Beyond the Multiplex

"Unborn in the USA": The abortion movie nobody wants to see (but everyone probably should)
Late in Stephen Fell and Will Thompson's documentary "Unborn in the USA," there's an angry altercation between a passing pedestrian -- a woman, presumably a liberal with pro-choice views -- and a group of antiabortion protesters who are displaying some of those gruesome poster-size photos of aborted fetuses on a street in Flint, Mich. (I think it's pure accident that this happens in Michael Moore's hometown.)

Visibly livid and horrified, the woman begins screaming angrily at the church pastor who's leading the protest. At first he remains calm, but when she insists that she's a better Christian than he is, he tells her she's a hypocrite and calls her "a servant of Satan." She slaps his face once, then twice, and in the ensuing melee ends up hitting his 3-year-old son, presumably by accident. Handcuffed and led away by police, she screams and sobs, utterly unable to control herself.

I can sympathize. Whatever your personal feelings or political opinions on abortion, Fell and Thompson's film is likely to make you feel wretched. It's an uneven but fascinating survey of views and tactics in the contemporary pro-life movement, especially in the wake of federal laws (ill-advised and probably unconstitutional laws, in my opinion) that criminalized certain kinds of abortion-clinic protests. As "Unborn in the USA" makes clear, these activists are now attacking the issue at its most vulnerable point, the undeniable fact that most of us don't want to know much about abortions, about how they are actually conducted and what the results really look like.

That woman is not the only pro-choice passerby provoked to irrational rage in this film by the pro-lifers and their pictures of chopped-up fetuses, although she's the only one who escalates to actual violence. The pictures, I am sorry to report, appear to be legitimate. In the 1980s, before disposal methods at abortion clinics became more sophisticated, anti-abortion activists scavenged hundreds of fetal remains from dumpsters and used them to create their infamous photographic library, since reproduced for protests in virtually every large city, college campus or state capital across the country.

"Unborn in the USA" may likewise infuriate many pro-choice viewers, since it pretty much allows pro-lifers to form their arguments and make their case without rebuttal. As the film demonstrates, this is a movement that has grown more sophisticated and diverse in recent years. It still includes terrifying nutcases like the Rev. Don Spitz, self-appointed leader of the Army of God, which advocates killing abortion doctors and blowing up clinics, and is still largely based in hard-line elements of various Christian faiths. But it also includes the "post-abortion" movement, meaning women who now say they regret having abortions and mourn their unborn babies. Irrespective of political logic or coherence, it's impossible for any adult, and especially any parent, to watch these women testify without a lump in your throat.

Still, the entirely reasonable counter-arguments -- for example, that abortion may be unpleasant, but banning it would only make the underlying social problems worse -- are never expressed in this film. There's an integrity to this, surely; Fell and Thompson just want to depict the pro-life movement in its own terms, as it stands on the cusp (probably) of its greatest victory. If I had to guess, I would say the filmmakers are challenging the pro-choice movement to recognize that its opponents are people of deep conviction, and to examine its own beliefs in the harshest possible light.

"Unborn in the USA" opens June 15 at Cinema Village in New York. Other cities, and DVD release, will follow.

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