Can a star be born if she believes all babies should be allowed to be born, too?
The anti-abortion biopic “Unplanned” provides a challenge to Hollywood’s supposed dislike of blacklists and its self-congratulatory pose as champion of artistic expression.
The film’s lead actress, Ashley Bratcher, who gives a spectacular performance, says she’s been warned that the major studios would never hire her again if she accepted the role of abortion clinic director-turned-anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson. After Bratcher’s wonderful turn, Hollywood has no reason other than ideological animosity to ignore her.
Numerous reviewers otherwise hostile to “Unplanned” nonetheless acknowledge the nuanced and believable grace with which Bratcher carried out her role. Reviewer Troy Anderson, for example, pronounces the final third of the movie a “caricature” and “crazy town” and identifies himself as “a cold humanist” whose “feelings about abortion might play a little closer to the coasts.” But, he writes, “Ashley Bratcher carries Unplanned on her back. … Bratcher is doing something amazing for [Christian production company] Pure Flix. She’s starting to get them on the road to credibility.”
Bratcher is sympathetic both as the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic director in the country and in leading the effort to close the clinic. She helps the viewer sympathize with a reckless college kid getting pregnant and having an abortion, and she helps them understand how someone in that situation might go to volunteer for Planned Parenthood, thinking that by providing birth control she would be reducing other future abortions. She produces a character winsome enough to make it believable that a strongly pro-life husband could deeply love a wife who so aggressively led an abortion provider that she was named Planned Parenthood’s “employee of the year.”
Bratcher particularly shines, for example, when at the dinner table, before her pro-life conversion, she gives a full-throated moral argument for her job at Planned Parenthood. With her performance, she makes the arguments carry real heft, rather than being a caricature of pro-choice tropes.
It is impossible to watch this film without recognizing Bratcher’s talent, acting chops that should make directors of would-be blockbusters want to knock down her door trying to hire her for a starring role. No one knows yet whether the prediction of blacklisting will prove correct, although Hollywood’s single-minded support for unrestricted abortion is well recognized. What is indisputable, however, is that leftist Hollywood elites say they detest blacklists even, or perhaps especially, when the blacklist involves actors who secretly conspire as communists to undermine the American republic itself.
Hundreds of the movie industry’s finest ostentatiously condemned the Academy’s Honorary Award, sometimes referred to as the “Lifetime Achievement” Oscar, in 1999 for famed director Elia Kazan, who, under oath, had confirmed the already-reported names of eight actors as secret communist activists. Kazan’s “snitching” on fellow performers led, in some cases, to those performers getting blacklisted from further roles, a sin that led many to conclude Kazan himself, despite his artistry, should be forever shunned.
Sean Penn, who stands out for self-righteous leftism even in Tinseltown, has the dubious distinction of signing both a letter condemning Kazan for his blacklist-related activities and a letter in late March demanding a boycott of all filming activity in Georgia because of a new pro-life law in the Peach State.
But back to “Unplanned.” It’s an earnest, thoughtful movie, though perhaps too graphic. It treats most Planned Parenthood employees with respect and even empathy. It repeatedly reminds viewers that women undergoing abortions merit compassion, not condemnation. It offers a real window into the complicated emotions and moral confusion surrounding abortion. Decent people respect the opposing side of the debate from their own, even if they profoundly disagree.
If blacklists are unacceptable even when used against people conspiring in favor of a communist ideology that by the 1940s had already slaughtered at least as many people as Nazi death camps did, then surely blacklists should be unacceptable against people creating earnest art on behalf of human life. To treat a pro-life actress as too evil to hire is to invert morality itself, and it’s something that Hollywood, nearly drowning in its morality problems at the moment, can hardly afford to do.
Quin Hillyer is a Washington Examiner senior commentary writer.
