How Hollywood Proves Abortion is Wrong

There are some things we know by instinct, by a sort of God given understanding if you will. Despite what people think, this is especially true of morals. You never hear Americans argue over whether or not child abuse is okay. Yes, it happens, but, when it does, people rise up to put an end to it. Some things are obvious, and this concept even goes a step further: some things are obvious to us, even when we don’t realize it. Such is the case with abortion.

Suppressing the Truth

Paul talks about this idea in relation to the existence of God. He says everyone naturally knows God exists and deserves our worship, but people purposely hide the truth (Romans 1:18-23). Paul says people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (verse 18, NAS), that we don’t just hide the truth, but we hide it from ourselves. We are naturally self-deceptive. You see this tendency in people with addictions—alcoholics and drug abusers, for example. If you’ve ever had a conversation with an addict you’ve experienced the lies first hand, not just lies to you but the lies they tell themselves. You can tell that, deep down, they know they’re doing wrong. But they refuse to admit it, always staying one step ahead of the truth with a clever lie. Unconsciously, they know what’s right while consciously they trick themselves into believing the lie.

Stories can circumvent this tendency to self-deception. They can teach truths we all know even when we don’t know that we know them. Story writing happens in the heart as well as the head. When imaginatively exploring life and the human condition, a writer pens not only the truth he knows, but the truth he doesn’t know as well—the truth his heart knows even if his head has forgotten it. In other words, common sense often speaks up despite the fact that we’ve trained ourselves to think against it. Common sense, for example, teaches us that there are real differences between men and women, despite the most sophisticated arguments from radical feminists to the contrary. Based on this understanding, I can prove that abortion is wrong and most everyone thinks so, even “liberal” Hollywood.

Hollywood’s Pro-life Stance

The proof is simple: there are no happy abortion movies. Tragedies show us the hardships, darknesses and difficulties of life, while comedies show us life’s joys—the things that make life worth living. And the simple truth is that there are no movies coming out of Hollywood in which people rejoice, laugh about, or otherwise celebrate abortions. A movie that came out some years ago now, The Cider House Rules, was specifically written to argue that abortion is sometimes necessary. But beneath the lesson on ethics in that film is the truth that abortion is terrible, miserable, awful—it’s there even when the film wants to argue that abortion is good.

Comedies are more honest. Every comic movie that deals with a problem pregnancy follows a basic formula: a single woman gets pregnant without wanting to and wonders what to do but concludes that the baby cannot be aborted. And these are mainstream, Hollywood films! Sometimes the baby may be given up for adoption, but it is never “happily” aborted. On the contrary, the baby’s birth is a wonder and a blessing—almost spiritual in its significance.

How many movies are we talking about here? In Juno, a high school girl chooses to have her baby (and meet the couple to whom she gives it up for adoption). In Waitress, a woman is angry at her unborn baby because she is in an abusive marriage. She thinks the child will keep her tied to a selfish, violent, manipulative man for the rest of her life with no chance of escape. But she keeps the baby, despite not wanting it and despite the fact that her husband has already told her he won’t allow her to love the child more than she loves him. She thinks that, at least while she’s pregnant, her husband won’t beat her or demand sex from her. At the end of the movie, our heroine finds strength to stand up against her husband’s abuses. It happens at the very moment she holds her little daughter in her arms. Most recently, a film called Knocked Up, which otherwise has no redeeming value and I urge you not to see it, portrays the lives of a professional woman and a deadbeat man who have a one night stand which results in her pregnancy. From the outset she determines to keep and raise the child—abortion is simply no option—and the comic plot and vision for the rest of the film, then, revolves around the father’s choice to grow up, become a responsible adult, and help his child’s mother through her pregnancy and the birth.

There are so many Hollywood movies that celebrate “keeping the baby” rather than aborting it (or having a baby rather continuing to live only for oneself). She’s Having a Baby, Nine Months, Baby Boom, Baby Mama, For Keeps, Three Men and a Baby, Look Who’s Talking—these movies show that Hollywood has known for decades the truth that so many in Hollywood claim not to believe: abortion is wrong and babies are a blessing. There simply are no happy abortion movies. That’s the truth.