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Teen pregnancy will also restore your virginity and pay off your credit card debt

Jill

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I still haven’t seen Juno, although I really want to. A whole lot of feminist bloggers have criticized its message, but Susie Bright’s take is my favorite so far. Head over there and read it.

Anti-choice bloggers are calling these movies “gems” and saying that they reinforce a culture of life. I’m sure these films are entertaining and sweet, and I’ve heard that Juno in particular is fantastic — I’m sure I’ll like it. But while Culture of Life Warriors are applauding films which show teenage girls having babies, they’re taking all kinds of steps to insure that teenagers in real life have fewer options to prevent pregnancy, and are kept ignorant about their bodies and their health. They are making it harder for low-income women to raise children. They are making it harder for children to thrive in our society. They are willing to sacrifice women’s lives for their ideology.

Many of these movies are enjoyable for pro-choicers and pro-lifers alike. That’s great. But a truly “pro-life” culture requires more than just feel-good films — it requires an actual commitment to the lives and well-being of women, men and children. And I have yet to see anything resembling that from the “pro-life” political establishment.

30 thoughts on Teen pregnancy will also restore your virginity and pay off your credit card debt

  1. Saw “Juno” last night with my sister and a friend of ours — strong, self-professed feminists both — and we all laughed our asses off. On the one hand it dealt with the “schmuschmortion” issue in sort of a flip, quirky way — in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie, of course — but on the other hand I was kind of happy it got mentioned at all instead of just glossed over.

    I think you’re right, though, that too many pro-lifers applaud these kinds of movies and twist them to their own political ends without bothering to stop and think about all they’re doing to prevent these kinds of idealized endings from happening. Basically they want us to live in a world where kids are never taught about sex, kids never have sex, and therefore unwanted pregnancies never happen — but if they really bothered to pay attention, they’d see just how unrealistic “Juno” reveals that magical fairy land to be.

  2. I’m sure they would have been singing a different tune had she decided to keep the baby rather than provide a nice white couple with a nice white baby.

  4. “that Juno chose to have the baby?”

    But she only chose to have the baby, after visiting TEH EVUL ABORSHUN CLINIC!!1!!, so that is what counts.

  5. I just saw the movie last night and loved it. Funny and sweet in a quirky nerd girl way.

    Thing is, the movie isn’t anti-abortion. She decides not to have an abortion, but she never comes out against the concept of abortion. In fact, the anti-abortion protester outside the clinic is portrayed as slightly pathetic and ridiculous.

    If anti-choicers really paid attention to the movie, they’d hate it. Because Juno is autonomous. She chooses to have sex. She initiates sex. She makes the decision about adoption. She chooses the adoptive parents. She makes all her decisions about her own life. She is not portrayed as the property of either the baby’s father or her own father.

    Also, we assume that she continues having sex (hopefully with condoms) with her perfect, sweet, geeky boyfriend at the end of the movie. We know she goes back to happy teenagedom. She does not suffer long-term punishment for her actions.

    And I don’t want to give a spoiler, but I just want to point out that the situation with the adoptive parents is not so cut and dried either, and the final resolution there also supports female autonomy.

  6. I usually agree with most of the stuff on Feministe but this one i can’t seem to wrap my head around from your perspective… I just saw Juno this weekend and, even being an avid pro-choicer, LOVED it. Pro-choice is just that, having the right to a choice. I thought Juno did a great job depicting that message… just because Juno chose not to abort but rather give the baby up for adoption does not mean that the anti-choicers won or even that they should use this movie to further their politics. All it means is that this girl made a decision that she felt comfortable with. In fact, abortion was considered a great deal and even the mother and the baby’s dad suggested it.

    As far as Aeryl’s sarcastic comment about her chosing to keep the baby only after going into the “evil abortion clinic” i don’t think the clinic was depicted negatively at all. In fact, that scene was hilarious, the girl at the receptionist window tried to get Juno to take a boysenberry flavored condom because they make her “boyfriend’s junk smell like pie” – best line of the movie!

    I think Juno (the movie) does not miss the mark simply because Juno (the girl) chose to keep the baby. Pro-choicers don’t only win when women have abortions but also win simply because women have the right to chose what’s best for them. Juno was able to chose, and that’s a victory for pro-choicers.

  7. Also, Juno Macguff isn’t real. A young woman in her position choosing to have the baby and give it up for adoption (more power to her, if that’s what she sincerely wants) is different from a character making that choice, created by a writer, in a popular mainstream comedy without her other options being treated too favorably. My concern isn’t “how dare she decide what to do with her pregnancy!” (I don’t think anybody’s saying that), it’s “I wonder why all these yay-unplanned-baby movies are all the rage lately, and I wish abortion wouldn’t be ignored or treated in a negative light every time.”

    I enjoyed Juno a lot, by the way.

  8. I didn’t get a pro-life vibe from the movie, really. I mean, they make fun of the pro-life picketer (“Your baby wants to get borned!!!”) and just sort of treat the whole thing in a flippant way. Juno doesn’t run out of the clinic for moral reasons, really; she was just personally uncomfortable with the idea (and the receptionist’s boyfriend’s boysenberry junk).

  9. (Posted that at the same time as feminist gal, but it was meant toward the comments before — although it also kind of relates.)

    Divorced from the pregnancy issue entirely, I wanted to add that I was happy with my (barely) teenage cousin seeing this movie. It was carried by a smarter, funnier, more interesting heroine than most romantic comedies, at least.

  10. I too, enjoyed Juno- although more for its engaging movieness than its politics. I thought a lot about why we don’t see more discussion of abortion in mainstream films, and I came to this conclusion- beyond all the obvious reasons (we live in a sexually repressed country inordinately influenced by anti choice whack jobs, etc.) I think it is because from the standpoint of plot, pregnancy and birth have a lot more low hanging fruit. This is not to say that one could not write an engaging story about a pregnancy ending in abortion, just that the sort of time bounded predictability of pregnancy carried to term is a lot simpler to write around. Also, people generally like babies, so that is an easy sell.

  11. Anti-choice bloggers are calling these movies “gems” and saying that they reinforce a culture of life.

    Warbloggers kept insisting that the success of Transformers meant that Americans are happy with the Iraq war and the way it’s going. Not reliable witnesses, in other words.

  13. I usually agree with most of the stuff on Feministe but this one i can’t seem to wrap my head around from your perspective… I just saw Juno this weekend and, even being an avid pro-choicer, LOVED it. Pro-choice is just that, having the right to a choice. I thought Juno did a great job depicting that message… just because Juno chose not to abort but rather give the baby up for adoption does not mean that the anti-choicers won or even that they should use this movie to further their politics.

    Well, sure. But the post didn’t say that — in fact, it said that the movie looks cute and that I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. My point wasn’t that Juno is anti-choice; I don’t think it is. My point was that pro-lifers are saying it’s a pro-life film, while ignoring the realities of what we actually need to become a more life-affirming country.

  14. Haven’t seen the flick yet but I am troubled by the carelessness of the main character. How can she initiate sex without protection? Gosh, what good is sex ed? She might just as well have been part of the abstinence crew.

    Funny thing is most girls past 12 that have any sense are aware of the need for their own source of BC. Why in Dagon’s Name is a 16 year old unable to do so?

  15. If I remember correctly, Mold, it’s never really specified in the movie whether or not birth control is used. For all we know it could have been and it failed. Condom failure, for example, is particularly high among that age group. Either way, there are also plenty of adults who have unprotected sex, and there are plenty of teenagers, especially in what looked to be a small town that Juno lived in, that simply aren’t getting adequate sex ed. That’s the issue that we should really be dealing with.

    Besides, the point is not her initial carelessness, but that she takes agency in her life and deals with the pregnancy on her own terms. She makes her own choices. And that’s exactly what we (well, we pro-choicers, not sure where you stand) want to see happening.

  16. feminist gal:

    My sarcastic comment was supposed to be snark. I haven’t seen the movie, but I do know she goes to the clinic, then changed her mind.

    The point I was trying to make, is that is why pro-lifers see that as a “win”. Obviously, she was scared by the evil abortionists(in their view).

    The rest of the storyline, which is about her choices, goes right over their heads. The be all and end all of that movie is that she went to an abortion clinic, then left before getting the abortion. Hence, they win.

    What would have been beautiful in the movie, is instead of leaving the abortion clinic, she gets daunted by the mounds of ordeals that a teen has to go through to get an abortion, and then changes her mind.

    Of course that would have shown the pro-lifers who are hailing this movie, as another victory, so maybe not.

  17. Mnemosyne:

    Warbloggers kept insisting that the success of Transformers meant that Americans are happy with the Iraq war and the way it’s going. Not reliable witnesses, in other words.

    Man, I was thinking the exact same thing. Dear God, please keep these people away from the theatres when “Rambo” comes out in a couple weeks.

  18. I have to say, in the Bright/Miller discussion, I’m with Laura Miller (probably because I have a film criticism background):

    Laura Miller:

    I agree that in real life being able to terminate can be a liberating, positive experience, but I’m not sure it would play that way. That’s the difference between drama and life, I think, which people are prone to forget.

    In reality, you have a whole idea of the life that you expect to be leading over the next “X” years, and you’re attached to it. That imagined life can be as real to you as your actual past. But there’s no way to render that imagined life in a movie. Drama is all about conflict and change, not about things going on the way they were before.

  19. I’m just trying to think of a movie concept where abortion would be the best choice for the character’s situation, she chooses to take it, and there’s still a movie worth making a movie about. If she chooses to have the abortion and, as so frequently happens, it all works out well, she sighs and says, Well, gosh, I wish I hadn’t had to do that. Oh, well, life goes on, and life goes on, there’s not much of a movie. And, of course, if she chooses to have an abortion and everything goes horribly (or even marginally) wrong, the anti-choicers are all over it, screaming, See what happens?! See what happens when you kill teh baybeez?!!?!?!one!! Maybe, per another post today, it could be a movie from the perspective of one of the woman’s other kids who now has a better life because her mother had an abortion, but I just don’t know. Maybe there aren’t any explicitly pro-choice movies out there because the pro-choice position is so inherently reasonable as to be beyond cinematic drama.

  20. There was always Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And Teachers. Both involved a high school girl impregnated by an older man, both involved the girl getting an abortion. In both cases, the girl wasn’t punished for seeking an abortion (though in Teachers, the teacher who took his student to the abortion clinic (she was impregnated by another teacher) was asked to resign. I don’t remember exactly why (the school was in the middle of some kind of lawsuit, and the information may have come out during the investigation into that). But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.

    In both cases, the pregnancy and the fact of having to deal with it were crisis points for the girl, and affected the way that she viewed the people around her, or it affected the lives of others.

    Mind you, both of these movies were from the early 80s, which was the peak in terms of access to abortion. And neither could be made today.

  21. I’m just trying to think of a movie concept where abortion would be the best choice for the character’s situation, she chooses to take it, and there’s still a movie worth making a movie about.

    In real life, Minnesota’s parental consent law requires the consent of both of the pregnant girl’s parents, even if one of them has given up custody. So you could have a road trip movie in which Juno and her father went to find her absentee mother to beg her for permission for Juno to have the abortion. That’s the best idea that I could come up with.

    But I like the movie that got made, and I really don’t care what delusional anti-choice jerks thought about it. I refuse to let delusional anti-choice jerks ruin perfectly entertaining pop culture for me.

  22. Pingback: Juno « Peggy Lu Who’s Just Sayin’!

  23. yeah, these are cute, feel-good movies, but it wouldn’t be so feel-good if Juno had her parents threatening to kill her for being a slut and kicking her out into the streets at worst, or having her parents kind of hush her away elsewhere, where she has very few resources to raise or feed a baby.

    >:|

  24. I’m just trying to think of a movie concept where abortion would be the best choice for the character’s situation, she chooses to take it, and there’s still a movie worth making a movie about.

    There’s a Canadian movie called Parsley Days that fits that description. Not the best movie ever, but shows that it can be done.

  25. Speaking of 80’s movies, I’ve always thought Dirty Dancing’s abortion-related subplot was pretty damn pro-choice. She has to get an illegal abortion because it’s the early 60’s, practitioner bungles the job, and then she refuses to let anybody call for an ambulance when she’s haemmoraging because she knows a hospital will call the cops. Jerry Orbach’s character risks his medical license and possibly prison by treating her and not notifying the police.

    And subsequently, when she’s recovering, she informs the main characters that Jerry Orbach says there’s been no permanent damage to her reproductive system, and she’ll still be able to get pregnant in future. And she’s HAPPY about that. Thrilled, in point of fact. Which was pretty earth-shattering to my 12-year-old self. Being 12, my opinion re: abortion was pretty much, “Babies are cute. Anybody who doesn’t like babies is mean. So ladies shouldn’t have abortions.” Watching that movie I suddenly realised that hey, “She does like babies, and she wants to have them one day. But she can’t have one RIGHT NOW.” The character’s boyfriend was refusing to have anything to do with her, she would’ve lost her job if her pregnancy had been discovered, and she would’ve had great difficulty in finding another job. So she was pretty much fucked either way. She couldn’t afford to support a child, and she couldn’t get a safe, legal abortion, so her most viable choice was to go with the illegal kind and cross her fingers the guy doing it was halfway competent.

    It was actually a very feminist subplot. Shame the main plot of the movie was so…generic. But I kind of doubt such a movie would get made today and be a mainstream studio movie. Or if it were, it would be extremely controversial. I don’t recall there being any public fuss over the abortion subplot (although again, 12, so I could just not have been paying attention). And I don’t recall any of my friends at the time who’d also seen the movie finding said subplot particularly noteworthy or shocking. Mostly it wasn’t really talked about, because it was pretty much just a plot device to further the Twoo Wuv of the leads. But despite being a small part of an otherwise very conventional movie, it was actually pretty subversive, in retrospect. And had a pretty major impact on my way of thinking.

  26. Raincitygirl:

    Excellent points. I remember loving that movie when it came out (I was in the 7th grade) but not necessarily understanding that whole bit of it. I knew about abortion, knew it was once illegal, but had no idea what the ramifications were for women back then.

    My mother was the one who talked to me about it and told me that what “Penny” the dancer went through was what A LOT of women went through back then and nobody really gave a damn. It was she who introduced me to the term “back-alley” and then told me a great aunt of mine had one, but could not have children afterwards. That she nearly died from it, but recovered in silence at home. when she wanted children years later, when she was ready for them, she couldn’t have them.

    Then my mother told me that she could have suffered the same fate, but was lucky enough to travel to NYC in the early 70’s to have a safe, legal one (she had to travel from Illinois). By no means was she wealthy, but she told her parents (my grandparents) and without hesitation they helped her out and helped her get the safe, legal care she needed and wanted.

    But it really hit home and painted a picture of what it was like, the risks women took – and the risks some doctors took.

    Another great flick on how abortion can work out is Cider House Rules In it you can see how safe legal care saves lives, how illegal back-alley care (or home remedies) kill…and how a world that is purportedly “pro-life” lets children languish, sans family in an orphanage.

  27. “Goddamn it, I’m gonna have a baby!”

    This is from Cabaret, a movie that I think it is actually the opposite of movies like Juno. In Cabaret, they have a few moments of fantasy that the baby could be a good thing in their lives, and then Liza Minelli’s character realizes that her life that is not really about being a mother, and even though it’s fucked up, she loves that life. And oh yeah, MIchael York (the dad) probably will leave her for a man. So, she sees the fantasy “what if I keep it?” moment for what it is: Fantasy.

  28. My impression was that Juno and the boy decided to have sex on the spur of the moment without protection, which I think sends a bad message. What would have been the big deal if they went to the drug store and got a condom? Juno seems like she’d be smart enough to do this.

    I saw the movie as pro-choice. It was the girl’s decision to have the baby and give it up for adoption. No one forced her to do anything. Remember, it’s pro-CHOICE, not pro-abortion.

  29. As a dues-paying member of Feminists for Life, I would like to offer that women deserve more than only one option – abortion – which is clearly bad for the woman and especially bad for the baby. We deserve better. The Choice camp claims to be about the right to choose, but they do not offer very many viable options: abort or suffer. Contrarily, the Life camp offers more real choices: place or parent, and if you choose to place, with whom, when, where, and if you choose to parent, more power to you. It is a gross generalization to say that Lifers don’t do anything to offer choices to young girls farther upstream. True feminism means the choice whether to have sex and use protection rests with the woman.

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