Rick Santorum, a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and a known and dedicated defender of the family, has written an important article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on a change in focus on the issue of life in some recent Hollywood movies. In a number of recent popular films, a woman is faced with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy and chooses to have the baby. While some of these films are awash in the cultural ills of contemporary Western society, there is a techtonic shift on how the entire abortion issue is handled.Even with some questionable conduct on the part of the characters, the movies show young people grappling with the issue devoid of the usual caricatures provided by Hollywood. For example, in the much praised film Juno, the mian character has a warm and positive interaction with another girl in her high-school who is a pro-life advocate and encourages her to have the baby. This stands in stark contrast to the portrayals of pro-life advocates by the mainstream media.
The commercial success of these films is perhaps an indication that even among those who publicly accept abortion as a “choice”, personally it is a very wrong choice. There seems to be a growing sense that as the generation that “liberated” us from traditional morality passes, we are in need of being liberated from the tyranny of our liberators.