Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s resist the urge to burn the whole damn suitcase, and dig in:
First off, this is not a film “telling the truth”, it’s FICTION. The real story has already been told, and it’s not so cut-and-dried. It’s also not pretty. Abby Johnson, the woman who allegedly had a “moment of truth”, only changed sides because the anti-choicers (who are well funded by all the usual right-wing suspects) were offering her money to pay down her debts:
Johnson’s decision to join the Coalition for Life, the same anti-abortion group that had picketed her clinic for years, was “completely opportunistic,” Kaminczak told the Observer.
“She called me two weeks before this whole thing broke,” Kaminczak said, “and she told me she was thinking about going to the coalition. She had been having serious money problems—she’d been talking about bankruptcy—and she told me that Shawn [Carney] had promised her $3,000 speaking gigs if she came over.”
In short: Abby’s romanticized “epiphany” was fiction, made up to conceal her embarrassing reality.
Secondly, abortion isn’t an “industry”, it’s a SURGERY. Sometimes, it’s not even that; it’s just a couple of pills and a wait. It’s not even highly profitable; quite the opposite, in fact. But the anti-choice side IS an industry, and a very lucrative one at that. $3000 US per speaking appearance isn’t exactly chicken feed, except to the very wealthy men funding the anti-choice crapaganda industry. They can afford it, and it’s clear that they don’t miss the money.
Which brings me to third: This is a man, opining on something that concerns him not in the least. A man of the Religious Reich. All eager to control women’s bodies and sex lives, but you never hear boo out of him over male supremacist porn (which “Unplanned” in fact is), or sex aids that are aimed at men, or even Viagra. He’s all up in the ladybusiness. Why is that? Oh, surely not because flinging anti-choice red meat to his credulous constituents in rural Saskatchewan is a sure way to get elected, and re-elected, right up until he decides to cash in and go for that sweet, sweet parliamentary pension, eh?
And finally: “Unplanned” isn’t “controversial”, I’ll give him that. It is quite uncontroversially a piece of garbage. It’s built not only on Abby Johnson’s own lies, but on the same unscientific hogwash the anti-choice industry has been spewing for years. And he’s crowing over it like a rooster on a dungheap.
