Three young women wake up, confused and terrified, in a room that looks like a cross between a normal hospital room and the creepy underground lair of some mad scientist from a horror movie. A video screen flickers on and a creepy older man, looking a bit like Academy-award-nominee Robert Loggia, appears on it, telling the women that he’s their “jailer.” The women, you see, had all been getting abortions when their jailer’s shadowy accomplices kidnapped them and brought them to this strange prison, where they will be forced to live for the next seven months until they gave birth. “You were all on the operating table, all ready to commit murder,” announces a mysterious doctor. “Your babies will be given life just as God planned.”
This is the premise of a new horror film called The Life Zone, which recently had its world premiere at the prestigious, er, Hoboken International Film Festival, a festival that was, perhaps not coincidentally, founded and chaired by the film’s writer and producer, Kenneth del Vecchio. In case you think I’m making all this up, here’s the film’s trailer, which makes The Life Zone look a bit like an equal-parts mixture of Saw, Human Centipede, and The Handmaid’s Tale, with Robert Loggia in the role of Jigsaw/Dr. Heiter/The Commander:
Now, if you thought that something seemed really … off about that trailer, well, you’re not alone. For the film is not, as you might have assumed from my description, a warning against the fanatical misogyny of many in the anti-abortion movement.
No, the film – produced by a pro-life former judge, crime thriller author, and Republican New Jersey state senate candidate – is meant as pro-life propaganda. As the offical press release for the film’s premiere put it:
The film, which appears to cut right down the middle [of the abortion debate], examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist. Del Vecchio and the cast invite pro-lifers to come to this historic event.
During the months the three women are held in captivity, you see, they are exposed to a barrage of films and books intended to, er, educate them about abortion –what their attending obstetrician Dr. Wise describes as “an abortion think tank.” Two of the captive women do indeed convert to the pro-life side; apparently we in the audience are supposed to develop Stockholm Syndrome along with them. The third, as we see in the trailer, tries to induce a miscarriage, which doesn’t go quite as planned.
And this sets us up for the final twist, which I’m just going to go ahead and reveal: once all three women have given birth, Dr. Wise tells them she’s going to sew them all, mouth-to-vagina, into a Human Abortion-pede!
Actually no: the twist is that the “life zone” the three women in has actually been … purgatory! All three “captives,” you see, had died on the operating table while getting their abortions. (Apparently they went to the world’s worst abortion clinic, as first-trimester abortions don’t involve anything more surgically invasive than the insertion of a suction tube; the risk of death from a legal surgical abortion is 0.0006%, one in 160,000 cases, making the procedure many times safer than childbirth itself.) Their time in the “life zone” was a test: the two women who changed their minds were whisked up to heaven, while their miscarriage-attempting, stubbornly pro-choice companion is sent straight to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Dr. Wise, despite being on the right side of the abortion question, also goes to hell for committing suicide. And, oh yeah, their jailer – Loggia – was Satan. Why Satan and a hell-bound doctor were the ones trying to convert the abortion ladies to the pro-life side I can’t tell you; del Vecchio’s theology is evidently more sophisticated than I am.
The real twist here? As Jersey Journal writer Alan Robb notes:
The Life Zone went viral across the internet [last] Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film’s trailer. … But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people – including the film’s cast and producers – attended this weekend’s screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn’t know how to interpret its twist ending.
It’s impossible to tell from the trailer if the film is bad in a so-bad-it’s-good way, or if it’s just plain awful. I will try to get hold of it when it hits video, and will report back with my results.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good horror film set in a creepy hospital, try renting Infection, a Japanese film from 2005. Or, if you’ve got a longer attention span, try Lars Von Trier’s supernatural soap opera The Kingdom, a darkly comic miniseries which takes place in what one might call, paraphrasing Bill Murray’s character in Tootsie, “one nutty hospital.” Both are conveniently available on Netflix instant watch, so you don’t even have to leave your pregnancy dungeon to see them.
EDITED: Added some info on the minimal dangers of abortion procedures.
Damn my slow connection! I keep getting beaten to the punch and end up parroting other people. Sorry folks.
Yes, that’s exactly it. Go ahead and try to deny it, MRAL, but that is in essence the MRA position on abortion and child support. Conflating fetuses with children is a very useful rhetorical tool when you’re arguing for idiocy such as this. Which is why you keep doing it.
I got to wondering, if you think fetuses aren’t alive, do you think children are alive? When does a baby become alive?
“So what you’re saying is that a child’s right to be taken care of is less important than a man’s right to have sex without consequences, right? ”
The mother is thus responsible for taking care of the child, on her own. If she doesn’t want to… well, she can get an abortion as well.
So, yes, you’re saying a man deserves the right to have sex more than a child deserves to be taken care of.
That’s a filthy lie. Any man who gets pregnant has every right to choose whether to abort it or carry it to term.
I am an feminist and I honestly don’t see the problem with so called paper abortions, provided the paperwork would be required to be filed in a timely manner, such as to allow for an actual abortion should the woman chose to have one, and provided that the paperwork would include an agreement to split the costs of any abortion. I realize that I may be overlooking something in reaching this conclusion and would welcome any explanations of why this is wrong.
Victoria, I don’t really think hardcore feminists run the pro-choice movement. It’s a full-time job to be a senior leader in one of the other. I should have been clearer- I don’t like the way feminists (made up of pro-choice people, but are not the pro-choice movement) discuss the abortion issue, because it’s done in a hostile manner, usually involves mocking men, and also feminists are generally against Choice 4 Men.
(both wishful-thinking Republicans and fear-mongering feminists would have you think differently, but there’s no way the government will ever overturn Roe v. Wade)
Unnecessary. Regulations and acts of terror make it effectively impossible to procure an abortion even if it’s technically legal.
By the way, I will name one issue where I think ciswomen’s opinions matter less–circumcision.
The C-bomb has been dropped. Everyone hit the deck. *fetches popcorn*
Sally, maybe you failed biology, but men don’t get pregnant. However, they have the same responsibilities afterward (they don’t actually give birth, but that’s negligible compared to the next 18 years of financial and emotional commitment).
Fatman – Two reasons:
1) Abortions aren’t just a matter of cost. They also involve strangers going up your hoo-hah and doing things that hurt like the dickens.
2) If the mother doesn’t want to abort, if she wants to keep the kid, what then? The kid will cost just as much to raise as any other. I don’t think it’s fair to the child (or to society, if you want to take the “welfare comes out of my tax dollars” perspective) to say the father’s off the hook just because he wanted the fetus to be aborted.
No… I’m not saying the man’s right to sex is more important than a child’s right to be taken care of. That’s very important. But you’re twisting the facts of the issue. The child is not a child as the time of abortion- which is why the mother can have an abortion. The same principles would apply for men. Once the child is born he is completely committed and cannot get an abortion.
Forgive me for thinking that you were ignorant of this fact. You see, the choice to get an abortion can only exist when a person is pregnant. Anything else is tantamount to slavery.
Tell me, MRAL, what would you think of a government that mandated abortions for women who didn’t want them? On the basis of, say, controlling population. It’s a compelling interest. Would that be a violation of women’s human rights or not?
Fatman- Throw in a back-up source of child support and I too would not have a problem with “paper abortions.”
But that would probably require TEH SOCIALIZMS. Which is evil and feminine and quite possibly ghey.
“The thing is, choice for women is allowed and the right is fairly stable (both wishful-thinking Republicans and fear-mongering feminists would have you think differently, but there’s no way the government will ever overturn Roe v. Wade)”
Someone hasn’t been paying attention lately!
For what it’s worth, I find the concept of paper abortions interesting. I just don’t know how to get around the fact that it’s basically asking the government to subsidize these paper non-fathers. It’s … problematic.
I think “paper abortions” or “choice for men” is wrong because it violates the rights of the child. Every child has a right to know their parents and to their resources and support until they are old enough to support themselves. A “paper abortion” is tantamount to child-abandonment.
If you’ll all excuse a terrible, terrible analogy, unplanned pregnancies are like car accidents: you didn’t want it to happen and it is an expensive pain in the ass, but saying you don’t *want* to deal with it won’t un-break the car or un-pregnant the lady. Life is inconvenient, but you can’t change the past or trample other people’s rights just because you don’t like the consequences.
The root problem here is that childbirth isn’t fair. The only way to have total equity is to have the Supreme Court rule that fetuses will exist 50% in the mother and 50% in the father, can only be created by conscious choice, and can be made to painlessly vaporize at any time between conception and their 18th birthday.
Until we get that ruling, shit will be unfair, because the physical reality of pregnancy happens in a woman’s body, and the physical reality of a child’s need for money and effort cannot be wished away.
No, that’s exactly what you’re saying. I understand that it’s a little embarrassing to realize that your viewpoints value a man’s orgasm over a child’s well-being, but that’s just part of life when you’re an MRA. Maybe if you change your views then people won’t think you’re an asshole who thinks that a man’s ability to have consequence-free sex is more important than ensuring the well-being of children.
because it’s done in a hostile manner
I know, how dare we get annoyed that other people try and control what we do with our bodies!! Could you please show me how a non-feminist, pro-choice person manages to talk about abortion in a hostile manner, while a pro-choice feminist is overtly hostile? I mean, how exactly are you defining ‘hostility’? Because I think men like Scott Roeder, Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and John Salvi are WAY more hostile in the abortion debate than feminists are (hint: no feminist has ever bombed a clinic or committed murder to further the cause, all those men killed at least one person).
usually involves mocking men
I won’t deny that some pro-choice feminists openly mock men, but they usually don’t mock men as a gender – they reserve their mockery for individual assholes who deserve to be mocked.
and also feminists are generally against Choice 4 Men
So it basically is that feminists don’t think you ought to be allowed to abandon a child. Good to know. You’re really not convincing anyone here that you’re *not* an asshole with positions like that.
Sally, well then the definition of abortion should be expanded. Anyone who is committed to caring for a child has the right to abort that child, be it biologically or legally, before the child is born.
You know what? Here’s the real difference between female abortion and “male abortion.”
After a woman gets an abortion, the father doesn’t have to feed it and diaper it and send it to school for 18 years.
**I miss three days ago, when I had never heard of “The Human Centipede.”
Sorry about that Bee. Nice to see David picked up on it though.
CHOICE 4 MEN IS NOT ABANDONING A CHILD.
No, Choice 4 Men (in a best case scenario where it is only during the first trimester) is telling a woman she’s being forced to have an abortion, otherwise the guy’s gonna abandon her child.
That’s not a full choice.
I have to think about this. Some of you have put forth suprisingly reasoned arguements against Choice 4 Men, mostly the child abandonment thing. Usually it’s just “LOL MEN SHOULD KEEP IT IN THEIR PANTS”, which is less than convincing. The abandonment thing upset me a little. I’ll be back later.
What you’re really saying here is that a man should have the right to do to his sex partner what was done to the women in this movie: kidnap her, tie her up, and force her to give birth against her will. I don’t see any other way to make this happen. Except for the aforementioned artificial uterus. That’s a men’s issue I would get 100% behind. You should really be agitating for the medical field to put more research into developing artificial uteri. Then men can achieve true equality.
Repetition =/= truth