In a recent article [1], The Daily Beast writer, Teo Bugbee, bashes Hollywood for not making abortion flicks like ‘Obvious Child’ a long time ago. That’s exactly what we all want to see- abortion comedies in the box office every weekend. How fun.
Bugbee began by insisting that ‘Obvious Child’ is “not an abortion movie.” Yet here we are, reading a 1,700+ word article about how ‘Obvious Child’ is a revolutionary film about abortion.
(“Obvious Child” star Jenny Slate, in a separate DailyBeast article [2], responded to the label “abortion comedy,” stating, “I don’t think of our movie as an abortion comedy at all.” Just like how abortion isn’t really murder, this film isn’t really about abortion. But The WashingtonPost [3] must have missed Slate’s memo because they describe the film as a, “…relentlessly hilarious, poignant and refreshingly real romantic comedy about getting an abortion.” Ditto npr.org: 'Obvious Child' Tells An Abortion Story With Rom-Com Heart.’ [4]”)
But that’s disingenuous. If this film were a run of the mill rom-com that has nothing to do with abortion, would Planned Parenthood and NARAL support it [5]? Or better yet, if the film were about a woman struggling with physiological devastation after having an abortion, would they have hosted screenings [6] of the film? Would they have collaborated [3] with a film that shows the side of abortion they try to hide and ignore?
Bugbee continued to claim that ‘Obvious Child’ is not all that “groundbreaking” as it’s being made out to be by critics; rather, it’s a lump of coal that’s been primed into a diamond by the pro-abortion movement within Hollywood for decades.
Somehow, it’s the politicians fault for thwarting the pro-abortion movement within film, “Obvious Child is the belated inheritor of a pro-choice movement gestating in Hollywood for decades—a movement aborted the moment politics turned contentious.”
“Humorous” double entendre aside, when has politics ever not been contentious?
Bugbee went through an array of films that have included abortion as a theme, beginning in 1934 and ending in the 1980’s, because apparently that’s when pro-abortion films came to a screeching halt thanks to Ronald Reagan’s “neo-conservative revival at the polls” building a campaign based on “family values.” Those stinking conservatives are always ruining our demands to moralize murder!
The article concluded by stating that all movies depicting abortion should present it as ‘Obvious Child’ does, because it doesn’t show abortion as an ‘issue’ at all.
The fact that liberal journalists themselves can’t stop calling ‘Obvious Child’ an “abortion comedy” proves it actually is an issue – one you can’t easily disguise under a rom-com plot.
‘Obvious Child’s” effort to normalize abortion has been failed by the very journalists who attempt to support it.