(LifeSiteNews) — The LGBT movement’s hijacking of Hollywood—described in the documentary series Visible: Out On Television—is now well-known. Filmmakers and TV producers did much of the heavy cultural lifting in the crusade to normalize alternative sexual lifestyles and persuade the public to accept the LGBT movement’s agenda; even President Joe Biden, the first prominent Democrat to endorse the redefinition of marriage, credited the TV show Will & Grace for making it happen.
But the entertainment industry has had a harder time selling abortion. For decades, even liberal Hollywood declined to normalize abortion onscreen. The reasons were easy to discern. Viewers didn’t want to watch abortion storylines, because even most pro-choice people saw it as a “necessary evil”—and feticide is never considered a happy ending. As Jonah Goldberg observed, even though those working in the entertainment industry are avowedly pro-abortion, “nearly every pregnant TV character treats her unborn child as if it’s already a human being.” Crisis pregnancies generally ended with a live child being born, loved by his or her parents. Viewers wanted happy endings, not abortions.
As the strategy of the abortion movement changed, so did that of the storytellers. In the 1990s, activists championed the need for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Most claimed, for public consumption, that abortion was not good, but an unfortunate social necessity. As the abortion wars heated up in the 2000s, however, the strategy changed. Abortion was championed as not just a social necessity, but a social good. The activists set the agenda; the storytellers got with the program (the activists and the storytellers were often the same people). Obvious Child (2014) was billed as the first-ever “abortion comedy,” in which a young woman gets pregnant, procures an abortion, and is very happy with her decision—as is her adorkable, awkward boyfriend. The film flopped.
Major sitcoms began showing abortion with regularity to drive home the point that abortion is normal, and in 2020 director Eliza Hittman released a gritty road trip drama about two young girls crossing state lines to get an abortion. The abortion staff are the heroes of the story; pro-life laws are the cruel catalyst for it. The message of the film is clear: abortion is necessary, and those who oppose it are, at best, misguided ideologues. Unlike previous films, Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always was a genuinely powerful and moving piece of storytelling.
Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Unpregnant, released that same year on HBO Max, reprised the stillborn “abortion comedy” genre with the story of a 17-year-old girl heading off on an abortion road trip with her sidekick from Missouri, which requires parental consent, to New Mexico, which does not. Pro-lifers are portrayed as creepy “Jesus freaks” (who at one point try to kidnap the girls to ensure she gives birth), and the film is packed with Planned Parenthood talking points. Goldenberg stated that she was passionate about the film because of her own abortion: “I’m proud to be working on a project that will hopefully help destigmatize and normalize abortion.”
With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Hollywood propaganda machine has ramped up. In 2022, Call Jane was released. It starred Elizabeth Banks, a long-time abortion activist who serves as the chair of the Center for Reproductive Rights Creative Council. The Center for Reproductive Rights is an organization that works towards the legalization and de-stigmatization of abortion—their “creative council” is made up of storytellers who work to help them do it. Call Jane tells the story of an underground network of activists who helped provide illegal abortions to women in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. They are portrayed as heroes, and the director explained that the intent of the film was to normalize abortion.
In the post-Roe era, our elite storytellers have changed tactics. We must be prepared to counter their stories with our own.
