Juno Has An Abortion
I haven't seen Juno yet because I don't go to see movies like that in the theatre.
I wait for them to come out on dvd and then I go to the little independent video store in my neighbourhood and rent them.
Oh, and when I say "movies like that", I just mean movies that you may as well watch on tv as opposed to in a theatre. I don't mean movies that are like fairy tales because they aren't true to life. If I meant that I would be saying that I only see Eastern European movies about death and dying in the theatre.
Because we're all dying, Dear Reader - which is why Eastern European movies don't do so well at the box office and Hollywood movies do.
Anyway, I've read enough about Juno to know that it's a movie my daughters will enjoy, while I will feel compelled to say to them at the end of it (and all the way through it, no doubt), "Of course, you know this is only a movie, right, and that in real life she would get AIDS and die for having unprotected sex?" To which they will reply, "Mawwwwwm, we knowwwww".
Still, I don't exactly agree with the Feminist take du jour on Juno, either. Personally, I think it's great that it's a good and entertaining movie with a teenaged girl heroine. I also think it's pretty true to life that a sixteen year old girl like that from that sort of background WOULD have the baby as opposed to an abortion.
Lots of teenaged girls think abortion is bad and they don't make the choice to have one when they get pregnant by their teenaged boyfriends for a variety of teenaged girl reasons - most of them to do with keeping the teenaged boyfriend on the hook for the rest of his life (look out parents of sons - seriously - look out).
They choose to have the baby, and can make that choice, confident that the stigma of teenaged pregnancy is pretty much gone altogether from our society - thanks to Feminism and the progressive politics of the Left.
And that's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want any girl or woman to have to have an abortion when she doesn't want one, when she would rather bring the pregnancy to term and have a baby. Sure, teenaged girls don't think beyond that point, but what are you going to do?
So it goes. Democratic society provides the choice. You make the decision.
What's an absolute fairytale ending to Juno, as far as real life facts bear out, is that a teenaged mother, these days, would give her baby up for adoption.
That, Dear Reader, is exactly what DOESN'T happen in our society. NOT that there's anything wrong with that, either, but - teenaged girls don't give babies up for adoption. They keep them. They don't have abortions, they do have babies, they don't give them up for adoption, they keep them.
Those are the facts, ma'am, the way it is, and who am I to judge whether it's right or wrong. It just is.
Juno, on the other hand, is a movie, just like Knocked Up is a movie. And I certainly understand in both movies why abortion wasn't the choice made by the female characters - and strike another one for women that Knocked Up was a huge hit with a female lead who wasn't a wife/girlfriend left to say to the male lead working at the CIA, "What's happening to you?" every day when he comes home from work. The character in Knocked Up is a fleshed out female d'une certaine age who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and yup - it's believable that she wants to have the baby and nixes the idea of having an abortion straight off. Women like her go to sperm banks in real life, ferchrissakes. Getting pregnant the old fashioned way, why it's practically divine intervention.
What's not believable in Knocked Up is that she has any desire to hook up with the father of the baby - especially THAT father of the baby. But hey, it's a movie.
So, is abortion being left out in the cold in the movies? Well, yes. But abortion's a hard sell and movies are all about sales. Meanwhile, the fact that women in different situations - in real life - are better able to have and keep their babies as opposed to necessarily having abortions or giving their babies up for adoption (and I wish that's exactly what more teenaged mothers would do, so maybe Juno will inspire a few girls to make that choice) is the good news that is being represented in the movies - finally.
Movies with female leads presented in somewhat realistic situations albeit with unlikely fairytale endings? Okay. I can live with that - for a change.
Meanwhile, in real life? It's all about the Right to control our own reproduction, as far as I'm concerned. Choice. That's what Feminists have fought so hard for and will continue to fight so hard for - Choice - for ALL women. Not just white, middle-class girls and women in the movies. Because no girl or woman, in this country, who does NOT want to terminate a pregnancy should be denied the choice to bring her pregnancy to term, either - just as no woman should be denied the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
That's the real life bottom line.
Movies are just movies. Cripes, in real life, the wife/girlfriend of the CIA agent is more likely another CIA agent who knows EXACTLY what is wrong with him because she's just as stressed out as he is that all they do is fuck with other countries while their own becomes a swirling vortex of hell.
