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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Last night I saw the movie, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” with a group of friends.  It was a funny movie, though not entirely appropriate, and one I wouldn’t go see again, but this is not so much a movie review as it is a reflection, specifically pertaining to one part of the film.

The film covers the lives of five different women and their partners, with all the ins and outs and awkward moments each go through during pregnancy.  Though an obvious and blatant comedy, this flick takes a sad turn at one point, when Rosie wakes up to find she is bleeding.  She quickly wakes up Marco and they drive to the hospital, where Rosie proceeds to have a miscarriage.  The next 30 seconds of the film aims to capture a sense of sorrow and heartache as Rosie weeps with Marco.  Until the end of the movie, Rosie is bitter and angry towards Marco and still mournful over the loss of her child.  She hides this underneath a shell of isolation from Marco and only begins to heal when she allows Marco back in her life.

Our Postmodern Culture

While I agree that Rosie should be sorrowful over losing her baby and the director was right to portray it as such, this scenario does not agree with broader culture’s opinion and viewpoint on who the unborn child is.  Our postmodern culture would say and Hollywood would agree that abortion is a woman’s right and having one is no more serious than having your wisdom teeth removed.  If that is true, then having a miscarriage during the first trimester, such as Rosie did is nothing to mourn over and Rosie was out of line to isolate herself from Marco.  Yet the film’s message is unexpected because it captures the sad reality of a miscarriage, which is the loss of a baby, whose life began at the moment of conception.

It is interesting to note though that nobody is crying foul over this film’s unexpected message; the pro-aborts are quiet and content.  Portraying individual circumstances and personal opinions is okay, so long as the film industry doesn’t make any objective claims about the unborn.  That would create an uproar.  In other words, it’s okay to show Rosie and Marco mourning the loss of their baby, since they wanted the baby, but to go further than that would be judgmental.

Planned Parenthood & Relativism

Planned Parenthood has perfectly captured this belief.  On October 16, 1996, Planned Parenthood of Minnesota/South Dakota ran an ad in the Burnsville/Lakeville Sun-Current which stated “Babies are loud, smelly, and expensive. Unless you want one.”  Planned Parenthood was essentially saying that if the baby is wanted, then it is a gift, a cute bundle of joy, whose life is worth protecting; but if it is unwanted, then it is a parasite, a disease, something to be quickly disposed of.  This is classic relativism.  How does whether the baby is wanted or not dictate whether it is worthy of protection or not?  Our opinion of the unborn child does not change the fact that the baby is still a baby.

Thought Experiment

Imagine for a second that my friends lost their son in a tragic car accident and while mourning the loss of their boy, I decided to kill my own son for various reasons; perhaps I couldn’t afford to feed him, perhaps I was annoyed by him.  Imagine further now that while at the boy’s funeral (who died in the car crash), as I am weeping with my friends over the loss of their son, they express their condolences about my own son’s death, to which they are unaware of the details, and I respond, “Well, I never really wanted him in the first place, so his death is inconsequential.  But I am so sorry for your loss.  I know how much you loved your son”  This scenario is obviously ridiculous because we recognize human life as valuable, regardless of whether they are wanted or not.  The Jews during the Holocaust were not wanted by Nazi Germany, but that didn’t make them any less valuable.

I appreciate the director’s portrayal of Rosie and her grief at losing her baby through a miscarriage, and perhaps it speaks to his beliefs about abortion, perhaps it doesn’t.  Due to the relativism that has become so embedded into our postmodern society, no one will be upset if you make a moral claim that is placed within the context of a personal situation or opinion.  So long as Rosie and Marco wanted their baby, then they have every right to be sad over losing him/her.  People will only begin to get upset if and when film directors objectively portray the unborn child as a baby and the loss of that baby’s life as something to be mourned (whether through abortion or a miscarriage).

The humanity of the unborn is what must be established.  To see how we can begin doing that effectively and persuasively, click here.

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