“Unplanned” finds a larger audience than expected
The movie “Unplanned” is about many things, but one thing it’s about is a person changing her mind on an important issue. In this case, the issue is abortion, and the change was from being head of a Planned Parenthood clinic to being an anti-abortion activist.
The movie wasn’t heavily promoted or predicted to do all that well, but in addition to that, many efforts at publicizing it were blocked, ostensibly because the subject matter was controversial. That hasn’t seemed to stop a lot of other promotional campaigns, so it’s hard to conclude anything other than that it was the movie’s un-PC pro-life stance that was the problem.
And this despite the fact that apparently the movie takes a “nuanced” view of things in terms of sympathy for women having to make the decision (Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, is the villain), although reviewers panning it disagree and think it’s simply a one-sided anti-abortion polemic.
I haven’t seen the movie, but many of the reviews that criticize the movie also state that the movie preaches to the choir, and that its intended audience is those who are already firmly in the anti-abortion camp.
I disagree. I haven’t seen the movie, but all the descriptions (including those of those who are giving it negative reviews) indicate to me that the movie actually would appeal—and intends to appeal—to those who aren’t sure about abortion or at least have some doubts where they stand.
I have read, for example, that in the younger generation, support for abortion has been declining somewhat rather than increasing. Polls over the last three decades indicate a periodic wobble but no clear trends, as far as I can see. I also think that there are two main issues involved: whether people think abortion should be legal or not and under what circumstances, and a second question as to whether this particular woman would ever have one. I believe (yet cannot prove) that there are a significant number of women who think abortion should be legal but who would not personally have an abortion if faced with an unwanted pregnancy.
It seems to me that the film probably is working on that last group more than on anyone else, trying to get an increase in the number of women who see abortion as something that is not a personal option for themselves.
“I believe (yet cannot prove) that there are a significant number of women who think abortion should be legal but who would not personally have an abortion if faced with an unwanted pregnancy.”
Depends on the meaning of significant, which is precise only when talking statistics, and somewhat malleable in general discourse.
Personally, I know of 6 women — and I mean direct, face-to-face knowledge, not hearsay — who carried through with pregnancies which were in all cases originally unwanted, in the sense of being unplanned.
Only 2 of them chose to give the babies to adoption agencies; the rest raised the children, with support from their families and friends.
One married the baby-daddy; two others later married some other man; one I lost track of, but suspect she also married later.
I don’t actually know their opinions on the legality of abortion, as the topic never came up, but all of them would have been considered “justified” by the pro-abortion camp in seeking to kill the babies.
They were certainly all inconvenient.
We are seeing it this afternoon.
Four theaters in Tucson showing it and Tucson is kind of a left wing town. College town and all.
Women and men have two moral choices: abstention and prevention. The third choice, the ethical choice, Pro-Choice, is the “wicked solution”, which should be limited to self-defense. As for the movie, documentation of the “final solution” has enjoyed variable success. Documentation of the “wicked solution” will also succeed and fail. The issue is whether planned parenthood should be normalized, tolerated, or rejected. Day after, month after, decade after regrets, social progress, medical progress, are poor apologies for the practice. Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic ethical code, including summary judgments, cruel and unusual punishment, is two choices too late. Unfortunately, unlike one-child that was adopted by a minority, selective-child has been normalized in the general population, and it will be a challenge to address its progress.
terminating a pregnancy just because it was unexpected to me is as foolish as someone throwing away a winning lottery ticket worth millions just because the money came unexpectedly. Who cares if it was planned or unplanned, being a mom is a miracle, the greatest gift a woman can ever received, should accept this gift with the greatest amount of gratitude without question, destroying this very gift just because the liberals have brainwashed you into believing in denying it is some misguided triumph of free choice is downright foolish. For the sake of Career? give me a break, there is no greater career than being a parent, ask Bill Gates if given a choice that only one thing can exist in this world and the other would be wipe out from existence which would he choose, his children or microsoft? i bet you he would choose his children to survive without hesitation.
“Fetal Viability” is theme of the very long process that will modify Roe/Casey.
I read a review by someone who claimed to be “prochoice.” They said that it was a powerful movie, that it really humanized the people who work for Please Parenthood (which the reviewers appreciated) and it really made her think about her stance on abortion. Had she changed her mind? Not as of the writing of her review. Will she? Who knows, but I think it is more likely now that she has seen the film.
I’m not going to see it. I don’t think I could bear to watch it. If I had money to throw away, I might buy a ticket just to help their numbers, and support it
PowerLine Picks today:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/01/the_real-life_power_of_unplanned_139922.html
Dave: Please get back to us when you grow a uterus. Even then, you might not be in a position to proclaim that “being a mom is the greatest gift a woman can ever receive” and that there is “no greater career than being a parent.” Personally, I might ask Melinda Gates for her views on this matter before asking her husband to weigh in.
We are going to buy tickets for our 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and ourselves. But none will see the film. We just want to pad the box office totals. Abortion is an abomination except for the very rare cases where the mother’s life is truly in peril.
The premature birth of my twins (12 weeks early) changed me in oh so many ways.
Before their birth, I had not yet completed my political change. I was still struggling with my parents’ Progressive programming and the typical Public School indoc. And if anyone had asked me before this, “What do you think about a woman’s right to choose?” I would have answered, “I support it, I guess.”
But it was the realization in the NICU that all of the babies were people, real people who already showed signs of individual personalities (and many of them were born at an age were they could have been legally aborted), that changed me. It was my Soylent Green moment: “They’re people! The baby’s are people!”
I can’t believe what an insufferable little shit I was to believe otherwise.
It’s my belief that someday, if humanity survives long enough, the Leftist cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries will be held in the same regard as the Aztecs and the Phoenicians. Horrific times of death sacrifice to Leftist sacraments, built on millions of skulls. Some who stood in the way of Progress, some murdered in the womb but who still stood in the way.
MollyG:
Chuck the argument by uterus. Somehow plumbing and hormones impart special wisdom and exclude others from having an opinion? We think with our brains not the other parts.
@om: I agree with you. And my original comment allows for your objection, as you will see if you read it carefully.
Dave’s opinion proclaims what is best for every woman, from the perspective of someone who is biologically excluded from the real-world physiological consequences of pregnancy and from some of its social and economic consequences as well.
I am contesting Dave’s opinion, not his right to hold and express it. I am also suggesting that Dave’s opinion might be different, or at least that he might express it in less absolutist terms, if he were physically susceptible to pregnancy and all its consequences, which are not entirely identical with “being a parent.” That is also why I would be inclined to seek Melinda Gates’s views before Bill’s.
I will have to wait and see this film on Netflix or otherwise on demand. To see it in a theater, I would have to drive at least 90 minutes each way, since it has apparently been banned from the dozens of theaters in the liberal utopia where I live.
If We leave your uterus alone will you leave our wallets alone? My uterus and your sperms are mine and your hard earned money is mine too.
You can actually argue when only women have uteruses then a monopoly is established and the decision makings regarding uteruses should no longer solely belong to women to make but everyone should have a say since how women use or misuse their uterus will have a profound affect on men too, we all extinct if women collectively decide to suck down their baby factories. Just like government agencies by law cannot go on strike because it has a adversarial effect on every citizen that can’t be alleviate by other private companies.
Throwing down the argument by uterus is designed to silence opposition and render topics off limits to the other sex. The argument by uterus is a progressive hammer/hand grenade.
Do post menopausal women or infertile women have a right to speak about abortion since they can no longer be impacted directly?
The principal that allows A government to have power to control how we can’t drive after alcohol in blood reaches certain level is because drunk driving affects everyone. Because women have a monopoly on uteruses and men have no other means to naturally Procreate without corporations from women. since laws concerning uteruses no longer only affect women but the whole mankind men and women then based on that men should have a say, period.
Babylon Bee has a great twitter spoof
https://babylonbee.com/news/unplanned-twitter-account-slapped-with-truthful-content-warning
om on April 1, 2019 at 9:30 pm at 9:30 pm said:
Throwing down the argument by uterus is designed to silence opposition and render topics off limits to the other sex.
* * *
But — there is no “other” sex, since anyone who wants to weigh in on the question can declare self-identification with being a woman, whether or not a physical organ labeled “uterus” is present or not.
The Bee is priceless.
https://babylonbee.com/news/report-more-unborn-babies-in-new-york-identifying-as-convicted-criminals-so-they-cant-legally-be-executed
See the movie.
I did, and it’s interesting on several levels.
Dave and om: I am, to use Neo’s term, a “changer.” As such, I am well acquainted with irrationality, projection, incivility, and hypersensitivity from commenters on leftist blogs. Your comments here will not prevent me from continuing to expect and enjoy a higher standard from the commenters on this blog.
AesopFan:
I didn’t want to go there so I chose not to use “gender.” 🙂
I’m still a bit, less than pleased, about last Sunday’s sermon topic “Gender Dysphoria,” delivered by the youth pastor. Practicing penance for the choir this Lent, as doesn’t look good to walk out on a “Woke” sermon.
MollyG don’t use the tools of the left and then hide behind civility, or play the victim.
We just saw the movie tonight and it is well done.
The best players were the actress who played Abby and the lawyer. He was great although a small part. The Planned Parenthood gal was a good villain.
They never got into selling baby parts. That probably was after she left. The villain woman made it clear that PP makes its money from abortions.
it has apparently been banned from the dozens of theaters in the liberal utopia where I live.</i
Four theaters in Tucson, which is pretty leftist.
@Mike K: That’s good.
I’m surprised that “Unplanned” is being screened at all in my totalitarian uniparty blue state.
Of course l’ve had my pick of theaters to see “Vice,” “Death of a President” (portraying the assassination of George W. Bush), “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and everything else by Michael Moore.
“In an irony that only life could deliver, the directors had unwittingly cast an abortion survivor to play a survivor of the abortion industry.”
I’ll take “Divine intervention for $400 Alex”
“a higher standard”
Well MollyG, opinions are like a**holes, we are all born with one. In which direction is your high horse trotting? I ask because I want to move forward at 90 degrees.
Of course males can not know the burdens of pregnancy or the pain of childbirth. But as a father I have observed first hand 3 pregnancies and subsequent births. I never felt the discomfort of pregnancy or pain of birth, but I witnessed them 3 times. Therefore, i can fully appreciate the burden females experience in bringing the next generation into this always troubled world.
Sorry Molly G, but you asked for it. Om is right – leftist tactics.
For the average healthy woman, pregnancy and childbirth is just not that hard or risky. I know, I’ve done it twice. And I had extreme morning sickness and a difficult breech birth that required a caesarean. Pregnancy in this day and age doesn’t derail career or schooling. An elite athletic career is about the only thing I can think of that pregnancy would negatively impact. And even then only for about a year. e.g. Serena Williams. Enough with the pregnancy hardship blah blah.
And there are plenty of people who would LOVE to have someone else’s inconvenient baby.
So what’s really going on here? Could it be that women get abortions in order to avoid the pain of giving up a child? How crazy is that? In fact, everything about abortion is crazy and facing the reality of that is one of the things that began my own political/philosophical change.
Thought experiment:
You are driving, get distracted, and momentarily take your eyes off the road. This causes an accident that puts someone – a complete stranger – in a life threatening condition. At the hospital a doctor tells you that you can save this person’s life by restricting your physical activities and being moderately uncomfortable for four months. You’ll have constant heartburn, backaches and need to memorize the location of every public restroom in a five mile radius. And there will be four or five hours of really intense pain. Of course you don’t have to make this sacrifice, but if you don’t, the victim of your mistake will die. Oh yeah, and if you don’t chose to save this Complete Stranger’s life – no one will ever know.
I’ll just leave it there.
To me the issue has always been what the government will do if given the power to outlaw abortion. The cure will be much worse than the disease.
A criminal industry providing abortion services will immediately manifest. Any nurse or EMT can do them.
A new criminal industry selling Plan B and other dangerous hormonal overdose drugs will be active everywhere. Every teenager will have a stash of these drugs, resulting in more teenage sex, not less.
Women who miscarry will be destroyed by prosecutors demanding that they reveal their abortionist or non-existent abortion inducing drug provider.
The new war on abortion will far outdo the excesses of the drug war. It will look more like the wars of the Reformation, with incredible excesses justified.
A blackmail industry preying on those who have provided or had abortions, and those improperly accused, will ruin their lives.
This crusade looks a lot more like the prohibition movement than anything seen in the century since. It will have the same disastrous outcomes. It will make the excesses of the drug war look mild.
It is tough to write, finance and then successfully distribute a movie. Congrats!
I thought it was very interesting that the movie made it clear that PP SELLS abortions in order to turn a profit, as in pressures women who are wavering just like a car salesman, using the threat of higher cost if it isn’t done on that visit. When Abby’s boss makes the point that abortions are how they make money, Abby says, “but we’re non-profit” and her boss says that non-profit is a tax status, not a business plan and points out that abortions pay her salary. The perfect example of Evil Capitalism which is another talking point for the left.
Andrew Breitbart – “Politics is downstream of culture.” It used to be acceptable in the western world to enslave humans, that is no longer a socially acceptable thought, even though it took a second war to end the practice Europe and Asia, One hopes the movie will help bury Planned Infanticide’s social acceptability. Will they be willing to take up arms to continue killing the innocent?
I thought it was very interesting that the movie made it clear that PP SELLS abortions in order to turn a profit,
Yes, and they didn’t even get into selling fetal body parts, which probably came along later.
We saw it last night and it is well done. Not as dramatic for a doctor and nurse, which we are, but still well done. The best scene I thought was when he did an abortion with an ultrasound video showing where to put the suction tube. The baby kept trying to get away. That’s the scene where Abby has had enough and quits.
The lawyer, although a brief part, was also excellent. PP sued her and alleged she had stolen secret files. The court took 58 minutes to dismiss the suit.
The PP supervisor was a very good villain. Not too many female villains in movies.
I was very surprised and pleased to find that “Unplanned” is playing at every movie theater at normal times in town, unlike “Gosnell” which had a very limited, short release. Perhaps the difference is that “Unplanned” did not shy away from depicting the shocking horror, the bloodiness, of an abortion though Abby Johnson says the movie should have been more graphic. “Gosnell,” though ostensibly about the nation’s “most prolific serial killer,” tried to get a PG rating.
My wife thought the PP villain was a bit of a caricature, but then she never saw those undercover videos of PP execs negotiating the prices of baby body parts. I thought the villain had to be portrayed as she was in order to represent the PP corporate culture in such a compressed time.
Dick Illyes @ 5:26 a.m., that is exactly the kind of fear tactics that are routinely used, no matter the moral issue. May I remind you that the unimaginable Gosnell travesty happened while abortions were legal? Abby Johnson naively believed Planned Parenthood was indeed all about watching out for women. I have heard her speak twice, early on and again in October 2017. The progression of her coming out of that unreality started when her supervisor told her there is no way every abortion would be performed with an ultrasound (Abby assuming it would, as that is the safest means for the pregnant woman) as that is costly and would negatively affect the bottom line. The real reason for her complete change of position came with her discovery that the baby in the womb does feel, as evidenced by the baby trying to get away from the suction device. Once she witnessed this, the house of cards of her beliefs regarding abortion came tumbling down. She already knew it was a baby. She was promoted to director of the clinic in part because when she was given the job of reassembling the “products of conception”, she was told she was the only woman her boss ever encountered who didn’t cry upon seeing the baby whose parts all needed to be accounted for. This was part of her responsibilities. In our sphere, family members that embrace abortion and those of us who do not, I think the difference lies in whether one believes a baby is who they are upon a first breath or a first heartbeat. I just babysat my 3rd grandchild yesterday. At 2 months she has her own personality and is Ava…the one and only. In raising my own 3 children I wasn’t as aware of the inherent differences in them “out the gate”. Too much responsibility, demands, fatigue. As a grandmother of a 9 yr old, 1-1/2 yr old and 2 month old, I have a vivid knowledge of each one from the beginning…the first time I held them and up to the present. Distinct and precious. Dick Illyes, one of the most fundamental purposes of government is to protect the weakest and most helpless member of a society. If that isn’t the innocent baby in the womb, I do not know who it would be.
Poland, today, shows what ‘illegal abortion” means in the EU and in an OECD country.; tho Ireland also shows how a no-abortion state can legalize abortion.
There is little excuse, today, for getting an abortion rather than going thru with the pregnancy and then deciding to keep or give up the child. There are plenty of people looking to adopt, and even care for abnormal and damaged babies.
Single mothers in OECD countries do not starve, tho they also don’t have “an easy life”.
The increasingly good sonograms, showing more clearly the baby, is a huge reason for fewer abortions. Fewer unwanted pregnancies, as well as fewer totally pregnancies, also has been helping to reduce abortions.
In the future, the Feminists who think:
Being a Wage Slave for a Rich Company is
Better Than Being a Mother to Your Own Children
such feminists will be increasingly mocked.
Plus, the pro-file families will continue to have, on average, far more children than the pro-abortion feminists. Tho many pro-life kids will be indoctrinated in schools towards whatever the PC-Klan believes at the time, esp abortion.
We need more movies about the realties, and more real situations. It’s not showing in Slovakia. (Yet?)
https://www.france24.com/en/20180525-abortion-laws-vary-eu-ireland-malta-poland-termination
In the credits for the movie was the information that Abby now has 8 kids !
I am still prochoice for some cases as I saw women who died from illegal abortions when I was a medical student. I do think the woman has to acknowledge that she is killing her infant, a position endorsed by, I think, Camille Paglia who is a leftist but very honest.
I’ve read a few Bee parodies, and at first glance thought they were as good as those I had read in The Onion. That was a while back.
Conceptually, the one you have linked to, is, as you note, pretty clever. And I wish them all success.
But the writer, whether wittingly or unwittingly, injects so much pejorative language into the text, that it undercuts the intended effect. There is also the problem that the writing is not at all newsy, but comes off almost as sloppy junior high school level sarcasm.
Indulging in sniping, breaks the frame and destroys the effect of the parody.
Reread it, and it will immediately become obvious what I mean.
If the writer had given it more time, he probably would have come up with something more along these lines – which may not be very good, but preserve the facade of an actual news blurb.
What has struck me as amazing is how well the Left has both deified Sanger, and obscured what Margaret Sanger was really and always about—the deliberate elimination of what she viewed as inferior races—particularly blacks—from the gene pool, about her contacts with the KKK, and some of her all too revealing writings.
Writings and correspondence in which she very deliberately laid our what she was trying to accomplish, and the methods she was going to use, including hiring black ministers to fool/reassure blacks about the “extermination of the Negro population” that was her stated aim, along with the elimination of other “human weeds.”
See, for instance this quote at: https://www.tfpstudentaction.org/blog/margaret-sanger-quotes
“… these two words [birth control] sum up our whole philosophy… It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
— Margaret Sanger, “High Lights in the History of Birth Control,” Oct 1923.
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…
See for instance this quote at https://www.lifenews.com/2013/03/11/10-eye-opening-quotes-from-planned-parenthood-founder-margaret-sanger/
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
See here for a PDF of the full three page letter the above quote comes from, from the Smith College Margaret Sanger collection at https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/files/original/d6358bc3053c93183295bf2df1c0c931.pdf
“When Abby’s boss makes the point that abortions are how they make money, Abby says, “but we’re non-profit” and her boss says that non-profit is a tax status, not a business plan and points out that abortions pay her salary. The perfect example of Evil Capitalism which is another talking point for the left.”
No, this is not about “Evil Capitalism,” but of a non-profit taking advantage of its tax-exempt status to enrich themselves.
For a better example of this, you only have to look at the SPLC. A 501(c)(3) non-profit with a half-billion-dollar endowment, some of it soaking up the sun in the Cayman Islands. We all know now it’s a well-built scam built on the unfounded fears of Leftists with cash to spare.
Not to mention, PP has repeatedly sued every state which has passed legislation or executive who has ordered their funds cut based on the Will of the People – which a Federal judge or another strikes down, for some stupid reason. PP receives so much private money: why the hell do they need the taxpayers’? Simple: there’s always been a business in “hiding” and “burying the evidence” for too many people. That includes politicians (and judges) with a reputation to keep.
This is all done “in the name of the public good” – the “public good” being what, exactly?
Honestly, both PP and SPLC should lose their tax-exempt status. Let people like George Soros pay for them instead.
My best part of the movie, and I loved it, was when Mike Lindell pops up, Stan Lee-like, driving the excavator that takes down the PP sign. “I’ve waited all my life to do this!”.
It was a great, even handed movie, demonstrating the difference in tactics (and what works) in anti-abortion pr testers.
DickIllyes @ 4/2, 5:26pm is entirely a libertarian nutter.
More than 60 million Americans have been murdered in utero since 1973. That is way more than the number of deaths Hitler caused.
I guess that’s OK with you, Dick.
Nah, it ain’t murder, it’s a woman’s right to choose.
Well, I’d like a right to choose to murder someone sans legal consequences too. An ex-wife? a Democrat? An illegal migrant? An Erdogan?
Abby Johnson now works to help others leave the abortion life. Apparently, within the medical world, working in abortion carries a stigma for those who want to move into legitimate health care jobs. So her organization helps with that, as well as providing counseling and emergency assistance. Fair warning, it’s quite faith-based.
See the website abortionworker dot com
Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Johnson or ATTWN other than as a past cash donor.
I’m late to reading this but…
” In this case, the issue is abortion, and the change was from being head of a Planned Parenthood clinic to being an anti-abortion activist.”
We call ourselves pro-life activists.
In a fashion of political civility, I call the other side ‘pro choice activists’, not ‘pro-abortion activists’.