The Tired Refrain: "Not Enough Abortions in the Movies"

By Dave Andrusko

If you're walking on the pro-abortion side of the street, you have to come up with some explanation why the abortion rate has gone down, the public increasingly self-identifies as pro-life, and the mindless dehumanization of unborn children no longer is cool.

Well, one feeble/desperate explanation comes from Stephen Farber, a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter. "However you feel about the subject, the invisibility of abortion on mainstream movie screens during the last 20 years has almost certainly had an impact on public attitudes," he writes. "Last year, for the first time since 1995, a majority of Americans described themselves in a Gallup poll as 'pro-life' rather than 'pro-choice.'"

The "good" news, from Farber's perspective, is that "A Movie Breaks the Abortion Taboo." He's referring to Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," a new film starting Ben Stiller as a "40-year-old malcontent." According to Farber it's "received many enthusiastic reviews praising its acute characterizations and evocative rendition of Southern California anomie," but "almost no one has called attention to one of the most startling things about the movie: its matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental depiction of abortion."

Even though the "A' word (abortion) is never used, it's "perfectly clear that she [the "20something"] is terminating the pregnancy," he tells us. Even though abortion is downplayed and the movie's "so far showing only in major cities where critics may be more blasé (or more out-of-touch) than moviegoers in the heartland," according to Farber, this "plot twist is pretty revolutionary for a Hollywood film in 2010."

Darn it, no one has abortions any more, let alone as the character in "Greenberg" does) "without experiencing much pain or guilt." They keep having their babies!

If you want, you can read Farber at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-12/the-taboo-breaking-abortion-in-greenberg. If the topic weren't about killing babies and emotionally maiming their mothers, this nostalgia for the "good old days" when Hollywood would casually show abortions would be almost amusing.

Farber goes through the usual litany of films and television programs, lavishing special attention on "Dirty Dancing." (Why? Patrick Swayze's dance partner gets an illegal abortion, a kindly doctor saves her after the bungled abortion, and the Catholic Church denounces the film--a trifecta.)

And Farber contrasts puritanical America with sophisticated Europe where "Abortion is treated more forthrightly in acclaimed European films like Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, which earned several Oscar nominations in 2004, or the Romanian film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2007. "

FYI Mr. Farber. If you actually carefully watch, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, you'll find that by no means does it send the message you think it does. (See http://www.nrlc.org/news/2008/NRL03/Argument.html.)

So, Farber is simultaneously encouraged by this film (and "The Yellow Handkerchief," which I have never heard of), yet bummed out that largely "Hollywood has chosen to play it safe and keep abortion invisible."

It speaks volumes, don't you think, that "The filmmakers of Greenberg--[Noah] Baumbach and [Jennifer] Leigh--were unavailable for comment," Farber tells us, "ironically because they had their first baby just days before the movie opened."

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