The Choice Issue Goes To The Movies
I've seen the trailers for the new movie "Knocked Up" and what I remembered about it was that it was from the director of "The Forty Year Old Virgin." The last thing I would have guessed is that the movie would be seriously debated as pro-choice or anti-choice. But so it goes. Here's Ezra:
The early efforts of folks on both the Right and the Left to brand the movie pro-life were discomfiting. Some in my group seemed genuinely distressed that the main character didn't choose an abortion, and were ready to write off the film for that initial bit of betrayal. I found that baffling. The flick is pro-choice in the most literal sense of the term. Katherine Heigl's character receives advice in both directions, and then makes a decision -- a decision the audience may very well conclude is the wrong one. But she has a choice; nothing is forced on her . . . [T]hat's a perfectly allowable, and indeed respectable, decision within the choice framework.
Of course everyone knows this. The word choice means, um, choice. But this is not the first time abortion has gone to the movies. The last time was a bit more high brow however. It involved the film adaptation of John Irving's book "The Cider House Rules." Here is an excellent 2000 discussion of the issue of abortion and the movies from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now program. THIS discussion delves into the issue of the taboo in film and TV regarding abortion. We have not come a long way baby since Maude had to make her choice in the 1970s.
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