By Dave Andrusko
One of the last stories in Tuesday’s edition of National Right to Life News Today combines three story lines. The hub is the movie “October Baby” and the spokes are the “surprising” second weekend audience totals, an angry misreading of the film in Slate.com, and the story of the woman who plays the birth mother of Hannah, who survived a “failed abortion.”
According to the company promoting “October Baby,” the film posted another strong showing at the second-week box office,
“claiming the No. 2 spot for films in fewer than 500 theaters and the No. 7 spot in per-screen average for the top 20 films despite only showing in 387 theaters.” Its first week, “’October Baby,’ distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films and Provident Films, claimed the No. 8 spot at the box office (No. 1 in limited release) against blockbuster competition that included the record-setting THE HUNGER GAMES—which opened in 10 times as many theaters.”
Even Libby Copeland, writing for Slate, concedes it’s had “surprisingly good box office results for a Christian film in limited release.” Copeland no doubt has no use for the film’s “cultural critique of abortion,” but what really makes her blood boil is that the film misrepresents “modern womanhood” and “female ambition.”
She brings together half-dozen different developments –all part of the ‘war on women,” a clunker she, thankfully, avoids using–which “October Baby” has unknowingly been conscripted into. The film’s beyond-all-redemption-fault? That the birth mother had the abortion because (as the nurse who attended the abortion tells Hannah) “she had to go to school, she had to have a career.”
Is Copeland really saying that no woman has ever had an abortion because she felt an unplanned pregnancy would “get in the way” of college or a career? How silly. But the film is not saying that is the only reason women have abortions. That would be equally silly.
And of course Copeland mangles the REAL message—the real “war,” if you will—which is an all-out forgiveness offensive. Hannah is understandably bitter—including at her parents who adopted her for not telling her. But by the end of “October Baby,” secrets have been revealed and hearts mended and relationships established.
Finally, writing on bound4life.com, Jael Zeballos tells us about how during the film’s end credits, filmmakers included an interview clip of Shari Rigby, who plays Hanna’s post-abortive mother. Zeballos writes
“Rigby shares how her role in the film mirrored her own life, to the surprise of the filmmakers who did not know that she had undergone an abortion in real life when they offered her the part of the mother. For Rigby, the role offered a chance to disclose a long-held secret, to find healing, and give voice to the story of so many women who have undergone abortions.
“’It was easier to get rid of the child, to not be questioned again, rather than to have a child and be looked up at the time like another failure,’ Rigby says of the circumstances surrounding her abortion, breaking down in tears. ‘So many times, especially as young women, we carry that burden that we’re going to look like a failure, that it’s shameful. And you can hide a secret for a long time, of abortion, unless you really speak about it.’
In one of the most gripping scenes towards the end of the movie, Rigby’s character and Rigby herself, found healing in the forgiveness of God. On filming that scene:
“’We went into it and I remember the cameras rolling and I just, right as I walked into the room, I just knew that the Lord was with me and it was just complete healing…that wasn’t acting, that was my moment with God and Him with me, saying ‘it’s okay, it’s over, and you’ve been forgiven.’”
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