October Baby: A Reminder of Hollywood's Abortion Bias
By Gabriel Garnica
After seeing the pro-life movie October Baby get bashed by 75% of the film critics and praised by over 90% of
the audience, I saw the film myself last weekend and came out of the theatre with two observations.
Hollywood's Twisted Portrayal of Abortion
Nowhere is Hollywood's pathetic and despicable hypocrisy, bias, and cowardice more evident than in its handling
of abortion. Films like Cider House Rules and Vera Drake, which both displayed abortion as a noble social good
removing the chains of ignorance and oppression from women, had no problem getting wide distribution and
garnering high praise and awards from all corners of Hollywood.
The made for television movie If These Walls Could Talk, which Cher partly directed and starred in, depicts two
women who choose abortion as thoughtful victims of an ignorant society and a third who decides against abortion
as an ignorant and gullible fool with no legitimate clue as to why she has made the choice. That third woman,
played by Sizzy Spacek, is portrayed as a woman yearning for an education who drops all hope of happiness as she
prepares to deal with an unwanted child while shining her husband's shoes. The clear message of all three
stories is that men are heartless monsters who victimize women with pregnancy, reflecting the Obama message that
pregnancy can be a prison and abortion is the get-out-of-jail card that only ignorant, gullible, and backward
women reject.
Invariably, Hollywood condemns any pro-life film as blatant propaganda rubbish and any pro-abortion movie as
thought-provoking, profound, and insightful. Bella, another beautiful pro-life effort, was criticized this way
when it was released a few years ago, and October Baby receives the same treatment from the vast majority of the
same critics who nearly slipped on their own drivel in excitement over Cider House Rules and Vera Drake. These
films, and If These Walls Could Talk, practically depict abortion as a sacrament and abortionists as its most
noble and saintly priests. In Walls, Cher is the smiling, benevolent, comforting, saintly doctor and abortion is
the loving, sanitized, practically bloodless salvation from the suffering of an unwanted pregnancy. In the most
absurd and truly ridiculous of ironies, this peaceful abortion is cut short by the crazed violence of a
bloodthirsty pro-life zealot. Such is the utterly heinous and vile lie sold by Hollywood and the Left. Namely,
that abortion is anything near a salvation from violence and harm to women. In the most ironic and detestable of
ironies, Cher is practically depicted as an almost Virgin Mary figure gazing over the girl seeking an abortion
and, just as suddenly, as a Christ-like sacrificial lamb giving up her life for her noble cause.
If Hollywood portrays abortion and abortionists as a cross between Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale, what
of its depiction of those who oppose this barbaric procedure? In short, they are depicted as stupid, homophobic,
sexist, creepy and downright psychotic. From squealing priests and pro-life protestors short a few chromosomes
to superstitious dolts with the IQ and common sense of a doorknob, abortion opponents are branded as pathetically
evil idiots preventing the enlightened pro-abortion crowd from efficiently and fully dragging society to the
modern world.
The Left's Pathetic Scramble to Conceal The Truth is Losing Ground
The Hunger Games has scored box office success while depicting children sadistically enjoying shooting, stabbing,
and beating each other to death,
Parents Warned About Hunger Games Violence,
in becoming the third most successful opening film of all time after netting $ 155 million in its opening
weekend.
Although it only opened in 390 theaters, October Baby earned the second-highest-per screen average, bringing in
almost $2 million in ticket sales. One of October Baby's directors, Jon Erwin, described how no studio wanted to
touch the film because it was considered "too controversial" such that, ultimately, he and the film's other
director, his brother Andrew, raised the money themselves, delaying the release. Dr. Ted Baehr, founder of the
Christian movie site Movieguide.org, attributes the success of "October Baby" to a strong Christian and moral
world view that touches the hearts of those who saw it.
Pro-life October Baby Rejected
Therein lies the inherent problem with this entire situation. We live in an increasingly anti-Christian, amoral
society where a film depicting random, sadistic violence by children against children is gladly accepted and
October Baby, which depicts loving forgiveness and a respect for life is bashed as a "slickly packaged...
essentially ugly...soapy melodrama... which communicates in language of guilt and fear…intended to terrify young
women."
October Baby with Jasmine Guy and John Schneider.
The film is alternately described as dull, amateurish, weepy, unrealistic, indecent propaganda, better off as a
bumper sticker, a campaign video, or an endless lecture by the myriad of critics regularly paid by someone who
cares what they think about film.
Fortunately, the audiences who are flocking to see this wonderful film are ignoring, and rejecting, the biased
and distorted reviews of these so-called movie experts whose expertise lies in being paid to view and spew their
own biases about what they view. As is the case with many issues today, we see the delusions and distortions
being sold by the Leftist news and entertainment industry being brushed aside by average people who long for
movies about the kind of themes which October Baby supplies in ample measure.
Try as it might, Hollywood will continue to be blind, deaf, and silent regarding the heinous and despicable
evil that is abortion. It will continue to peddle its twisted and absurd version of entertainment and reality,
where the murder of young life is whitewashed with flimsy explanations, where the fact that a bunch of teens in
October Baby travel cross country without having rampant sex is mocked, and where propaganda from the left is
spelled reality and reality from the right is spelled propaganda.
I have long argued that Catholic Universities like Georgetown and Fordham have become about as pro-life as
Planned Parenthood. Dripping in the social justice drivel which has been used by defiant pro-choice Cafeteria
Catholics to defend the woman seeking an abortion over the life of the unborn, these institutions have been far
more eager to present rubbish like The Vagina Monologues than beautiful efforts such as October Baby.
Some of October Baby's harshest critics mocked the fact that the film, release by Goldwyn, did not heed one of
Goldwyn's most famous lines regarding what movies are supposed to do; namely, "Pictures were made to entertain.
If you want to send a message, call Western Union." Anyone who has ever seen Cider House Rules, Vera Drake, and
If These Walls Could Talk might wonder why these blatant pro-abortion propaganda efforts are not criticized in
the same way by these critics. Given the success of films like Kill Bill and The Hunger Games, it might well be
that, when it comes to everything from depicting the truth to glorifying violence while criticizing the pro-life
movement as violent, Hollywood and its warped morality relish hearing the director say "cut".
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