Hollywood Uncomforable with Abortion

Citing two recent movies dealing with unplanned pregnancies, Gerald Baker in The Times (London) writes an excellent article entitled, "You Won't See Termination 2 at the Movies." It can be found here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1934760.ece.

I read it first on Dr. Mohler's blog. Dr. Mohler is the president of my future alma-mater (?) and you can read his commentary on Baker's article here: http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=961 .

Baker contends that it is extremely rare to see a movie depict a women having an abortion. When given a chance, even in difficult circumstances, mothers choose to keep their babies. The reason for this is more than just a desire to avoid offending a large percentage of their potential audience. He believes that we go to movies in order to be inspired in some way and people, in their heart of hearts, realize that deciding to have a baby in the "moral and honorable" thing to do. This is problematic for the pro-choice crown because it illustrates that abortion is really about a choice between doing something "inherently expedient and selfish, and doing something that is inherently good and self-denying." His concluding paragraphs are especially strong:

And that makes you think a bit deeper about the “choice” question. The defenders of abortion like to say that choosing to have a termination is an agonising decision – and certainly many women will attest to this. But they also say that abortion presents no deep moral problem because it does not represent the taking of a human life.

So if having an abortion is no more than the disposal of an unwanted clump of cells, why on earth should a woman feel so bad about it?

In this newspaper recently Caitlin Moran wrote that she put more thought into choosing a design for her new kitchen than she did into a choice to have an abortion. This caused a bit of a stir, but if you think hard about it, it’s the only truly consistent moral position an abortion-rights defender can feel comfortable in taking. Otherwise, what on earth have they wrought?
After years of wondering whether we’ll ever change society’s permissive attitude towards abortion, I’m convinced that we will some day come to view it in the way we now view slavery, a moral abomination that generations simply became inured to by usage and practice.

The big difference, of course, is that abortion is worse than slavery. Not just in the obvious sense that it involves the taking of life rather than liberty. But because our current debate suggests that deep down most of us really know there’s something quite wrong with abortion.

Say what you will about the slaveowners, I doubt many of them sat around agonising about their decision to keep Uncle Tom and his family chained to the shack at the end of the drive. I doubt they justified it, after much soul-searching, by saying they were only painfully exercising their “choice” to own slaves so they wouldn’t have to sacrifice their standard of living.

When even Hollywood declines to celebrate the moral courage involved in choosing an abortion, it might be time we all woke up to what abortion really is.