Bloodless Coup

Juno: Taking the Anti-Choice Side in the Abortion Wars?

Yowza, talk about seeing what you want to see. From some reason I click on Ross Douthat's blog and this is what I see:

And while Juno may not be moved by thoughts of her embryo's "hallowed rights," exactly, she certainly seems to be moved by the unremitting grossness of the abortion clinic (complete with a pathetic-seeming girl receptionist who tells her that they need to know about "every sore and every score") - and more importantly, by the declaration, from a pro-life Asian classmate keeping a lonely vigil outside the clinic, that her child-to-be "already has fingernails." (Careful viewers will note that while Juno sits in the clinic, filling out paperwork, the camera zooms in on the fingernails of the other people in the waiting room.) Just as the movie as a whole charms viewers (and particularly critics) with Juno's hyper-articulate tomboy cynicism, but ultimately asks us to admire the idealism at work under the cynical shell, so too does the scene at the abortion clinic invite the audience to giggle at the Asian girl's pro-life idealism ("all babies want to get borned," is her lisping chant), while simultaneously giving her the sincere line that makes all the difference in Juno's decision.

Ummm, no, this scene isn't showing that the anti-choice side is somehow virtuous and persuasive. The problem is that it's probably the worst written scene in the film, and some people are trying to read a political message into it. Juno decides to have the baby for no discernible or rational reason. It's perhaps the one time in the film that I actually believed she was only 16. Cody gives a laughably non-confrontational picketer, a depiction of a health clinic that deserves to be ridiculed (I've never seen anything like that in my life), a character who at this point we really still don't know, a woman who seems to be as gullible, irrational and weak-minded as Justice Kennedy seems to think women are, and we're supposed to draw some political message relative to non-fictional society from it? Errr, don't think that's a very good idea.