MOVIE NIGHT

Parents need to know that Unplanned is based on the memoir of a former Planned Parenthood director who joined the pro-life movement after witnessing an abortion. The film's complex topic is given nuanced treatment, but ultimately its sympathies lie firmly in pro-life sentiment. Graphic content is all related to abortion, and it's very realistic and disturbing. Viewers see two "procedures": a surgical abortion and a chemical abortion (via RU486). In the first scene, a woman cries, and there are images of a well-formed 13-week-old fetus writhing and twisting as if in pain, trying to hold on to the sides of the uterus as it's sucked out (some experts have firmly disputed the accuracy of these scenes). In the second, a woman retches into a toilet, crying with agonizing cramps while blood and chunks fall out from between her legs; there are bloody smears all over her bathroom. Other scenes show technicians reassembling the bodies of aborted fetuses to make sure there's nothing left in the mother's bodies; viewers see a very small realistic dead fetus' head, face, and arm. A physician who performs abortions is shot; viewers see a news report about it, but there are no images of the shooting. A protestor holds up a picture of a dismembered infant. Characters kiss, and some drink at dinner and while watching TV, but no one acts drunk. Cursing is mild ("hell," "damn," "ass"), but there's other upsetting language, like when a man yells at a woman that she's a "baby killer" who "couldn't keep her legs closed." Viewers' take on this film will largely depend on their views around abortion, but it has both messages of compassion and empathy and scenes in which characters are cruel to one another.