On Wednesday Oct. 9, Students for Life presented a showing of the film Unplanned, a film based on the memoir of a former Planned Parenthood director and current pro-life activist Abby Johnson. While I am personally pro-choice, I have no problems with Students for Life putting on events with the purpose of furthering their political agenda. It is important to civically engage as students. However, I strongly disagree with the ethics of showing this film when it presents factually incorrect information.
The concept of the film Unplanned is that Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson learns from the inside that Planned Parenthood is a corrupt institution that pushes women to have abortions in order to make money off them. Johnson sees the horrifying side of abortion when she witnesses a 13-week-old fetus struggling away from the suction tube. Seeing this causes Johnson to leave Planned Parenthood and eventually become a pro-life advocate.
This seminal event in the film, the struggle of the fetus to avoid abortion, is completely false. A 13-week-old fetus neither feels pain nor has any sense of impending danger. To assume, therefore, that it would struggle for its life is a false dramatization of abortion. In the words of Jennifer Villavicencio of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “There is no neurological capability for awareness of danger—that part of the brain is simply not there yet,” according to The New York Times. Thus, the movie seeks to compare abortion to murder while misrepresenting what an abortion actually looks like.
I am not one to object to political films nor am I opposed to dramatizations in order to enhance character beats. I don’t fault the film with stretching the truth in order to convey the importance of this moment to Johnson. However, I do object with a fictionalization masquerading as the truth, which is the result when the film is presented in lieu of a factual political discussion.
By presenting posters that read, among other things, “Pro-Choice? I Dare You to Watch this Film” and “What Does Planned Parenthood Not Want You to See?” Students for Life has created the impression that Unplanned is factual and can be used as evidence in a genuine political discussion. But in an age in which the line between fact and fiction is already so blurred in politics and the media, it is in poor taste to promote falsehoods as actual evidence.
There is a genuine moral and political debate that can be had surrounding abortion. Certainly, I’ve seen the issue taken up in a respectful and fact-driven way at Geneseo, and I encourage Students for Life to continue pushing for discussion around abortion. However, I implore them to not do so in a fear-mongering and dramatized way that accomplishes little more than to spread misinformation.
Lara Mangino is an English and political science double major junior who likes it when people pronounce her name correctly.