Just… can't… do it.

In an unintentional trip through most of the 2008 Best Picture nominees, I've seen There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and Juno, in that order, over the past few weeks. Yes, please applaud my cinematic hipness, however delayed it may be.

Out of the three, Juno is the one that I enjoyed the most. It is one of a recent string of films depicting pregnant women deciding what to do about their, um, problem. In each of these films, the mother eventually decides not to terminate her pregnancy. In Juno, the title character explains that, "Well, you know, I was thinking I'd just nip it in the bud, before it gets worse, because they were talking about it in health class, how pregnancy, it can often lead to… an infant." She makes her way to the abortion clinic, only to change her mind after a protesting fellow-classmate informs her that the baby has fingernails. While the film certainly is not overtly or dogmatically pro-life¹, it seems worth noting that this teenage mother chose not to abort the baby.

Last night's Grey's Anatomy offered up another example of this on-screen pregnancy pirouette. After receiving confirmation that she's pregnant, the HIV-positive mother-to-be asks to schedule an abortion. By the end of the episode, Izzy (played by Katherine Heigl of Knocked Up) confronts the mother, informing her that her baby would have a 98% chance of being born without the disease. The mom, relieved by this news, begins to cry and decides not to abort her baby.

So, here's what I don't get. It's no secret that an overwhelming majority of our film-making friends on the Left Coast are stridently pro-choice (and pro-everything that's not traditional, moral, or religious). So, why can't any of them pull the trigger? Why would they present us with multiple examples of women contemplating abortion, only to be won over based on, of all things, medical facts? If it really is just a lump of tissue, and if women really do have "reproductive freedom," why not show us this perfectly normal, valid choice on screen?

One hunch is that it just wouldn't make for a good story. I can see that, to a point, but if these folks really believe what they keep telling us they believe, why not tell the courageous story of a young, pregnant mother defying all odds and making a triumphant choice that's "right for her"? My guess is that, despite all the rhetoric, no sane human being can truly bring himself to see things this way. We know better, and we won't buy (or tell) a story that ignores this intrinsically understood truth.