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.
Does the movie deal with the post abortion trauma that causes an increase in drug abuse, depression and suicide for women who realize it was a baby??
Pray for W and The Victims of Abortion
That's a higher percentage than I thought.
So 98% of all abortions should be illegal. I can live with that.
Obviously, that ruling is just plain ridiculous. Everyone should know the risks of every medical procedure done to them. (For that matter, every medication too. (My husband past out last week because of a medication reaction last week so don't even get me started!) The reason I keep responding to you is that this in and of itself is not a good enough reason to outlaw abortion. It's just not. When seeing the statistics, most women will take the chance.
no a good reason to outlaw abortion is because its MURDER.
You can say its your body and its your choice, but your not killing your own body. keep telling yourself that its a choice, i guarantee you, your aborted children will be standing at the gates of heaven when you try and enter. God have mercy on your soul.
I respect your viewpoint. And I know because it's such a personal, religous one, that you feel strongly about it. I believe it is a woman's choice. I pray it will be to have the baby. But I also pray that abortion will never be outlawed.
So that's why the critics are hailing the movie; they're trying to drum up business for it!
Just think of the irony. We are condemning scott Petersen for doing to Conner what his mother could have done by hiring a medical hitman, and there does not seem to be overmuch consternation abouthe paradox.
The purpose of criminalizing it is not to stop it, although that would be a welcome incidental benefit. Criminalizing murder has never and will never stop it. It simply provides criminal sanctions for those who request and perform it. It would probably deter many, if not most of the women considering it, and thereby save thousands of innocent lives, which should be one of a government's highest priorities. Criminalizing this disgusting procedure (if purely elective) is a statement of society's antipathy toward it expressed in law.
It's never going to happen. I just think that you guys should take all of your passion and use it for education and family planning instead.
You may be right. This is another example as to how relativism has trumped objective morality in favor of the protection of innocent life. Society and civillization is not well served by this trend.
It's just reality.
Reality can and should be altered those people who realize that law should reflect the time honored precepts of Judeao Christian beliefs and the best of the Western philosophical tradition that serves to protect innocent life. Law is enacted by human beings who hopefully recognize those truths that are best crystalized in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the US constitution.
No matter how you package it... murder is still murder.
Well..that being said..it's never going ot happen.
As of this point in time I am sadly forced to agree with you, but more and more people are realizing that the foundation of this current regime is Roe vs Wade, the worst Supreme Court decision in the history of the United States, and I DO believe that this constitutional abomination CAN be reversed. Each individual state could than use it's police power rubric to establish it's own abortion law, as a proper Federalist structure would dictate.
Frank, use your passion in other ways. You're wasting your time.
ping
It is never a waste of time to employ passion in the defense of innocent life and the constitution. One day when this nation enters a more enlighted age, I hope that it will collectively look back on a national regime of often state funded on demand abortion in the same spirit as today we look back on those who exercised their "choice" to own slaves or the Nazi's to "choose" to round up Jews for extermination.
It is never a waste of time to employ passion in the defense of innocent life and the constitution. One day when this nation enters a more enlighted age, I hope that it will collectively look back on a national regime of often state funded on demand abortion in the same spirit as today we look back on those who exercised their "choice" to own slaves or the Nazi's to "choose" to round up Jews for extermination.
As a Jew, I truly don't care for the comparison, thank you.
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