The pro-life film “Unplanned” opened with an astounding $6 million debut weekend. I call this figure astounding because of the movie’s small budget, and also because of the powerful external forces that have conspired against it. Various TV channels have refused to run its ads. The “Unplanned” Twitter account was arbitrarily suspended and many users reported that they were unable to follow the account after it was reinstated. Of course, it also faced an unofficial embargo from all the major late night shows and other media platforms.
But the most insidious form of censorship came from the Motion Picture Association of America, which slapped the film with an R rating, creating the absurd situation that minors in states like California, Connecticut, Maine, New York, and others, can get an abortion without parental consent but they cannot watch a movie about abortion without parental consent. The MPAA gave Pure Flix, the Christian entertainment company, its first R rating on the basis of two scenes that depict abortion honestly, though not gratuitously. Abby Johnson, the woman on whom the film is based, described the two scenes in an open letter to parents:
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