Washington Post film critic alleges film should include choice for abortion; Kristen Fyfe responds

Washington D.C., Jul 18, 2007 / 12:54 pm

The ridicule of two box office summer hits by film journalists for the scripts’ absence of abortion has got Kristen Fyfe, a senior writer at the Culture and Media Institute, riled up. 

The two films, Waitress and Knocked Up both have main characters who are pregnant, unmarried, and unhappy with their pregnancies. But both main characters decide to have their babies.

Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday suggests in her July 15 article that because the characters in these films never consider abortion, the movies are flawed and represent Hollywood’s “moral hypocrisy.”

Hornaday also cites New York Press film writer Jennifer Merin, who writes: “I think it’s shocking that the subject of abortion as a choice has been so eliminated from the discussion.”  That the topic isn’t “even on the table” destroys, according to Merin, “anyone’s claim that Hollywood has a liberal agenda.”

Hornaday adds: “It’s a setup that has some viewers, especially women who came of age in a post-Roe v. Wade America, wondering just what world these movies are living in.”
 
However, Fyfe shoots back at the film critics, suggesting instead that they aren’t in touch with the real world.
 
“Hornaday and other feminist, pro-abortion journalists just can’t fathom a world – the real world – where some people, regardless of marital status, will choose to exercise personal responsibility and carry a pregnancy to term,” writes Fyfe.  “[They] will choose to give birth to the human being growing within them. [They] will choose life.
 
“Lots of people are doing it [not having abortions], Ann.  In the real world and in the movies,” she writes.