A Movie Reflection: Unplanned

This will be the first time I'll be reflecting on a movie on this blog. Now, this is not a movie review as I won't be going talking about acting, story telling and all that jazz. I'll purely be putting out my thoughts on what the issues that the movie presented but I won't be explaining anything seen or heard in the movie.

Unplanned does a great job in opening up the topic it wants to tackle - abortion. Back when the RH Law was still a bill, proponents of the bill really wanted to highlight the access to information about a woman's choices about family planning. If the same people want to push for legalization of abortion here in the Philippines, they should be honest and show this movie to the woman who wish to have an abortion. Unplanned shows, as graphically as it's allowed to, how abortions are carried out and what actually happens during abortions - both surgical and chemical.

Those scenes, which actually show what abortion really looks like can be very chilling. I had to remind myself that I wanted to see this movie so I can put the test my convictions (I am pro-life) and so I had to force myself to watch the everything. And it can be a trial for someone like me who gets grossed out very easily.

I appreciate the honesty of the movie, in that, it shows that almost everyone, pro-life and pro-choice, truly believed they're doing the right thing. The clinic even had some Catholics working in the abortion industry. I am not surprised in the slightest. I belong to a charismatic community (BLD) and one of the people I look up to in that community mentioned to me that he supports the RH Law even though it has been pronounced by the church as against church teaching. It's the common dilemma of, "I don't want to take this choice away from other people," which does indeed sound noble and as such, many religious people will fall into that trap.

The movie does also show the negative sides of both pro-life and pro-choice sides and especially criticizes the negative side of the pro-life movement going so far as putting into the mouth of one of the main characters that they weren't with "them", officially distancing herself from misguided pro-lifers who think calling other people "murder" would get other people on their side.

It also does expose the abortion industry for what it is - an industry. As such, it's goal is to make money. It claims to be a protector of women's rights but mostly, they really are just a business trying to make more money money for themselves. It would be like a 5-star restaurant claiming to be a champion for feeding the poor and disenfranchised with what's on their menu. Organizations like Planned Parenthood have quotas to meet. The line, "safe, legal, and rare" no longer hold.

I did a bit of digging into this and it really doesn't take much digging at all. Right in the Planned Parenthood website, you'll find statistics into the effectiveness of different kinds of contraception. This was one of the talking points in pushing for the RH Law in the Philippines. The only figure we really hear about is that condoms are 98% effective. This is what pro-RH Law politicians claim is the solution to over population especially in poorer areas.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/condom/how-effective-are-condoms

Since the 98% figure is all we hear, we assume right away that if a poor family has 5 unexpected pregnancies, that had the couple used a condom, they wouldn't have those children. The truth, however is that over the course of a year, if couple continue to use a condom, due to all factors including improper use, there is a 15% chance of getting pregnant. So while a single sexual contact has only 2% failure rate, continued sexual contact actually has up to 15% failure rate. I can break this down in another post as I can actually attempt the math on this.

In other words, condoms promise 98% efficiency (I'm being generous here) while delivering 85% efficiency with continued use. This is actually how abortions are sold. You already have a couple who bought into the deception that they won't get pregnant. It only takes a little chiding to convince them they're not ready to be parents and actually sell an abortion.

It's a clever business model and one which was bared in the film though not mentioning this much detail. Now, this film won't convince everyone to be pro-life but what it can do is spark the conversation. And it does that very well. One thing everyone I hope can actually agree on, is that abortion providers shouldn't be treated as champions of women's rights. They should be treated as businesses (a health care provider) and they should be held liable to every human being who comes into their facility.

A New Kind of Fake News

In this point in time, we're all used to fake news. The kinds which put words in other people's mouths. News headlines like, "Pope Francis changes church teaching on homosexuality," or "Chel Diokno says, 'Tutol ako sa Death Penalty kahi rapin at patayin pa ang aking mga anak na babae,'" or anything that comes out of Mocha Uson's mouth or Twitter.

These are easily verifiable even with a quick google search. I do notice, however, a subtle form of fake news. One that gets all the facts right but inserts their own spin to it to push an agenda. More recently, the LFS was come out with the statement against mandatory ROTC and the story they cite involves the death of the ROTC cadet Willie Amihoy by one who is an ROTC officer.

The incident itself had absolutely nothing to do with any ROTC activity. It stemmed from an argument between two people, one happened to be a cadet and one happened to be an officer. Again, the facts were correct but the narrative being pushed was misleading. And we see this popping up on our news feed every now and again. I thought about putting in recurring news articles (bombings, Duterte-isms etc.) but I find that to generalize them all would be counter productive. As such, I've linked to the news articles which promote an untrue narrative.

Here's a couple more I found:

• A few months ago, a friend of mine shared a news article which said conservatives share more fake news than liberals. The data is clear. More conservatives do in fact share more fake news than liberals. But a little digging into the studies gave a clearer explanation as to why. The study actually found that the older demographic generally share more fake news than the younger demographic regardless of political views. Younger conservatives and younger liberals share fake news at a similar rate and so do older conservatives and older liberals. The reason why more conservatives share fake news is simply because more of the older demographic hold to conservative views. Also, the study cited that a liberal news site was the one that decided whether the news was fake or not.
• https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/01/10/19/older-people-conservatives-more-likely-to-share-fake-news-study

• Late last year, news broke out about numerous child molestation cases in the US by Catholic clergymen and the implication by most mainstream news outlets was that this is a common occurrence in the Catholic Church and that the church simple moved priests around. A closer look at the cases being brought up shows that most of the cases were from before 2006, when the US bishops started to put in actual measures to address the issue of child abuse. Again, the facts of the news article were correct but to omit this crucial fact seems irresponsible. Another fact almost never mentioned is that child abuse is NOT a Catholic problem. Protestant pastors, school teachers, sports coaches commit child abuse at a rate similar to or more than Catholic priests.
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/has-the-catholic-church-committed-the-worst-crime-in-us-history/2019/03/12/1875bb84-44ee-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b9d588d5bbb8

• This next bit is a double feature where two news outlets were trying to cover the same story but in different ways. Both were clearly trying to push their own biases to their viewers. I can't track down the news articles as they were unremarkable. But basically, ABS had an anti-Duterte spin to their news while CNN had a pro-Duterte spin to the same news bit. I laughed when I those two news bits. You'll actually see this in several news outlets where one newbit will claim, "Duterte curses during military event." while another might claim that, "Duterte shows his support during military event." Both might tell the truth but single out one particular thing that will does not give the full picture of the entire event.

• The last bit of fake news I want to tackle cannot be found online. I may come up months after the fact but that's what makes it so hard to identify. I'm talking about the events that never make it into the news. Some journalists will purposely not report certain events that do not fit their own agenda. When, for example, have you heard about the booming economy during the time of PGMA or how her project of the strong nautical highway has helped the economy. All we used to hear was how these projects are marred by corruption but never their economic pluses.

Now, I'm not saying we should disregard all of these news bits. What I am saying is we should be alert to spot the color of the news and remove the color they add - I might write more on this at a later date. The point of all this is, newscasters and journalists are human too. They carry their own biases and whether wittingly or unwittingly, they add the color of their own biases into the news they carry or the news they choose not to carry. What we should do as a people is learn to remove the color these journalists add to their storytelling.

It may be difficult but it's something we need to do if we are to get the bigger picture.