Letters to the Editor
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Some Women Don't Consider Abortions
Isn't it true that some women simply wouldn't consider having an abortion in the situation _Knocked Up_'s female lead is in? that for some women it's simply a non-issue? honestly, I've read a lot of advance publicity/reviews about the movie and I don't get the head-scratching. I'm firmly pro-choice, but many of my friends would never seriously consider having an abortion themselves (though they support a woman's right to have an abortion). They wouldn't call up on their friends and agonize "should I or shouldn't I"--they simply wouldn't have one, and therefore all their moves would focus on how to prepare for the pregnancy.
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Stephanie Zacharek can answer this post for me.
From http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/06/01/knocked_up/index.html:
"It's clear that Apatow doesn't intend "Knocked Up" as a right-to-life tract, and I hope it won't be celebrated -- or decried -- as such. The movie is simply delicate-handed enough to know that neither it nor the Supreme Court can dictate what a woman's choice should be. And it's intuitive enough to know that such a complicated choice can't be easily explained -- at least in terms that will satisfy anyone's politics. At one point Alison and Debbie's well-intentioned mother (played by Joanna Kerns) reminds Alison how a friend of the family became pregnant out of wedlock, had an abortion and then later went on to have "a real baby" -- a pointed reminder that even when we're faced with the most intensely personal of decisions, there's always going to be someone arrogant enough to think he or she knows what's best for us."
Also, wouldn't keeping abortion discussions to a minimum be a sort of writerly decision? Why dwell on this plot point if you've already got an idea of where your movie's going? If the movie was supposed to be about abortion, it would be about abortion. This movie's supposed to be about a pregnancy.
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Many women have already made the decision long before....
I was in the same position once as the protagonist, and I too did not consider an abortion. The guy asked, "And you've decided to keep it?" and I said yes, and that was the end of it. I went to a pro-choice pregnancy clinic; the woman there asked me what I wanted to do if I was pregnant; I said that I would keep the baby, and she gave me a videotape appropriate to that choice to watch as I waited for the results. It wasn't a political decision on my part; I just had always known if I got pregnant, I personally would keep the baby, although I wasn't really concerned what someone else would do in the same situation. I didn't run through the ramifications of the choice with my friends or family. Having since then volunteered in a pregnancy clinic myself, I have seen that many women do not make a decision between abortion or keeping the baby; they have already decided long before, when sitting around with girlfriends or sisters or an old boyfriend, talking about what they would do if....
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Unless I was pregnant as a consequence of rape or unless my health was seriously endangered, I would never consider abortion.
Many people who are prochoice would try to avoid having an abortion. Many people would choose otherwise. That's why it's called choice. Not every unplanned pregnancy need end in abortion.
So what if the movie avoids the abortion issue. It's a movie and a comedy at that. Abortion is not an issue that invites chuckles.
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Controlling her body
Does anyone remember what happened after Katherine Heigl's character learns about her promotion, early in the movie? She will now be in front of the camera. So her new bosses tell her that - although they can't directly say she needs to lose weight - that she should "tighten things" or perhaps go home, weigh herself, write down that number and plan to lose 20 pounds. Perhaps the character was, in her own way, claiming the right to do what she wanted with her own body.
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Let's not forget, the movie is trying to create a comedy world
There are some issues that are very hard to introduce into a comedy and maintain the mood they are working to establish. Once you raise the issue of abortion, you put the audience in a frame of mind very different than the one you've been building. Even if you manage to get humor out of it (as in the famous epidsode of Maude) it's a very different emotional place you're putting the audience in. A place quite a few of them are unwilling to go. It's a major distraction for a movie that, as mentioned, needs the pregnancy to fulfill its premise.
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She avoids the issue? Really?
Spoilers follow, if anyone's worried about that.
Just got back from this very movie tonight, actually. And both sides of the couple both get this presented as the option other people think they should take. And Alison seems fully prepared for Ben to be upset by her decision to carry the child to term.
But he isn't. They aren't teenagers, they're adults. It's implied that they both have college educations. It's certain that they are both employable in well-paying fields. When she makes the decision to keep the baby, she isn't necessarily making the decision to keep the guy, too... but she does know that she's capable of dealing with motherhood at that point in time, and that everybody mentioning abortion is doing so not because she's pregnant but because of *how* she got pregnant.
Criticizing people for that sort of attitude is not anti-choice. There *are* people who like to make this decision for others, whether they're parents or friends or even strangers, in either direction. The pro-choice crowd is just as guilty as the pro-lifers. It's not that everyone does it, it's that there are a few very vocal and very annoying people who do and they should stop. Telling someone it's an option is cool, telling someone who is perfectly capable of supporting a child--she's on national television, for God's sake, she drives a brand new car, her family obviously has money, there's no hardship there--that they *shouldn't* (not just that they don't have to) is right up there, to me, with telling them that they have to.
But she doesn't reject it because abortion is evil or because some religious person got to her. She rejects it because, well, sometimes life doesn't respect your own plans but it all works out pretty well in the long run anyway.
I'm very much pro-choice. I'm not planning on a baby right now, at this stage of my life. But if my birth controls fails, I'm not going to choose an abortion just because parenthood isn't what I planned to be doing right now with my life. I think that's an absolutely valid and reasonable decision to have made, and does not speak at all to one's personal feelings on abortion.