Movies About Accidental Pregnancy Are Still About Choice

By Katey Rich

Carrie Rickey had a fascinating article in the Philadelphia Inquirer a while ago that said out loud what's been whispered a lot this year: There are a good number of characters not having abortions on-screen this year. Rickey points out Juno, Knocked Up, Bella and Waitress as four films that revolve around accidental pregnancy but never say the actual word "abortion."

"Rhymes with 'shmashmortion.'" We all remember that, one of the great lines among many in Knocked Up. It was one of those one-liners that makes you take a good look at yourself while you laugh your head off: Oh yeah, what about a shmashmortion? Seth Rogen answered the question quite succinctly in an interview with the Onion A.V. Club earlier this year; "It wasn't a movie about a woman deciding whether she should keep her baby; it was about a woman who decided she was going to keep the baby."

Fair enough. A story about having a baby is more interesting, and has much more potential for comedy, than a story about abortion, as Knocked Up and Juno demonstrate to great effect. Still, when there are four separate characters in four separate movies all completely forgoing the abortion debate, where does that put the debate itself? How have we gone from 80s movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Dirty Dancing, where unwanted pregnancies were a dangerous tragedy, to today, when there are any number of ways to deal with being, well, knocked up? When abortion issues are anything but settled legally, why are we so comfortable entirely skirting them on-screen?

Rickey quotes a statistic that says 55% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal under most circumstances, a number that has been about the same since 1975. But she also interviews gynecologist Beverly Winikoff, who notes that unwed mothers do not carry nearly the same social stigma they did in the early 90s, when Candice Bergen became a cultural flashpoint when her character on Murphy Brown became a single mom. It's hard to imagine Knocked Up or Waitress functioning as comedies if Alison and Jenna's pregnancies were seen as morally corrupting, or even damaging to their own lives. The American idea of family has changed enough that Alison and Ben work perfectly as a family at the end of Knocked Up, and Juno giving her baby up for adoption is a richly satisfying emotional ending, not a heartbreak.

Rickey and her interview subjects argue that abortion is so controversial a topic that it cannot be mentioned in film anymore, but I tend to think the opposite: Many Americans, especially those making movies, have come to terms with abortion so much that it needn't always be defended on-screen. I'll admit, there was definitely a feminist part of me that squirmed during Knocked Up, both times I saw it, wishing Katherine Heigl's character would have doubt for a moment, or seriously consider an abortion. But many months later it's finally occurred to me: Why should she have to? Plenty of young women decide to keep babies during accidental pregnancies, just as plenty decide to have abortions. It was her character's choice--there's that operative word-- and once the choice has been made, as Seth Rogen said, it shouldn't matter why.

A pregnancy is a great storytelling device; it even neatly divides into three acts, or "trimesters" as the doctor-types would prefer. The fact that we are able to tell stories about accidental, out-of-wedlock pregnancies without handwringing or proselytizing may represent some head-in-the-sand attitudes on the part of Hollywood, but it's still a refreshing spin on the "problem picture" attitude that has been taken toward abortion in most mainstream movies throughout the years. There still need to be defenders for the right to an abortion, of course, but the fact that Hollywood no longer feels the need to jump up to that plate every single time seems to indicate we've gotten somewhere. As they say, my body, my choice-- whatever that choice may be.