Topic: Media Research Center
Unsurprisingly for a group of anti-abortion extremists, the Media Research Center hates it when media portrayals of abortion doesn't hate it as much as they do. When the movie "Call Jane" -- about a service that provided clandestine abortions before it was legal -- the MRC worked to attack it, and anyone who refused to trash the film based on subject matter alone. In his Oct. 28 column, Tim Graham lashed out at the film's actors for committing the utterly normal "offense" of promoting their film like every other actor does:
In the closing days of the midterm campaign, liberals and Democrats remain convinced that the right to terminate babies is their, um, saving grace. Naturally, among those leading the charge are Hollywood feminists making propagandistic movies about the righteousness of destroying innocent life.
The news program CBS Mornings just performed two supinely promotional interviews with actresses Sigourney Weaver and Elizabeth Banks and their movie Call Jane, based on an underground Chicago abortion service that killed about 10,000 babies in 1968, before abortion was legal in America.
How dramatically biased was CBS? No one in either of these interviews used the word “baby” at any time. The most dehumanized Americans are the unborn.
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Inside this sugary bubble of our liberal media, these actresses can bounce from studio to studio promoting the wonderful bravery of abortion and absolutely no one utters a discouraging word about killing millions of babies. No one is allowed to offer any rebuttal about the death and disease that came with that glorious “Sexual Revolution.”
Graham followed up with an Oct. 31 post again attacking Banks for engaging in routine promotion of her film:
For your daily laugh that NPR calls their evening newscast All Things Considered, on Saturday night they celebrated the new pro-abortion movie Call Jane with actress Elizabeth Banks. Over eight and a half minutes, NPR host Michel Martin had no difficult or challenging questions, just facilitations.
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Banks added "If you want fewer abortions, you should give us sex education and contraception." As if our public schools don't offer sex education? As if contraception is hard to find?
The actress wanted to underline again that "abortion health care" isn't dangerous, completely overlooking the human that is murdered. Banks thought casual sex can be followed by casual abortion: "it was just making sure that we presented abortion in its reality, which is 10 minutes later, you're, you know, she was eating spaghetti." No guilt, just pasta.
Graham is much more into shaming and denigrating women who have abortions than trying to offer any meaningful help for them.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg -- who supports the creation of a Orwellian surveillance state to prevent women from crossing state lines to get a legal abortion -- melted down over the idea that the filmmight be shown at abortion clinics, accusing the makers of "propaganda" even as she spread her own anti-abortion propaganda:
Some propaganda with your abortion?
Actor Elizabeth Banks, most commonly known from The Hunger Games, recently starred in a 1960s-set story about a mother who stumbles upon an underground abortion network called “The Janes.” The film is set to partner with local and national abortion providers to play the film inside clinics for “educational” purposes, as The Hollywood Reporter indicated.
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The filmmakers want to push the idea that abortion shouldnt be something that women aren’t afraid of. It aims to “normalize” abortion.
But, the reality is that everyone SHOULD be afraid of abortions. This procedure is far from humane for the mother or the child involved and is a grave evil. Abortions should be feared for their completely vile nature.
This film is just another leftist attempt to paint abortion as gospel and the fact that it's going to premiere inside clinics that provide such vile procedures is horrific.
Right-wing film critic Christian Toto rushed to proclaim the film a failure after a brief limited release in a Nov. 5 post, insisting that it didn't bode well for Democratic prospects in the midterm elections:
Perhaps Roe v. Wade reversal. Instead, the movie arrived as evidence of a red electoral wave is intensifying, and voters are coming to grips with that reality.
Or, the conventional wisdom that abortion would be the Democrats’ best bet to defang GOP arguments never held much sway in the first place.
The film’s commercial failure is another sign Democrats may have plenty to worry about come November 8.
Of course, that "red electoral wave" never materialized, meaning that Toto's attempt to use the first-weekend box office of an indie movie to predict a major election was a major failure.
