Review of Obvious Child (2014) by Hilary C — 19 Jan 2017

When they (rightly) made divorce easier I suppose it not only helped abused women but also men who wanted to abandon their families and go off with a woman half his age. When they (rightly) introduced social welfare it not only helped the needy but those who didn't want to work. No doubt if assisted suicide is legalised (again rightly in my view) it will help those who are suffering but also make some vulnerable people feel obliged to die so as not to be a burden.

I am in my 80s and have been a life long feminist. I remember campaigning for legal and safe abortion when I'd seen the plight of desperately poor women, women who'd been raped, young naive girls in an age when life as a single mother was near impossible. Abortion was, however, always the last resort of the desperate. Little did I know that it would come to this. Jenny Slate's character leads an essentially egocentric life, makes money standing on stage pleading for the attention and approval of strangers, gets drunk, screws someone she's never met without using birth control, gets pregnant and falls back on society to help her abort her unfortunate off-spring and is presented as a heroine. Not only that but the entire film is a justification for the 'everyone does it, get over it, it's just a bunch of cells' attitude. In an interview Slate said she didn't want to trivialise abortion. How disingenuous. At the end of the film, we see these two spoilt adolescents in adult bodies, having just aborted their embryo sitting making tasteless jokes about it and getting over the experience by watching a movie. It was quite awful. I suppose free access to abortion not only helps the desperate but it helps the likes of Jenny Slate's character who see it as nothing more than a part an utterly self seeking and responsibility free sex life. I guess that's just the way it is and the price that has to be paid. Yet as the credits came up I sat with tears rolling down my face thinking this is not what I fought for. A feminism that glorifies the selfish and the destructive and trivialises abortion was not my dream. Jenny Slate you made an old lady weep with disappointment.