth.a.swanson Ruth Ann Swanson

    Loved Juno from the first time I saw it. Didn’t even know what hipsters were back then, but I loved the quirkiness of this movie. I wasn’t a pro-life activist then,

  • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

    No, you really just didn’t say that Revolutionary Road had a pro-life message…..if you notice the woman commits an illegal, self induced abortion with household cleaner and then bleeds to death. That’s why they made abortion legal so women wouldnt have to hemorrhage to death on their living room floor or in back alley’s. Dear God! How can you be so completely deluded? Was none of that totally obvious?

    • http://www.facebook.com/melanie.smith.12764 Melanie Smith

      anti choicers? lol . So kids who are not perfect, such as those with Downs Syndrome deserve to be killed? Sad.

    • http://www.facebook.com/eamon.reilly.50 Eamon Reilly Artist

      what about equality for the unborn child?? How about letting the unborn child live so that they can make choices. The stupidest excuses for legalizing abortion are the ones that say that illegal ones are bad and that it is better to have a ‘safe’ abortion. Yet women die regularly after these ‘safe’ abortions. Indeed many times these abortions aIt has become so mainstream and sanitized and hidden away behind slogans and fancy words that people haven’t a clue what is going on. Is it any wonder that some prolifers have resorted to displaying the horror of abortion to the public in the hope that it might just break through the slogans and brainwashing that has taken place for so long.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jason.hunt.96 Jason Hunt

      If you get to call us ‘anti-choice’ then we get to call you ‘anti-life’. wnhy should you get to be the only one who defines the standards, ne?

    • GG

      Joey, so much reference to Romania? ever been there? I have, and visited the orphanages you mentioned and the group homes that were helping solve the problems. I supported a young woman who opened one of those loving group homes and saw the complicated conditions that you simplify as problems with no choices in contraception and birth control. That doesn’t explain the endless cycles of 14 year old mothers giving birth to children who are raised in orphanages who in turn produce children as soon as they reach reproductive age, or the government control that stopped adoptions to loving homes b/c they wanted EU sanction. You don’t mention the hopelessness of teens who see no future, and the ethnic problems that cause a whole section of people to reproduce carelessly and thoughtlessly…not caring about issues like birth control and abortion. comparing this to the USA doesn’t make sense with what I saw. The cycle can stop with loving homes, families, and education. Hope for the future of a teen’s life is not shared when the answer is end another life. Simply selling condoms and offering abortions could not solve all the problems you so aptly describe!

      • Catalina

        I have lived in Romania and have done research on the topic of abortion in Romania. In the first several years after abortion was legalized when Ceausescu was deposed, 3 in every 4 pregnancies ended in an abortion. The rate has now decreased to about 1 in 3. Romania also is growing and recovering from the time of the overcrowded orphanages and widespread prostitution. I can only agree that children languished in orphanages because they were neglected by the communist government that had assumed control over their lives. The mental retardation was not caused because their mothers could not have abortions; it was primarily caused because their mothers engaged in unhealthy activities while pregnant. Ceausescu was extremely nationalistic and wanted a large population to result in a large work force. He outlawed abortion not for concern about the unborn child, but because he wanted more laborers. When a child was born disabled, the government did not care for them, because they would not contribute to the labor pool.
        The unfortunate reality is that most Romanian young women I spoke with about abortion equate laws limiting abortion as reverting back to communism; they think it is a great limitation on human rights. Because Ceaucescu made children a burden for many families, his legacy has, in a way, undermined any pro-life efforts there.
        I would also like to end with a personal story about a Romanian friend of mine. While I was living in Romania, this 19 year old (a senior in high school), became pregnant by her much older boyfriend. After many agonizing discussions with her, she refused an abortion at the last moment, while the doctors were readying her for the procedure. When she told her father (Romanian) that she had not gotten the abortion, he screamed at her and broke a plate on her face. She told me that she had no choice and returned two days later and aborted her child. Her mother grew up in Soviet Uzbekistan and had had 16 abortions over the course of her life.

  • Basset_Hound

    I loved Rob Roy. The wife herself said she couldn’t kill the child, and Rob Roy agreed that it wasn’t the child that needed killing.

    There was one thing about Juno, though that really bothered both my daughter and me. EVERY male in that movie seemed to be totally inept, or in the case of the intended adoptive father, a complete reprobate who walked out on his wife.

  • Kimberly Wedel

    Very true about Revolutionary Road. April comes across as a very unsatisfied woman. If it weren’t the pregnancy it would have been something else. She comes off as a very unsympathetic character. If the writers of the film thought that it was going to teach us that abortion is necessary they were wrong. It just shows that some women are so selfish that they are willing to risk their lives in their pursuit of unattainable hapiness. Most mothers feel blessed to have their children. No matter how hard motherhood can be at times they wouldn’t trade it for life without them. The rest are women that have issues that aren’t resolved children or not. Your stalker John Doey’s remark about Down syndrome is highly offensive. My beautiful 5 year old daughter with Down syndrome and autism is the light of my and my husband’s live’s. Every other family I know that has a child with a disability feels the same way. Our world is better off with people like my daughter. What the world needs is less heartless selfish people like John. Since he is so for abortion I wish he would do the world a favor and abort himself.

    • Basset_Hound

      Kimberly, I didn’t even bother to read through John’s rant. I tuned it out after about the second inch, so I didn’t catch this. I missed a part of his comment that was offensive to me, too.

      Our 21 year old son is autistic and non-verbal. He’s 6’3″ and has the speed and agility of a top flight high school athlete. He’s also had a history of being extremely aggressive, and needs constant supervision. Yes, we have him in an institution. No he’s not locked up. He attends a vocational program on site, and also goes on many community outings. He’s bonded with several of the staff there. The institution was a godsend for us.

      Since we didn’t find out about his disability until he was a toddler, I guess John-boy would have argued that we should have suffocated him with a pillow.

      • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

        See, if you had read what I said you would know that what it sited were real statistics from Romania’s years with anti-abortion policies. Children with birth defects and other forms of mental retardation born to parents who didnt have the resources to care for them wound up institutionalized and the rest were left to the street to sell themselves in order to survive. FACTS.

        • marie27

          Oh, yeah. Much better to kill them. That’s totally merciful and kind.

        • Basset_Hound

          I think the plight of Romania’s children had a lot more to do that the Communists viewed people in general as being expendable, rather than their policies on abortion.

          • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

            No, it had nothing to do with them being communists. There are poor people everywhere and they are the one’s most effected by bans on abortion. Even well meaning families with resources over a long enough period of time have relatives committed who they are no longer able to care for. FACT.

          • Basset_Hound

            So “well meaning families with resources over a long enough period of time have relatives committed who they are no longer able to care for.” They place their relatives in long term care facilities where they can receive treatment, therapy and recreational opportunities. They don’t kill them.

    • http://twitter.com/MarauderTheSN Marauder

      Let’s not totally give up hope on John. As nasty as he is, I hope he changes, not that he dies. I think he’s a troubled person.

      • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

        I’m a troubled person for handing you the facts? No, you’re a troubled person for believing a fetus takes precedent over a living, breathing, woman with skin in the game and have no problem wanting the state to exercise power to force a woman to have a child she doesn’t want.

        • http://www.facebook.com/melanie.smith.12764 Melanie Smith

          A fetus is not living? Has no skin? You need help.

          • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

            Has no skin in the game meaning it’s unborn and is not yet really “alive” in the same way a woman is who has hopes, dreams, ambitions, etc. You really are quite dumb.

        • http://www.facebook.com/eamon.reilly.50 Eamon Reilly Artist

          ok, John. If human life doesn’t start at conception then when exactly DOES it start. What exact month, week, day, hour, minute and second does life begin in your opinion. And before this moment that this ‘fetus’ became a life what exactly was it?? Is there anyone here, pro-life or pro-abortion that hasn’t started off as a fetus?

          • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

            Life starts when you are born. End of story. And as usual the anti-choicer has no interest at all in the woman who is carrying that fetus or blastocyst who is really alive and working, loving, hoping, dreaming, planning, etc. they mean nothing to you and are nothing more than human incubators for fetus’s. Amazing that you think you are “pro-life” when the woman’s life, wishes, desires, etc are absolutely irrelevant to you and she means nothing.

          • Basset_Hound

            A 25 week old preemie struggling for life in the NICU is a human life. A 25 week old fetus is chattel and property. Yeah….that makes sense….NOT!!

        • Jamie

          I have to say, it seems from the absence of commentary on this post that no one else here finds this information particularly disturbing. I guess this level of draconianism would be acceptable to many.

      • http://www.facebook.com/melanie.smith.12764 Melanie Smith

        Agreed.

      • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

        Im nasty for pointing out the reality of what happened in Romania during the period when abortion was banned? No, what’s nasty is what happens when women lose rights over their own lives and bodies. I guess telling the truth makes you disturbed around here. The only disturbed people I see are the ones who believe in fairy tales like a blastocyst is a human or rape victims need to have their trauma prolonged indefinitely by having to give birth to the rapists child.

        • Schnig

          John…how many women who have been raped and become pregnant have you met? How about children of rape? How about actual post-abortive women? The people on this board work with these women EVERY DAY. We have real life experience…here in the U.S. Are you aware of the deplorable conditions at abortion clinics here in the states. Do you know how many women are harmed by abortion here? How many have died this year on legal abortion tables? Are you aware that 87% of ob/gyn’s in this country had to send a woman to the hospital for care following an abortion this year?. Do YOU care about women? Are you aware that abortion clinics are doing sex selection abortions…and that most of these are on immigrants who are choosing to abort GIRLS? Are you aware that abortion clinics are being used to cover up incest and underage rape? And, finally, you said that a baby in the womb does not become a “human” until it is born. How far born? Are partial birth abortions alright? What about a viable infant born alive “accidental” in an abortion attempt. It’s out…do we still get to kill it? It’s a human then…according to you. So, why would you worry about whether it is a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus…it’s all the same to you, right? So before it comes out, if it’s NOT a human, please tell us what it is….an elephant, a lion, a seal, a chimp. It has to be SOMETHING. It has completely unique dna from it’s mother…and scientifically, that dna belongs to a human being…so I’m confused where your “opinion” on it’s identity is coming from.

    • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

      Your stalker? LOL! I see, if you rightfully criticize the pro-life movement’s bs you must be a stalker or a troll. Gotcha. Notice you couldnt even refute a single thing I said with a substantial argument and instead resorted to your default mode of ad hom attacks because you nothing else to really say.

      • http://www.facebook.com/eamon.reilly.50 Eamon Reilly Artist

        ‘little or no brains’. everyone has only one brain. What about equality for the unborn? Why discriminate against people over size, development, disability, your perception of what sort of life they would have, your perception of whether their lives are worth living and all that usual baloney you pro-death people spout all the time while smugly talking down to pro-lifers and insulting and trying to ridicule them. If someone wishes for your murder that is wrong. As wrong as you wishing for the murder of the unborn.

        • http://www.facebook.com/john.doey.73700 John Doey

          Of course you’re not listening. Im pointing out real, cold, hard facts from Romania’s time with an abortion ban and the effects it had. That’s it. If you cant handle the truth of that perhaps you need to rethink your stance on abortion rights. What inevitably would be is women who were forced to give birth to children with severe developmental disabilities and didnt have the resources to care for them would have them committed. Families that can even afford the cost of care for a disabled person over time get worn down by it and have those people committed too so imagine being a poor, single, woman with no resources and trying to do that? it’s not possible. Even caring for a healthy child when you either dont have the financial means or emotionally cant do it is not good for the child either. Tens of thousands of children in Romania that were forced into this world without the ability to be cared for were left to survive on the streets as prostitutes, became addicted to hard drugs, or were trafficked for sex. Live in the real world, why dont you?

          And are you really telling me that you’ve never heard the expression “no brain’s”? No one ever say’s you have “no brain” do they? NO.

          • Mrgrt

            You say:”Not every child that comes into this world has loving, supportive parents that protect it.” Maybe the solution is that love and supportive relatives to protect these children rather than abortion. That is what Christianity professes. Abortion solution is to kill. The Christian solution is to love and protect the “least of these” as if they were God’s son, himself.

          • lovethink

            SAdly, you are a typical abortion supporter that views abortion as a cure to societies problems when in fact it has caused many of them. Tilt your globe slightly and study the plight of girls in china. For those that aren’t aborted or killed at birth there is a good chance they will be sold into sex slavery. http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/ .

      • Kimberly Wedel

        I said you should abort yourself. You call that wishing for your murder? Good we can then agree on one thing- abortion is murder.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Hughes/100000562751914 Jack Hughes

    the last Star Trek Movie (2009) had quite an accidental pro family message, firstly Jim Kirk’s father sacrifices himself to save his wife and (newly born) son, secondly we see the importance of family in the discussions between Spock and his parents and finally we see the problems that result from abusive step-parents in the adolescent behaviour of the young Jim Kirk and how Cpt Pike steps up to become the father that kirk never had

    • Basset_Hound

      I actually liked the 2009 movie, and was very disappointed when a rumored sequel failed to materialize. My hubby didn’t think it was faithful enough to the show.
      BTW Jack, I was so irked when they decided to bump off Kirk’s son in the third movie.

    • http://www.facebook.com/petraphonic Clinton Wilcox

      Star Trek has always generally had pro-life themes. There was even an episode of The Next Generation in which Counselor Troi was impregnated by an alien against her will. Commander Riker actually recommended abortion, but she demanded that the child was hers, and that she was going to keep and raise the child.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Hughes/100000562751914 Jack Hughes

        I vaugely remember that one

  • http://twitter.com/MarauderTheSN Marauder

    I never saw “Revolutionary Road,” but certainly two Americans who have enough money to live in the suburbs with two kids would be able to live in France on a tightened budget with three kids. Did the idea of a little kid lisping, “Maman, Papa, c’est La Tour Eiffel!” never strike them as totally adorable?

    My husband’s grandmother used to live next door to Jessica Lange.

  • adye

    Why didn’t Twilight Breaking Dawn 1 make the cut? That movie is supper pro-life. Bella gave up her life for her unborn child’s.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000548022078 Kathleen Maurice

      My thoughts exactly, adye!

    • Kris

      I think that movie is Pro-Choice. Bella may be pro-life but movie portrays the child as a monster killing her from the inside and she almost dies as a result of not aborting it. I think the movie as a whole bolsters the points of view or pro-choice people more than pro-life people.
      “Fetuses are evil, they’ll ruin your life if you carry them to term, and you’ll stand alone if you don’t choose abortion because everyone else will want you to do the smart thing and kill it.”

      • http://twitter.com/MarauderTheSN Marauder

        I didn’t see the movie, but I read the book, and what gets stressed in the book is that even though Renesme is hurting Bella, she doesn’t want to. When Edward reads Renesme’s mind while she’s still in the womb and finds out that Renesme loves Bella already, that’s when he stops thinking her her as a threat and starts thinking of her as his daughter. Renesme doesn’t ruin Bella’s life. The entire Cullen family ends up loving her and is willing to fight for her when the Volturi come after her.

      • http://www.facebook.com/beverly.harlton Beverly Harlton

        I disagree, Kris. Sometimes women have very rough pregnancies, and sometimes there’s a chance that the baby will have a disability (I guess being half-human and half-Twilight-vampire falls into that category). Despite Bella’s EXTREMELY rough pregnancy, the way that no one involved in the situation had any way of knowing what her baby would be like, and the way her own husband wanted her to have an abortion, she is persistent and defends her baby even until death. Her new life as a vampire after Renesmee’s birth could even be stretched to symbolise a new, “better” life as a mother.

        Also, for the record, though I have read all four books in the series, as well as the companion novella, and have seen the first movie, I’m not a big fan of Twilight. It’s okay as stories go, though it’s not that well-written, and personally, I found Breaking Dawn to be abysmally unrealistic and contrived. I’m not saying this to hop on the I HATE TWILIGHT bandwagon. I’m just saying that I have no reason to support the books as having a pro-life skew outside of my own opinion. :)

  • http://twitter.com/dallasdivergent E :)

    my favorite prolife movie is DEFINATELY October Baby!!

    • Basset_Hound

      FYI, you can rent October Baby at Redbox.

  • Lee

    Horton, from Dr. Suess! “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

  • Basset_Hound

    Here’s another “accidental” pro-life movie that you’ve forgotten, Kristen. Have you seen “Parenthood” that was released in 1989? It’s a classic and one of my favorites. It’s the story of an extended family. The protagonist’s wife becomes pregnant with their fourth child after he discovers his oldest child is having emotional problems, and he quits a job where he feels he’s not appreciated. In a subplot, a niece gets pregnant while still in high school. Both women carry their pregnancies to term.

  • Schnig

    Actually, in Juno, what she is hearing is NOT the baby’s heartbeat. Each sound she hears is someones fingernails…scratching themselves, drumming on the table, etc. THAT is what makes her run out…because the protesters last words before she went in were that her baby had fingernails. I think that makes the scene even better.

  • darby

    I’ve watched Revolutionary Road and thought it could be taken as pro-life or pro-abortion, though I’m sure it was meant to be pro-abortion.
    The wife dies because she gives herself an at-home abortion and then bleeds to death. So, you could look at this movie and the message could be taken as “if only she had safe and legal Planned Parenthood abortion (plenty of women die after these “safe” PP abortions, but anyway…).” Or you could look at it and say “abortions are horrible and destroy families; too bad she couldn’t have been happy with her life as it was and viewed the pregnancy as a blessing and not an obstacle to happiness in Paris.” They could have moved to Paris on the cheap with their two kids and just treat it as a new adventure in life.
    Great article. There are more pro-life messages in film and tv than you might expect, given how far left the industry is.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1326603574 Stash Krane

    District 9 had a scene where the evil corporation is shown practicing “population control” on the oppressed aliens, one of the bureaucrats working for them refers to it as abortion. And the Walking Dead adventure game has a scene where evil social-darwinist survivors practice forced abortions so they won’t have to deal with kids.

  • edinvestor1

    Kristen, you are awesome. Keep it up!

  • Steve Farrell

    “the sin of the father is no justification for punishing the innocent.”

    I agree. So why would you force a woman to endure several months of pregnancy and the rigors of childbirth under those circumstances? Doesn’t she have every right to claim that she never asked to get pregnant? Isn’t she innocent?

    • lovethink

      yes, Steve, the rape victim is obviously innocent as well as her baby. The rapist is the one that should die not the innocent baby. Living through rape is awful, many rape victims chooe life for their babies because they want something good (life) to come from something bad. If the unborn aren’t human it wouldn’t matter but since they are rape of one victim doesn’t warrant death of a second victim. All while the dirtbag rapist, in most cases, goes free.