I love documentaries and over the last few months I've watched a bunch of them. I watched
Lake of Fire a few months ago and watched it again more recently so that I could write a more comprehensive post about it.
Lake of Fire is a documentary about abortion in America, portraying both sides of the argument in a surprisingly even-handed way. The use of close-ups and other interesting camera angles, as well as the fact that the movie is entirely in black and white, creates a matter-of-fact feeling to the footage and avoids sensationalizing any one person or event. I wish that I could give a frame by frame, because every minute of this film is riveting, but at 152 minutes that would make for a tiresomely long post. I'll just focus on the parts that really got to me but that will still leave out a ton of really good stuff. There will be ridicule and probably swearing, but you guys should be used to that by now.
Shortly after the start of the film we see footage from the annual March for Life in DC. Several people are hammering small crosses into the ground (I'm sure that you've seen this sort of thing in church yards). This immediately pisses me off. The assumption that all embryos and fetuses are Christian is not just idiotic it's seriously arrogant. Don't Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and atheist women have abortions? Maybe they do, but apparently their products of conception belong to Jesus. The leader of this group of cross planters gives a really horrible speech about his brother's pregnant girlfriend and how his brother and his parents did everything to convince her to stay pregnant which included calling her non-stop, offering to raise the baby for her, and even offering to hire a babysitter for her so that she could go to school, because a babysitter is all a woman needs to make motherhood simple and easy. He then spoke of how she was convinced to have an abortion by her college roommates, and how his brother wasn't given a say in the matter. I'm sure that her decision had nothing to do with the fact that she knew what her life was like and what she wanted for herself, not to mention the fact that her boyfriend's family turned out to be a bunch of nutbags who were trying to harass her into motherhood. I'm sure that getting phone calls non-stop from every member of this guys family was nothing but reassuring to her. He then adds sweeping his arm over the grass "Just think of the fathers of these crosses", at which point I begin to dry heave.
Now we get to Randall Terry (Operation Rescue). This guy is fucking scary as hell because he thinks that the US should be ruled by biblical law. Maybe he wants to run his own Christian Taliban from the White House. Mr. Terry is filmed in front of a women's health clinic basically blocking the door. Here's my question, if a bunch of anti-fast food people led by Meme Roth for example, regularly staged protests during which they blocked the entrance to a McDonald's, harassed the customers, and carried graphic signs showing internal organs covered in fat, would they be allowed to continue? The Operation Rescue folks shout stuff at the people going in and out of the clinic as well as the bodyguards who are needed to help these people get into and out of the clinic. There are a bunch of counter protesters who also shout stuff at Terry.
The next part of the film was not easy to watch, especially since I wasn't really prepared for it. I should have read the sleeve a little more closely. After some brief interviews with women in a clinic (they're all facing away from the camera) we see a woman getting an abortion. What makes this unusual is that she's 20 weeks along (in
2004 only 1.4% of all abortions took place after 20 weeks). The entire procedure is shown, including the doctor examining the extracted tissues. I'm not a squeamish person, I actually enjoy watching surgical procedures on TV, but this was not easy to watch.
Later in the film we see a journalist, Jerry Reiter, talking to anti-choice activists Andrew Cabot and Paul Hill. Cabot talks about executing blasphemers and Reiter asks him "If a person says goddammit, should that person be executed?" After a quick consultation with Hill, Cabot answers "yes", he also adds that "sodomites" should be executed as well. This was incredibly chilling because Cabot is not the only American who wants to see our Constitution replaced by the bible. If these people were confronted with the fact that what they really want is a theocracy, similar to Muslim theocracies in all way but one, they would reject your argument. In a very portentous moment a different journalist asks Paul Hill, as he's defending Michael Griffin the murderer of Dr. David Gunn, if "we'll see you on trial for murder in the future?" Only one year later Paul Hill was taken into custody for the murder of Dr. John Britton and Britton's bodyguard.
Another anti-choice loon who likes ot hang out at abortion clinics is David Trosch of Life Enterprises Unlimited. Surprisingly his speech in front of a Florida clinic, in which he states that women who have abortions should be charged with 2nd or 1st degree homicide, and according to him 80% of women fall into that category, is not the craziest thing he has to say. Later on we get this gem
"I believe that we are on the verge of going out into the universe, and I believe that we will have a holy people at that time, so within the next 20 to 50 years...have a very highly religious people and it would be these people who would go out and populate the universe, or as the case may be if there's already populations out there, would instruct them in the proper faith."
Again, the arrogance is mind boggling.
Another part of the film focuses on Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe). Eventually, as time passed and she faced unrelenting harassment buy the anti-choice community, McCorvey decided to become anti-choice herself and joined up with Flip Benham of Operation Rescue. She seemed like a really sad woman without any self-esteem who was willing to go along with anyone who would pay any attention to her, whether Sarah Waddington and Linda Coffee (the lawyers who took Roe v. Wade to the supreme court) or Flip Benham who welcomed her with open arms when she admitted that she was the cause of "35 million dead babies". McCorvey talks about not being able to leave her house for several years, her previous beliefs in crystals and amulets, and feeling like an outcast because of her choices. I can't really blame the woman for her Stockholm Syndrome, especially since she gets a standing ovation when they trot her out for anti-choice fundraisers.
I was also very moved by the interview with Bill Baird founder of the
Pro-Choice League. Baird made it his mission to provide contraception to women, especially low-income women who had fewer choices than there higher SES counterparts. Baird was arrested in 1965 because he was handing out contraceptives to women and teaching them about birth control. It wasn't until
1972, after Baird took his case to the Supreme Court, that contraception became fully legal for everyone, not just married couples. In the film Baird explains the various methods that were used before sanitary, safe, and legal abortions were available. It's really horrific, especially the photograph that Baird shows of a woman slumped on her hands and knees on a motel room floor, dead from a hemorrhage from a coat hanger which became stuck in her uterus when she attempted to give herself an abortion. Baird explains that most women were attempting to scratch the uterine wall in order to cause some bleeding because then they would be able to obtain an abortion from a doctor. Unfortunately most women didn't realize that the uterus is very small and has thin walls and they would puncture the uterus and either bleed to death or die of an infection.
Some of my favorite quotes in the film come from former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders. She talks about the pregnancy rates for women younger than 20 (40% for white women, 67% for black women) and then adds "but we still can't accept that our children are sexually active". I think that I might have actually amened out loud for that one. She also talks about the children of many of these women. Children that are hungry, that don't get any medical care "these are the children that we love so dearly as long as they're in somebody else's uterus". Damn straight about that one.
The film ends with another young woman in another clinic. She is less than 8 weeks pregnant, as were 61% of women who had abortions in 2004. The camera follows her through the entire process. She checks in at the desk and is then asked extensive questions and counseled thoroughly by 2 different nurses. A medical history is taken which includes a mental health history. The woman is then given a complete and thorough explanation of the procedure. she is then asked the following; why and how did she make this decision, is she feeling sure about this decision, did anyone pressure her to make this decision, does she have a support person with her, does she have any conflicts with abortion, does she expect to regret her decision, does she feel like she's making the decision that is in her best interest. The procedure takes less than 5 minutes, a nurse holds the woman's hand and reassures her the entire time, as does the doctor. The doctor tells her that everything went well and that her bleeding was average and then examines the tissues extracted. The woman is interviewed after the procedure is over and even though she is crying and obviously emotional over the ordeal she repeatedly states that she is relieved and that she knows it's the right thing to do even though it's not easy.
I feel very strongly about a woman's right to choose. This film did not change my mind. In fact it strengthened my resolve. Abortion must remain legal. No one likes abortion. No one is jumping around celebrating it. The pro-choice movement is making every effort to cut down the rate of unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of abortions (a number that has been declining since the 70's).
The fight to make abortion illegal again, and drive women to back alleys and death, is not the only goal of the anti-choice movement. Many groups would like to make contraception illegal again as well, because they believe that the proper role of women is to be wives and mothers. I don't necessarily disagree, but I also believe that the only person who can and should make that decision for a woman is the woman herself. Religious groups have put so much pressure on medical schools that fewer and fewer are including abortion as part of their curricula. A very scary thought for women who need a D&C for medical reasons, or for women whose fetus has died later in pregnancy and must be removed.
I don't think that abortion is murder, but it does end the potential life of an embryo or fetus. However, which do we value more, a clump of cells without consciousness or a woman who is conscious, alive, and aware?
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