Abortion - Dramas
The Last Child
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Country of origin and year: USA, 1971
Duration: 73 min
Starring: Michael Cole, Van Heflin, Harry Guardino
The Last Child takes place in America in 1994, a time in which a massive, chronic overpopulation crisis has resulted in the passage of Draconian laws, declaring that no couple can have more than one child, and that anyone over 65 can receive only superficial medical treatment. Michael Cole and Janet Margolin play a young couple whose first child died; she is pregnant again, and they now find themselves hounded by authorities when she refuses to submit to a legally mandated abortion. Chased across country by a Population Control agent, they plan to escape to Canada but find the border closed. They receive help from a retired U.S. Senator, opposed the Population Control Laws. He shelters them at great risk to himself, using what political clout he still commands in his own state to block the pursuit. They must find a means of escaping the country, however, as the authorities close in even on this momentarily safe haven.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067326
Vera Drake
Director: Mike Leigh
Country of origin and year: UK, France - 2004
Duration: 125 min
Age Certificate: 12
Vera Drake is a selfless woman who is completely devoted to, and loved by, her working class family. She spends her days doting on them and caring for her sick neighbor and elderly mother. However, she also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. While the practice itself was illegal in 1950s England, Vera sees herself as simply helping women in need, and always does so with a smile and kind words of encouragement. When the authorities finally find her out, Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383694
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (original title: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile)
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Country of origin and year: Romania, Belgium - 2007,
Duration: 113 min
Age Certificate: 15
Awards: Palme d’Or Cannes Film Festival 2007, International Critics Prize by FIPRESCI at Cannes Film Festival
The film is set in Communist Romania during the late 1980s in the final years of the Nicolae Ceauşescu era. It tells the tragic story of two students, roommates in the university dormitory, who try to arrange an illegal abortion for one of them. The title refers to how far along this character is in her pregnancy. Towards the end of the movie, the audience is confronted with the powerful and graphic picture of the aborted fetus. This film is neither pro-life nor pro-choice but pro-reality.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032846/
Bella
Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde
Country of origin and year: USA, Mexico - 2006
Duration: 91 min
Age Certificate: Parental Guidance
Starring: Eduardo Verastegui, Tammy Blanchard
Jose is on his way to sign a multi-million dollar contract when the car he is driving hits a young girl in the street, killing her. His career comes to an abrupt end. Years later, the once a famous athlete, now a cook at his brother's Mexican restaurant, finds himself working with Nina, a waitress who is struggling to make it in New York City. When Nina discovers she is pregnant, José reaches out to her and through kindness and the relaying of his experience, encourages her not to pursue an abortion. In the course of a single day, he not only confronts his past but shows her how the healing power of a family can help her embrace the future.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482463/
Hunter
Director: Colm McCarthy
Country of origin and year: UK, 2009
Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Janet McTeer
When pro-life extremists kidnap two seven year-old boys from very different backgrounds and promise to release them only if their radical demands are met, the case falls into the hands of the intuitive and pragmatic Iain Barclay and his faithful deputy Amy Foster. The kidnappers demand that a film portraying an abortion is shown on national news bulletins to show the public the gruesome reality of abortion. While Barclay unsuccessfully argues with his commanding officer to persuade the powers that be to show the film, his team are racing against time to track down all clues as to the identity of the kidnappers. Barclay's clear thinking allows the team to pinpoint one of the perpetrators. Before they can locate him, however, the kidnappers have snatched another child, this time a young girl. As the lives of three children hang in the balance, and the deadlines loom ever closer, the pressure is mounting on Barclay's team to piece together the information, and to avert a tragic outcome to this shocking crime.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1293877/
Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story
Director: Joseph Sargent
Country of origin and year: USA, 1983
Starring: Melissa Gilbert, Helen Hunt, Peter Horton
This movie is a highly inaccurate portrayal, and avoids the difficulties with Sanger's life. It sugar coats her radical Marxist-socialist feminism, avoids her illegal abortion work, avoids mentioning the unsafe birth control methods she promoted, avoids her miserable 1st marriage and divorce, avoids her sexual promiscuity, and portrays her own reaction to her work as honest surprise at positive response rather than careful and cunning planning on her part. It also avoids her racism and eugenics work, which she de-emphasized after WWII Germany experience.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085332/
The Handmaid’s Tale
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Country of origin and year: USA/ Germany, 1990
Starring: Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, Aidan Quinn
In a dystopicly polluted rightwing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099731/
If These Walls Could Talk
Director: Cher, Nancy Savoca
Country of origin and year: USA, 1996
Starring: Demi Moore, Shirley Knight, Catherine Keener
A trilogy of stories set in the same house, but with different occupants and spanning over 40 years, deals with various women and moral crisis over unexpected pregnancies and their choice of abortion. In 1952, when abortion was illegal, a nurse deals with her unexpected pregnancy and takes drastic measures to get one. In 1974 a family housewife with four children discovers that she's pregnant and decides she can't handle another child to raise. In 1996, a pregnant college student decides on an abortion, but doesn't realize the means to go through to get one.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116607/
Doonby
Director: Peter Mackenzie
Country of origin and year: USA, 2013
Starring: John Schneider, Jenn Gotzon, Joe Estevez
Schneider plays Sam Doonby, a mysterious, yet talented drifter who gets off a bus one afternoon in a small Texas town to change and improve the lives of all he comes in contact with. It is a story of greed and envy, played out against the backdrop of the classic country and blues music that is performed in Leroy’s Bar. The film has been described by the producers as Crazy Heart-meets- It’s a Wonderful Life, while Schneider described it as "It's A Wonderful Life without the Wonderful."
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645054/
Rain without Thunder
Director: Gary O Bennett
Country of origin and year: USA,1992
Starring: Betty Buckley, Carolyn McCormick, Iona Morris
It's the year 2042 and the threat is real...women are going to prison for terminating their pregnancies. An investigating reporter is determined to reveal the truth behind the convictions.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105215/
Twilight of the Golds
Director: Ross Kagan Marks
Country of origin and year: USA,1996
Starring: Gary Marshall, Faye Dunaway, Jill Bernstein
When Suzanne Stein has a genetic analysis done on her unborn child, she discovers that although she has a healthy baby, the child will most likely be born gay, like her brother, David.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120392/
Juno
Director: Jason Reitman
Country of origin and year: USA, UK, 2007
Starring: Elliot Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner
Junior in Minnesota discovers she's pregnant after one event in a chair with her best friend, Bleeker. In the waiting room of an abortion clinic, the quirky and whip-sharp Juno decides to give birth and to place the child with an adoptive couple. She finds one in the PennySaver personals, contacts them, tells her dad and step-mother, and carries on with school. The chosen parents, upscale yuppies (one of whom is cool and laid back, the other meticulous and uptight), meet Juno, sign papers, and the year unfolds.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/
Malice
Director: Harold Becker
Country of origin and year: USA, UK, Canada 1993
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman, Bill Pullman
A tale about a happily married couple who would like to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy's a college professor. Things are never the same after she is taken to hospital and operated upon by Jed, a "know all" doctor.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107497/
Pregnant in America
Director: Steve Buonaugurio
Country of origin and year: USA, 2008
Starring: Angela Buonaugurio, Mandy Buonaugurio, Steve Buonaugurio
The true story of Steve and Mandy Buonaugurio, a young, adventurous, expectant couple, who decide to take a daring and potentially dangerous approach to having their first child--outside the modern American medical system. What they learn about hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, midwives, and home birth as they travel across the United States and Europe interviewing experts and confronting birthing situations, exposes them to some shocking and disturbing realities about America¹s maternity care system and what is happening to women and babies. Ultimately, what they learn impacts on and alters the outcome of their own pregnancy.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231290/
A Private Matter
Director: Joan Micklin Silver
Country of origin and year: USA, 1992
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Aidan Quinn, Estelle Parsons
The true story of Romper Room host "Miss Sherri" Finkbine, who, after the devastating effects of thalidomide were discovered in the early 1960s, sparked a firestorm of controversy with her determination to obtain an abortion.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105176/
The Cider House Rules
Director: Lasse Hallström
Country of origin and year: USA, 2000
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine
This movie features a doctor who performs illegal abortions because he is horrified by the consequences of the botched, back-alley abortions he has seen. He tries to convince his doubtful protege that he is making the moral choice. The movie spends a lot of time addressing the nuances of abortion, and the character who performs the abortions is not shown as morally reprehensible.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124315/
Kids Like These
Director: Georg Stanford Brown
Country of origin and year: USA,1987
Starring: Tyne Daly, Richard Crenna, Georgia Allen
Tyne Daly stars in this drama about a couple over 40 coping with the surprise of having a Down Syndrome child. Triggers issues about prenatal testing, genetic counseling, and social myths surrounding Down Syndrome.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093344/
Obvious Child
Director: Gillian Robespierre
Country of origin and year: USA, 2014
Starring: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann
For aspiring comedian Donna Stern, everyday life as a female twenty-something provides ample material for her hysterical and relatable brand of humor. On stage, Donna is unapologetically herself, joking about topics as intimate as her sex life and as crude as her day-old underwear. But when Donna winds up unexpectedly pregnant after a one-night stand, she is forced to face the uncomfortable realities of independent womanhood for the first time. Donna's drunken hookup - and epic lapse in prophylactic judgment - turns out to be the beginning of a hilarious and totally unplanned journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2910274/
Unplanned
Director: Chuck Konzelman, Cary Solomon
Country of origin and year: USA, 2019
Starring: Ashley Bratcher, Brooks Ryan, Robia Scott
All Abby Johnson ever wanted to do was help women. As one of the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic directors in the nation, she believed in a woman's right to choose. Until the day she saw something that changed everything.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9024106/