Review of Lake of Fire (2006) by Edith N — 08 Jun 2010

Safe, Legal, and Rare.

You cannot talk about a documentary about abortion without your own feelings' being exposed. Thus not only does director Tony Kaye's pro-choice stance make itself noticeable--though he says he doesn't know his own stance--but my own will colour what I have to say about his movie. I can't help it. It's the nature of the subject. So let me say that, while I did not myself have an abortion when I was pregnant, I was angry about how lacking the option was for me. I would probably have had to travel two hours to Seattle. My distancing from the Catholic Church began when I was young and they'd put up a bulletin board for "right to life month" covered in graphic pictures of aborted fetuses--and leave it there for the family mass, so very young children would see them. I have a friend whose sixteen-year-old stepsister is pregnant because she believes birth control to be a sin, whereas I think a sixteen-year-old being forced to carry and raise a child when she still is one herself is a sin.

It is true that this documentary shows a lot more of the right-wing crazies, but that's in part because I don't know of any left-wing crazies who have killed anyone over the issue. (One man yells that Jeffrey Dahmer was pro-choice, which may or may not be true; on the other hand, Hitler was violently opposed to abortion, which is every bit as relevant to the point as a whole.) Several people talk urgently about the importance of installing a Christian theocracy in the United States, including one who demands the death penalty for blasphemy. A man providing a definition of blasphemy is Reverend Paul Jennings Hill, who would later be executed for the murder of Dr. John Britton, a clinic doctor, and James Barrett--a "clinic escort," a person who walked women through the ranks of protesters. There are, of course, several quiet and rational anti-abortion activists, including "Jane Roe" of [i]Roe v. Wade[/i], Norma McCorvey. Several women seeking abortions are shown, and people speaking on the pro-choice side--including David Gunn, Jr., whose father was killed by an anti-abortion activist.

The problem is that a lot of people see it as a purely black and white issue. I am frankly not entirely comfortable with the story of one of the women, the one whose story is shown in the most detail, because it is her fourth. She acknowledges that this pregnancy is due to unprotected sex. Oh, I don't think she should be forced to raise the child, but I think the word "adoption" is underused in these contexts. The only child the woman carried to term, she gave up for adoption. I am bewildered by the fact that a lot of anti-abortion activists are also anti-birth control. The goal ought to be that every pregnancy is wanted, and when they aren't, they are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. There is an age below which I don't think anyone should be having sex, and there is an age below which I don't think most people should be having sex. However, I think possession of information is the best option.

Another thing which gets me is that these people will cite the Bible to "unbelievers" in defense of their stances. Now, leaving aside that I know the Bible better than a lot of them (Jesus said "turn the other cheek" was supposed to take the place of "eye for an eye"!), it doesn't work. It's like Charlton Heston insisting that the apes should respect him because he's a human being--what do they care? They aren't. I'm also leaving out the idea of interpretation, translation error, and sectarianism. Someone in the documentary calls Pagans "nonreligious," which of course is limiting "religious" to mean "Christian." Or at least "religious in a religion I think is real." He's ignoring, too, "The Devil can quote scripture for his own purpose." In a nutshell, if your audience doesn't believe in your source material, your source material won't carry your audience. Preaching "lake of fire" to people who don't believe in Hell doesn't win them to your side.

If it is true, and again, I have a hard time believing that it is, that Tony Kaye doesn't know his own stance on abortion, it says more for the issue than the anti-abortion side realizes. (And, yes, I use "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion." In general, people don't want everyone to go running around having abortions, and a lot of people are against abortion but for the death penalty; the movement is defined by abortion.) Like I said, the crazies he shows are all anti-abortion. I have no doubt that you can get crazy pro-choice people, but I have never yet seen the strawman "I get abortions because it's a right of passage" I read about last week. Very, very few women have abortions without agonizing over the choice, and the anti-abortion types don't want to acknowledge that. The main problem, I think, is people seeing an issue rather than other people in a tough situation. I also think maybe the time and money might be better served taking care of people who have already been born.