With the ongoing curtailing of reproductive rights in the United States, movies about abortion have become more and more common. Even when the imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade was still a distant nightmare, state laws restricting access to safe abortion were already inspiring movies such as Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Unpregnant.
Inspired by a short-film of the same name also directed by Robespierre, Obvious Child stars Jenny Slate as New York comedian Donna Stern, who, after a particularly terrible break-up, has a one-night stand with a man she meets at a bar. Some time after the encounter, Donna finds out that she is pregnant and decides to have an abortion. Due to the lack of available dates in her local Planned Parenthood’s calendar, she’s forced to schedule the procedure on Valentine’s Day.
Everyone is familiar with the risks that come with unsafe abortions. Even the anti-choice crowd is well aware of them. As a matter of fact, anti-abortion campaigns frequently turn the horrors of clandestine abortions on their heads, making the physical and emotional trauma that come from botched surgeries and counterfeit medication, as well as the difficulty in finding reliable doctors, into arguments as to why abortion should be made illegal in all cases.
According to the global human rights organization Center for Reproductive Rights, since 2011, nearly 500 laws restricting abortion access have been passed in American states. These laws go from requiring parental consent for teenagers who want to terminate a pregnancy to forcing patients to look at fetal ultrasounds before having the procedure, to simply cutting funds for abortion services. Even with Roe v.
This was a pretty good movie.