Gimme Shelter, the movie starring Vanessa Hudgens, Rosario Dawson, Brendan Fraser, and Anne Dowd, is a straightforward and unpretentious film about an unmarried pregnant teenage girl who chooses to have her baby rather than an abortion. Written and directed by Ronald Krauss, the film is both uplifting and instructive. In telling the story of Agnes Bailey, played by Vanessa Hudgens (the character actually prefers “Apple” for reasons that become clear later), and those who try to help and support her, the film implicitly underscores that pro-life commitment and advocacy is far more personal and individual than it is political.  Thus, her story helps to cast into relief three critical themes:  the meaning and exercise of “choice” in the abortion context, the importance of private entities that are able to mediate, and the need for fathers.

Agnes Bailey is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute.  Rosario Dawson plays Agnes’s mother and gives the best performance in the film as a woman who is cruel and manipulative, but also fragile and despairing. Desperate to escape, Agnes makes a rather harrowing journey to the home of the father she never knew—played by Brenden Fraser.  He is now married with two young children and works on Wall Street.  We later learn he was on the verge of entering college when she was born.  He left a letter for her, expressing his regret and sorrow that he would never know her; it is through this letter that she ultimately finds him.  Rather uneasily, her father and his wife welcome her into their home. When she soon discovers she is pregnant, they insist on an abortion.