Blah, blah, blah

In her NYT’s article “TV’s Perfect Girl Is Pregnant; Real Families Talk” Sara Rimer interviews families and high school students about the pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears. Families seemed concerned about supposed impressionability of their children. A S. Carolinian father said, “She was supposed to be one of the good, clean actresses for girls to follow after. I think it just sends an awful message for the young girls [my emphasis].” Sex is so dirty.

Overall, I’m impressed with the perspicaciousness of the high schoolers, who generally just questioned why she didn’t know about contraceptives. As one astute 16-year said, “There is no excuse for not using contraception.”

But then again, contraception can fail. Condoms can break, especially if you don’t know how to put one on properly (praise be to abstinence only education and the discretion of tv broadcasters).

You can also miss a few pills, which aren’t available to everyone because of insurance coverage, pharmacy refusals, money, access, limited information, etc.

what then? keep, donate, abort… pop culture seems to be saying everything but the latter.

The right to choose abortion is always being attacked-physically, such as the recent arsons of Planned Parenthood clinics in Albuquerque; and symbolically, with this influx of stupid Hollywood surreality (why is jamie lynn keeping the baby? did she say that she wants one or is morally opposed to abortion?) and movies about women opting to keep their babies despite their personal goals or realities. In both Knocked Up and Juno, the main characters have an unexpected pregnancy and decide to go through with the pregnancy, although neither ever expresses a desire for a baby. At least in Juno (an indy film), the character does consider abortion, but I dont understand why she didnt just go through with it–the basis of the film, yes. I am not saying that all teenage pregnancies should be aborted–that would be terrible to force such on people–but Juno didn’t want a kid.

Maybe it’s not fair to lump Juno in with Knocked Up. After seeing the latter, I decided against another movie with such a faulty premise of having a baby for fuck’s sake. In Knocked Up the lead actress just made the decision without explanation–as if she did it on a whim or “just because.” [ liable women, not labile. ] The film’s target audience must have been people not bothered with having to make and bear such decisions. Despite being annoying, childish, demeaning, and frankly mean (revealing the baby’s sex), the lead actor was intended to be seen as such as “nice guy” because he stayed around when he could have left.

I just wish they explained the reasons for not aborting the fetus and for keeping/giving away the baby. The desire for a baby, subjective understanding of life, economics, fear, curiosity … something? By withholding or omitting reasons, the movies bypass the gravity of the issue to arrive at comedy.

In effect, the media and education system are masking it as an option, refusing to show abortion as a viable option for people who dont currently want a baby. Not surprising, right?