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Re-Examining Personal Logic (or Where Netflix Begets Introspection Begets Blog Posting)
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Re-Examining Personal Logic (or Where Netflix Begets Introspection Begets Blog Posting) My name is Deb, and I'm a Netflix addict. (Hello, Deb.) Wondering why someone I knew nothing of had their recommendations show up on my home page on Netflix was the spark behind this post. Curiosity piqued, I started looking through their suggestions. Perhaps their viewing choices were similar to my own and they had some interesting movie or television show I hadn't yet encountered to share with me. Moving my cursor over the many titles the person recommended, I started seeing a hard right leaning of the posts. My viewing of Christmas movies last year might have cost me more than I though at the time. Nothing seemed even vaguely interesting, and I was bored. It was either find something or come up with another topic to blog about here. I was desperate. I had already compared Kirk Cameron to Amanda Bynes. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel here and knew I needed to give myself time to come up with more. Citizen Ruth was the next movie on the list. This one is about a pregnant drug addict who is being pulled between the two factions of the abortion debate (OMG, Deb, are you REALLY talking about abortion again? Of course.). I thought it was worth a chance and watched it through to the end. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't watched it but might in the future. I will give away a plot point or two in the following few lines. Now is the time to wander away, if that is the case. If not, follow me. The woman at the center of the case is Ruth, said pregnant drug addict. She's homeless, the mother of four , all of which are living with family or taken by the state. Ruth is in no state to be able to take care of her and, when<b> arrested </font></b>for public intoxication for the ninth time or so, is facing felony endangerment charges by the judge presiding over her case who suggests that the felony would go away in the event that she has an abortion. Here is the tricky point of the movie. Ruth starts with a more than gentle nudge in the direction of getting an abortion. The judge overtly suggests the procedure, believing it to be of the best interest that the pregnancy not reach fruition. Ruth follows the opinion with the hopes of avoiding prison time. Then the fundamentalists arrive. Their representative takes Ruth in and attempts to indoctrinate her into their way of looking at her fetus/unborn baby. (I still like the acronym, FUB. Who wouldn't want to knit booties for a little FUB-y? And it maintains its clinical approach at the same time.) The doctor asks her whether she'd like a boy or girl and has Ruth come up with a possible name for the baby. Humanizing, like they say you should do if taken hostage. The captor hesitates to kill you when he sees you as human, according to the psychology. Perhaps the same would work with Ruth? And, Ruth is terrorized by the material presented to her by the Baby Savers. Ruth being a typical drug addict, though, she reverts to her drug use and unpredictable behavior, striking the younger of the family who have taken her into their home. This tests even the turn-the-other-cheek patience of the family who have taken her in, and another volunteer with the organization volunteers to take her in. Agreement is made all around, and Ruth goes home with the second woman. Here, it turns out that the Baby Saver volunteer is actually a member of the Pro Choice group in the area. She was working undercover with the organization and secrets Ruth away to the opposing camp. Ruth is at times hesitant to follow through with her abortion and at times wants to have it as quickly as possible. A bribe of fifteen thousand dollars if Ruth keeps the baby is offered, nominally to assist her in being able to afford caring for her . A counter-offer of the same amount is made by a representative of the Pro-Choice side, so that she has a choice and isn't coerced in the matter. Then the Baby Savers up the offer. The Pro-Choice group stalls Ruth's access to an abortion because their national leader wants to be involved in the process. The Pro-Choice national leader arrives in a helicopter, sweeps Ruth away, and secrets her off to the local abortion clinic. Ruth secures her bag of cash for getting the abortion and jumps out a window with it. The night before the procedure, Ruth has fallen down the stairs when attempting to flee from the Pro-Choice group when the Baby Savers have made a larger second offer. Ruth woke up in the morning having bled on her bed, signaling a likely miscarriage of the baby. But no one listens to Ruth, and she doesn't mention that she would no longer qualify for the cash from either side of the argument. She just takes the money and runs. But the movie, in all of its crass representation of both sides of the debate (not all pro-Choice people are lesbians, militant, or unable to find a partner, and not all pro-Life people are religious zealots with questionable ethics), made me think about where I am on the spectrum of the debate. While I would not volunteer at the clinic and shoo away protesters who try to persuade women entering clinics that they should reconsider, I would defend the law that allows a woman to make that choice. And where I feel that a woman should have self-determination over her own body, I also feel that she should be as responsible for her actions as a man is for his. Using abortion as an afterthought birth control method, for me, is one of the bulwarks of inequality between men and women. Until we cede that our choice is prior to conception (unless we were not willing parties in the conception or otherwise unable to give consent, to be certain), we as women can never be equal to men. If we gain equality to men in all other ways, this will give us a definite upper hand in our choices and suggest that we remain the weaker or more limited sex. |
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I saw the movie "Citizen Ruth" too. I didn't much like it. To me, equality means equal protection under the law, and equal opportunity. Men and women are not identical and physiology and the mechanics of sexual intercourse predetermine a certain subordination. It's built in biologically. What should set us apart as humans is that we can intellectualize that relationship and decide that love and respect can play a part as well- maybe the most important part. We have the capacity to form abstract concepts and put ourselves in someone else's mind- imagine what it would be like to be her. Historically, might makes right, but we do have the option to behave differently. We may not be able to change the world but we can try to make our own country the shining monument to humanity that it has promised to be. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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