{"id":433,"date":"2007-11-26T09:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=433"},"modified":"2007-11-26T09:42:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T14:42:00","slug":"the-a-word-at-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2007\/11\/26\/the-a-word-at-the-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"The A-Word at the Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bp1.blogger.com\/_AjTpvPO_ddU\/R0wwXjaxWZI\/AAAAAAAAAss\/0pHWnwAjUaU\/s1600-h\/th-JunoFINAL.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer;cursor:hand\" src=\"http:\/\/bp1.blogger.com\/_AjTpvPO_ddU\/R0wwXjaxWZI\/AAAAAAAAAss\/0pHWnwAjUaU\/s200\/th-JunoFINAL.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>While waiting for the feature movie, Enchanted, with my family this week in Yonkers (long story, will tell another time), I watched trailer for the movie <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0467406\/\">Juno-<\/a>-another film that centers around an unplanned pregnancy.  And it got me thinking&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>The latest figures from the Guttmacher Institute find that in America, about one in five pregnancies end in abortion.  Yet, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/inquirer\/columnists\/carrie_rickey\/20071125_Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.html\">Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, just noted<\/a>,  in recent American movies, every unplanned pregnancy is carried to term.  What gives?  Writes Rickey, turning to my number 1 favorite sociologist for a quote,<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic\">From Knocked Up to Waitress to Juno, opening Dec. 14, abortion is The Great Unmentionable, euphemized as &#8220;shmashmortion&#8221; (Knocked Up), &#8220;we don&#8217;t perform, uh, -&#8221; (Waitress), and &#8220;nipped it in the bud&#8221; (Juno), comedies in which pregnancy is the situation. Abortion is likewise obliquely referenced, if actually considered, in the drama Bella, now in theaters. &#8220;It&#8217;s as if there&#8217;s an &#8216;every conception deserves delivery&#8217; policy being observed,&#8221; says Virginia Rutter, senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, a Chicago-based organization of academics and public health professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>You said it, Rutter.  And then, this nice bit from my favorite historian, Stephanie Coontz:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Perhaps when abortion is illegal, it makes a better story for filmmakers, says Stephanie Coontz, a family historian and author of Marriage, a History, in describing the motivating conflict behind Cider House, Vera Drake, and Four Months. &#8220;When you don&#8217;t have powerful stories about women whose lives have been derailed by unplanned pregnancy,&#8221; Coontz says, &#8220;there will be a tendency to sweep the subject of abortion under the rug.&#8221; Historically, she notes, abortions were common among respectable married women in the 19th century and were easier to obtain in the 1930s than in the 1950s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>How much do I love it when such smartie pants scholars are actually quoted in the press?!  I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing both Stephanie and Virginia at the May 2008 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contemporaryfamilies.org\">Council on Contemporary Families<\/a> conference in Chicago&#8230;but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be running to Juno anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While waiting for the feature movie, Enchanted, with my family this week in Yonkers (long story, will tell another time), I watched trailer for the movie Juno&#8211;another film that centers around an unplanned pregnancy. And it got me thinking&#8230;. The latest figures from the Guttmacher Institute find that in America, about one in five pregnancies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21626],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movie-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}