Posted on 12/13/2004 1:42:14 PM PST by Ed Current
Los Angeles, CA (LifeNews.com) -- A film that celebrates a cleaning lady who helps women obtain illegal abortions continues to rack up film critic awards and nominations for others.
"Vera Drake" took home awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association over the weekend as top acting honors went to Imelda Staunton, who plays the lead role in the pro-abortion film.
Staunton was also honored at the 17th European Film Awards where the British actress also captured the best actress award.
Meanwhile, contenders for the prestigious Golden Globe awards have been announced and Staunton has been nominated for the best dramatic lead actress award.
Golden Globes are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a small group of about 90 reports for foreign news outlets. However, the awards are often a good indicator for who will be top prospects to receive Academy Awards and Oscars.
Vera Drake, named best film at the Venice Film Festival of 2004, is set in the 1950s. Vera is a cleaning lady who "helps girls out" when they are pregnant and considering an illegal abortion.
One woman who has a covert abortion is a mother of seven who says she can't afford another child, another is fearful of telling her husband she had an affair.
Vera believes it is her duty to help the women have abortions, but hides her actions from her family. She visits women in their homes and helps them obtain secret abortions she performs at hospitals -- until she is jailed when one of the women is injured as a result.
Staunton is reportedly being considered for an Oscar for her role in the film.
In October, producer Mike Leigh told Ananova press that he is proud of the film and the pro-abortion message it conveys.
"I'm pro-choice but I hope this is a film that does not bludgeon the audience in black and white. It's a moral dilemma," Leigh said.
Vera Drake also swept the British Independent Film Awards taking six top honors and Imelda Staunton snatched another Best Actress honor.
Staunton has admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that she worries about abortion becoming illegal again in the United States.
"Everyone is pro- or anti-, but it's not going to go away. (But) if the laws change and it becomes illegal, it could go back to how it was in the film," Staunton said.
In addition to capturing the Golden Lion prize at Venice, Vera Drake also garnered the Best Actress award.
The film had been rejected earlier in the year by the Cannes festival.
"As noted before, the Supreme Court did not invent abortion. There might be plenty of abortion, perhaps authorized or permitted by state laws, even without Roe and Casey. Moreover, the Court is, arguably, not directly responsible for the wrong moral choices of individuals that the Court's decisions permit. Finally, the Court is not responsible - cannot be responsible, consistent with its constitutional role - for correcting all injustices, even grave ones. But the Court is responsible for the injustices that it inflicts on society that are not consistent with, but in fact betray, its constitutional responsibilities. To the extent that the Court has invalidated essentially all legal restriction of abortion, it has authorized private violence on a scale, and of a kind, that unavoidably evokes the memories of American slavery and of the Nazi Holocaust. And by cloaking that authorization in the forms of the law - in the name of the Supreme Law of the Land - the Court has taught the American people that such private violence is a right and, by clear implication, that it is alright. Go ahead. The Constitution is on your side. This is among your most cherished constitutional freedoms. Nobody ought to oppose you in your action. We have said so.
The decision in Casey, reaffirming Roe and itself reaffirmed and extended in Carhart, in my view exposes the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, as a lawless, rogue institution capable of the most monstrous of injustices in the name of law, with a smugness and arrogance worthy of the worst totalitarian dictatorships of all time. The Court, as it stands today, has, with its abortion decisions, forfeited its legal and moral legitimacy as an institution. It has forfeited its claimed authority to speak for the Constitution. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the People. The enthusiasm of liberal intelligentsia for the Court's abortion decisions, the sycophancy of the law professorate, of the legal profession, and of our elected officials, and the docility of the American people with respect to our lawless, authoritarian Court rivals the pliancy of the most cowardly, servile peoples toward ruinous, brutal, anti-democratic regimes throughout world history. We suffer people to commit despicable acts of private violence and we welcome - some of us revere - a regime that destroys popular government for the sake of perverted, Orwellian notions of "liberty." After a twentieth century that saw some of the worst barbarisms and atrocities ever committed by humankind, at a time when humankind supposedly had progressed to more enlightened states, we still have not learned. The lesson of the Holocaust - "Never Forget" - is lost. We fail to recognize the amazing capacity of human beings to commit unthinkable, barbaric evil, and of others to tolerate it. We remember and are aghast at the atrocities of others, committed in the past, or in distant lands today. But we do not even recognize the similar atrocities that we ourselves commit, and tolerate, today."Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 995, 1003-1007 (2003).
Sounds just like Hollyweird to celebrate an abortionist.
They're telling a story. The fact is that if abortion is illegal there will always be women who will seek it out no matter what. That's just the facts. Abortion will never be illegal in the US.
The question I have is just how many people have PAID their hard earned dollars to go see this movie?
Coming soon to a public school near you!
Hollywood celebrates abortion! Everyone should have one! And homosexuality and lesbianism! If the title character, Vera Drake, were a lesbian abortionist the film would be a shoe-in for Best Picture! Michael Caine won an Oscar for playing the warm, friendly, heart-of-gold abortionist in THE CIDER HOUSE RULES.
One need only pick up a newspaper to know that Judge Jones is correct — and that knowledge presents the biggest threat to the abortion movement today. Recent advances in ultrasound technology show in utero babies walking or smiling in the womb much earlier than once thought possible. The National Abortion Federation's main response to claims that partial-birth abortion caused severe pain to the unborn has been to note that most other abortions do too. But that sort of candor is in short supply among abortion advocates. It's little wonder that doctors and hospitals that supported the recent challenge to the federal partial-birth-abortion ban fought so hard to keep their medical records from seeing the light of day. The more the truth of their practices is exposed to sunlight, the less public support they can claim. — Shannen W. Coffin is a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. A Tough Boat to Roe, National Review Online, September 16, 2004
more women die today from abortion than before roe vs. wade.
More people are getting abortions. It would only stand to reason.
I can't think of any industry that relies more heavily on abortion than the entertainment industry. These beautiful people have figures to watch, don'tcha know.
The question I have is just how many people have PAID their hard earned dollars to go see this movie?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
true, but they like to perpetuate the myth that roe vs. wade put and end to women being hurt by back alley butchers. its simply a misrepresntation of the facts. they are still being hurt, its just now legal to do so.
i also read that most abortionist do not tell the mother the sex of the child. however those who do, the mothers will keep the child if they find out the baby is a boy. you have women killing women and they are calling it womens rights.
dirty little secrets lobbyists like to keep hush hush
My question is: Why do reasonable people pay to see ANY movie?
Stop vicarious living and get into real life!!!
;-)
I still don't understand your point. With any medical procedure, there is going go be a small percentage that die. Everyone knows this going in. That's why you always have to sign a consent form. Ever read the small print of one of these?
Of course, that is what liars and killers do, so there's no reason to be surprised by it.
Hollywood also likes to present the worst case scenarios when supporting their pro-abort position. In Cider House it was the ever present rape/incest. You cannot only have laws to deal with the worst case scenario. Abortion should only be legal in cases where the mother will die or they are charges pressed for a sexual assualt.
Couldn't agree more.
Posted on 10/14/2004 10:03:55 AM PDT by No Surrender Monkey
An appeals court on Wednesday rejected a state law that would require doctors to tell women about the risks of abortion before performing the procedure.
The law, also known as the ''Women's Right to Know Act,'' also would have compelled doctors to give patients a state-produced flier on alternatives to abortion, including information about medical assistance benefits for prenatal care, childbirth and neonatal care. The materials also would include a description of the fetus.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and ''runs afoul'' of Florida law for several reasons, including violating a woman's right to privacy.
''The Act is unconstitutional because, on its face, it imposes significant obstacles and burdens upon the pregnant woman which improperly intrude upon the exercise of her choice between abortion and childbirth,'' wrote Judge W. Matthew Stevenson in the unanimous, three-justice opinion.
The Legislature passed the informed-consent law in 1997 but it was stalled, pending legal challenges from a coalition of abortion-rights advocates and providers.
Marshall Osofsky, a West Palm Beach attorney and co-counsel in the case, called it ''heartless'' to force a rape or incest survivor to discuss with her doctor the option of carrying her pregnancy to term.
''It was the state trying to set up roadblocks between a patient and her doctor,'' he said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Jackie DiPietre, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health, said late Wednesday afternoon that the state is reviewing the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
Bebe Anderson, a staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights and a co-counsel in the case, called the law ``part of an ongoing campaign by the anti-choice movement to mislead women.''
Anderson said 21 states currently have ''some sort of bias counseling laws'' for informed consent on the books.
Lynda Bell, spokeswoman for Florida Right to Life, had a different view.
''It really is sad that the courts are upholding this,'' she said. ``No matter what side of the issue you're on, women have a right to know all of the ramifications of abortion.
``It's purely and simply information. Abortion is the one decision you can never take back.''
those cases make up for less than 2% of abortions performed.
Damn straight! Who has time
for movies when TV has
three CSI shows?!
If I hit a show,
I'll miss what's going on in
Las Vegas, New York
and Miami! Geesh!
People need to sort out their
life priorities!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.