The following came in an April 5 email from Kirk Kramer.
On Sunday the National Gallery of Art are showing Where Are My
Children?, an anti-abortion movie made in 1913.
The information below from their website gives the details.
Altho’ I am grieved, I am not surprised that they should be screening
a movie that defends contraception. But it is surprising that they
would resurrect a film critical of abortion – and plainly describe it
as such.
I wish someone would attend this movie and write about it.
Admission is free.
(FROM AN EMAIL TO A FRIEND:)
Here is the information about the film series at the Nat’l Gallery of Art.
https://www.nga.gov/programs/
This is the description of the program on Sunday, which will include
the anti-abortion movie I mentioned:
Ciné-Concert: Traffic in Souls
followed by Where Are My Children?
April 7 at 4:00
East Building Concourse, Auditorium
Andrew Simpson, piano
Traffic in Souls is an unusual silent feature based, in part, on a
Rockefeller Commission report about the prevalence of teenage
prostitution. After accepting a date with a “fine” young fellow, a
gullible candy store clerk is sold to a white slave ring (run by a
well known philanthropist). Shot in actual New York locations, the
film offers present-day viewers a rare window on the past. (George
Loane Tucker, 1913, 35 mm, silent, 88 minutes)
In Where Are My Children? an ardent prosecutor accuses a doctor of
performing illegal abortions, while remaining unaware of his own
wife’s secret life. By the end, the film becomes both a compelling
defense of birth control and a denunciation of abortion. Weber
herself, one of the most opinionated women in pre-sound Hollywood, was
an outspoken social reformer. (Lois Weber, 1916, 35 mm, silent, 62
minutes)
(Note that another film will PRECEDE Where Are My Children.
However, if you or someone else wants to see Where Are My Children,
I suggest getting there before 5 pm. The gallery is sometimes locked
at that hour, and only people who are already in the auditorium are
allowed to remain in the building.
The auditorium is downstairs in the East Building, the modern wing –
not the original 1930s neo-classical structure.
“By the end, the film becomes both a compelling
defense of birth control and a denunciation of abortion. ”
-My dear writer, how is it possible to mount a compelling defense for a causative event, and then denounce its effect? Defending contraception while denouncing abortion is the equivalent of defending drinking before driving, while at the same time decrying D.U.I. related fatalities.
The Rockefellers have poured countless millions into population control schemes like contraception and abortion.
I have not seen the film of course, but I am not surprised. In Margaret Sanger’s heyday that was Planned Parenthood’s stand (I think they called themselves the American Birth Control League then). Sanger and the league were strongly opposed to abortion but of course championed contraception. Their reasoning seems to have been the safety of the mother. Remember abortion was considered a very dangerous surgery until the sixties when science removed much of the danger to the mother. Sanger did praise some women who defied the law and aborted. But her admiration was for their defiance of the system rather than the wisdom of what they did. In her judgment using birth control would have been a smarter and more effective way to defy convention and bring about her Utopian dreams. Contraception then was sometimes portrayed as something that would save women from the harrowing experience of abortion. So I imagine it would be very hard to find anything in their literature from that period that is laudatory of abortion.
As late as the mid sixties the then president of Planned Parenthood (the name had been changed by this time), Alan Gutmacher, was condemning abortion, asserting that it destroys a new life and is injurious to the mother in various ways. It was only when the ‘procedure’ became ‘safe’ due to the introduction of the suction curette and other ‘advances’ that PP, with some prodding from NARAL, changed their minds, forgot about the ‘new life’ and came out swinging for abortion as well as contraception. Talk about evolving views!
Sanger was a eugenicist, just like Hitler. She focused on eliminating the poor, especially people of color. Planned Parenthood locates a disproportionate number of its abortuaries in black and Mexican neighborhoods. Rockefeller, Ford, and many other so-called philanthropists then, as today when we have Bill Gates, George Soros, etc. were promoting contraception, and now abortion, because of concerns about “overpopulation.” Instead of helping the poorer nations build systems for clean water, irrigation, good soil, they focus on eliminating people. Corrupt dictators who lead many nations today are also to blame. Perhaps Pope Francis will inspire many more to help the poor in our nation and elsewhere. Government handouts will do nothing to eliminate poverty…
It is the tendency of evil spirit at work, i.e the situation where we are confused to accept the right as right and wrong as wrong, then the evil lead to depression then to suicide/selfdestruction. We see how the devil is at lead. lets pray, because German wall can be brought down, Russia can be converted then this can also the be done, just faith, humility and unity.
When one thinks of a child and realizes the reality of the gift that a child is, one has to at least understand rationally that the person involved in an abortion will have to fend off very strong thoughts of self destruction because destroying the child has everything to do with hopelessness and despair. What is more insidious is that contraception may not seem to many to have any deleterious effects but it has an impact on the very personal emotional relationship, unknowing of the two persons engaged in the contraception. Of course all kinds of denial on this matter unfolds when the mention of this reality is made but of course planned parenthood, somehow is listened to by politicians, the lawyers, the courts and others who think they know what is best for the rest of us.
I used to think that politicians, justices, and members of the supreme court were smart people, having come from the best schools and supposedly being able to speak and act intelligently. But the fact of the matter is that they do not yet know that the fetus is the child, they call it a body part of a woman, and somehow they give the right to doctors and lawyers to lay their hands between a woman’s legs, breach all privacy of creation, and remove what has been created as if it is a cancer.
One has to seriously question the idiots we have in office, doctors who call themselves doctors, and justices sitting on benches telling the rest of us what is a life, in effect what is real, true and right. Their thinking is not even close to rational.
What is amazing is that they do not even understand nor know rational science because even with all the scientific tools at hand they do not choose to see what is factual and true; the merciless destruction of a human person. They exhibit the same kind of irrational thinking that Planned Parenthood does which is an organization of institutionalized demented persons that stands against every aspect of what is right and just!
It is my understanding that the change in Planned Parenthood’s stand on abortion was not because it became ‘safe’. It was because they realized that there was a high failure rate in the use of contraception especially with teens. They had no where to go but to approve of abortion as ‘backup contraception’.
From there they have moved to being the #1 agency in the U.S. for promoting and performng abortion, for any or no reason, for the full 9 months. PP also fights against any restriction on abortion, even minor ones that would give the mother a true choice.
Joan:
In either case, the concern was pragmatic, not ethical. That lot have no ethics.