Unplanned DVD

Editorial Reviews
Unplanned is a 2019 American anti-abortion film written and directed by Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman, based on the disputed memoir Unplanned by Abby Johnson. The film stars Ashley Bratcher, Brooks Ryan and Robia Scott, following Johnson’s life as a clinic director for Planned Parenthood and her subsequent conversion to anti-abortion activism, though some claimed it perpetuated “distortions and potentially dangerous myths” about abortion.

All Abby Johnson ever wanted to do was help women. She believed in a woman’s right to choose and as one of the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic directors in the nation, she was involved in upwards of 22,000 abortions. Until the day she saw something that changed everything, leading her to join her former enemies and become one of the most ardent pro-life advocates in America.

Abby Johnson was one of the youngest Planned Parenthood directors in the country, but became a pro-life activist, and throughout the movie, she chronologically tells her story, with scenes of appropriate length demonstrating her points. She is played by Ashley Bratcher, who herself was supposed to have been aborted. I felt the straightforward format of filmmaking was very effective in this movie. Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon co-wrote and co-directed it, and they are best known for the first two God¡¯s Not Dead movies and Do You Believe?, all of which were put out by Pure Flix, as is Unplanned. The approximately 5 uses of cuss words are used by the pro-abortion side in the movie. Probably intentionally, the movie has a very confined feeling to it, most of the scenes either being the fence surrounding the Planned Parenthood clinic where she regularly converses with pro-life activists, her home or her pro-life parents¡¯ home, or the Planned Parenthood clinic. Only at the end does she get free from being manipulated by Planned Parenthood. The close-up of the fetus and the blood from abortions are why it has an R rating. I am okay with that rating being given, though I could also argue that it could¡¯ve been PG-13.

The abortion activist camp and the anti-abortion camp are both humanized with interesting conversations that show how they view the other side. Abby is an ideologue and actually stays working for Planned Parenthood even after her superior orders her to increase the number of abortions so they can make a profit, despite being called a nonprofit organization for tax purposes. Even though their dishonesty bothers her, she believes she¡¯s needed to help women. But later, because she has come to understand the greed behind the corporation, God is able to open her heart to see the cruelty of abortion within the context of greed, after she witnesses one for the first time¡ªeven though she had counseled many to do abortions and had gotten two done on herself.

From my perspective, the movie is more effective at showing the corruption at the heart of Planned Parenthood than at trying to make someone¡¯s mind change about whether there are moral and immoral times for doing abortions. Planned Parenthood is deeply in bed with the Democrat Party and corporate media, so this movie is having to fight for attention. If you watch this movie, you will definitely not like Planned Parenthood as much as before you saw it, unless like me, you already knew about its shenanigans. But the movie is about more than exposing the corruption of Planned Parenthood. The religious aspect is fascinating in that it shows me a reality I haven¡¯t thought about much, how divisive within the Christian community abortion is. Abby thought she was a Christian even though she was ignoring the basic human rights which Jesus and the apostles taught. She was a churchgoer even while working for Planned Parenthood. George Tiller, who was murdered, also was a churchgoer while doing late-term abortions in Kansas. In one short conversation in the movie, Abby avoids answering her view on the morality of abortion once the fetus becomes viable; if medical science improves enough that they can make it viable even earlier, is it okay to abort then?

But Planned Parenthood doesn¡¯t really care about those questions, and they¡¯re the ones driving the debate because of how much they are in bed with the media and Democrat Party. They are only interested in convincing women that their freedom is inherently linked to control over their own bodies. This movie really drives home the selfishness that is at the heart of the abortion agenda. It¡¯s not about condemning individual people who are pressured into it, but about exposing the institution which manipulates its own staffers such as Abby Johnson to think it¡¯s good for people. In many ways PP resembles a religious cult, the movie argues.

The Kermit Gosnell movie ¡°Gosnell¡± did well in movie theaters, but I don¡¯t know how much it shaped the abortion debate. Gosnell was basically the poster child of the most unscrupulous abortionist, who operated outside the lines and had terrible health practices and didn¡¯t want accountability if a woman died on his watch. But that movie didn¡¯t reflect poorly on Planned Parenthood, which has burnished itself as a reputable organization. Unplanned has the power to really hurt PP¡¯s business if enough people saw it. I hope that the movie Unplanned does well enough that it becomes impossible for the culture to ignore it, so that it becomes a point of reference from now on in the abortion debate. It¡¯s a very important and very serious movie.

Product details
Actors: Jared Lotz
Format: Color, Dolby, Widescreen, PAL
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 4 for Australia
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Unplanned Movie
DVD Release in: 2019