{"id":199295,"date":"2019-04-02T06:24:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T11:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=199295"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:04:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-14T04:04:36","slug":"unplanned-show-abortion-really-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/unplanned-show-abortion-really-women\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Unplanned’ dares to show what abortion really does to women"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Warning<\/strong>: This is a movie review, and there may be spoilers below!<\/em><\/p>\n

“Unplanned” landed in theaters Friday, March 29th, delivering on-screen the redemptive memoir of Abby Johnson, Planned Parenthood<\/a> center director-turned-advocate for women and the preborn.<\/p>\n

Viewers may recognize a few cameo appearances: Live Action\u2019s founder and president Lila Rose (as a journalist), former abortionist and now pro-life educator Dr. Anthony Levatino (as an abortionist),\u00a0and My Pillow inventor and CEO Michael Lindell (as a construction worker). As an investor, Lindell also contributed $1 million<\/a> to the film’s $6 million budget.<\/p>\n

The film is the first movie from Pure Flix to be rated R by the MPAA<\/a>. Abby (played by Ashley Bratcher) is a wide-eyed, Southern college girl from a pro-life Christian family. She begins volunteering at a Planned Parenthood facility after being convinced that the organization\u2019s purpose is to serve women, in an effort to make abortion<\/a>\u00a0as rare as possible. She eventually finds herself employed as a counselor at the facility in Bryan, Texas, convincing women with unplanned pregnancies that abortion is the best choice, and that the faster they choose it, the cheaper it will be. Her commitment to the Planned Parenthood mission is unwavering, despite the clamor and persistence of pro-life activists at the fence, her parents\u2019 disappointment, and her own two miserable abortions, which resulted from a relationship that ended in divorce. Even when she later finds and marries a pro-life man, Abby\u2019s patient husband Doug (Brooks Ryan) doesn\u2019t convince her to leave her job.<\/p>\n

Abby and other women in the story rely upon denial to numb the pain of dealing with abortions every day. She and the other workers are either gaslighted or given empty reassurance when they instinctively know something is wrong with what they’re doing. Working in such an environment doesn\u2019t allow escape, so Abby must let her heart become calloused.<\/p>\n

READ: \u2018Unplanned\u2019 star shocked by mother\u2019s revelation: \u2018I was going to abort you\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Abby\u2019s work ethic and failure to shed tears while examining dead baby parts in the Products of Conception room impresses the facility director (played by Robia Scott), a sort of ‘ice queen’ who chooses Abby as her successor. Ever the overachiever, Abby excels in her new role, even trying to keep business running during hurricane weather for as long as possible. Her work is award-winning, despite her occasional doubts about her superiors\u2019 vision for the organization.<\/p>\n

Then comes the moment when, via live ultrasound, Abby sees what an abortion looks like on the inside.<\/p>\n

This scene is groundbreaking in that, perhaps for the first time in cinema, audiences can experience kinesthetic empathy with a baby in the womb (modeled by the editor\u2019s baby son, Cash Adams). When you watch the baby on sonogram struggle to flee for his or her life, pulling deeper into the womb to evade the abortionist\u2019s tools, you feel panicked for that little person. You want the child to get away and live. The tense moment has the wince factor of a horror movie, and it’s reasonably the part the MPAA found “most problematic.”<\/a> But the violence throughout the film is not excessive or grotesque. The sheer earthy reality of it is what makes it disturbing.<\/p>\n