WaPo Film Critic: Where's the Abortion?

Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday wants abortion. In the movies, that is. In her July 15 piece Hornaday complains that two box office successes this summer, “Waitress” and “Knocked Up,” feature main characters that are pregnant. Both are unmarried and less than thrilled with their pregnancies. Both have their babies.

“It’s a setup that has some viewers, especially women who came of age in a post-Roe v. Wade America, wondering just what world these movies are living in.”

Well, Ann, they’re living in the modern day world where the number of out-of-wedlock births among 20- and 30-something women is dramatically up, according to a poll conducted by Pew Research. Just look at Brangelina, if you want to see what that looks like in real life.

Hornaday’s piece basically makes the point that because the word “abortion” isn’t even mentioned, because the characters in these two movies never consider (on screen) the “option” of abortion that somehow the movies are flawed and represent Hollywood’s moral hypocrisy. She cites the evidence for the “moral hypocrisy” in that while the subject of abortion isn’t raised, the characters who find themselves pregnant in these movies should be morally repugnant to the presumably conservative audiences for whom Hollywood has excised the abortion option.

To further the inane argument, Hornaday quotes New York Press film writer Jennifer Merin, who is also the president of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, who says, “I think it’s shocking that the subject of abortion as a choice has been so eliminated from the discussion.” That the topic isn’t “even on the table” supposedly undermines, according to Merin, “anyone’s claim that Hollywood has a liberal agenda.”

Hey, Jennifer. Did you see “Brokeback Mountain?” Hollywood’s liberal agenda hangs on a whole lot more than two pregnant characters, whose very pregnancies are the crux of the movie plots.

For Hornaday, really good movies that deal with abortion include the “fearless” “Citizen Ruth,” described as a “scathingly funny satire about abortion politics.”

Yeah, “abortion” and “funny” go together really well.

Hornaday and other feminist, pro-abortion journalists just can’t fathom a world – the real world – where some people, regardless of marital status, will choose to carry a pregnancy to term. Will choose to give birth the human being growing within them. Will choose life.

Lots of people are doing it, Ann. In the real world and in the movies.