Unplanned

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

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—even 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.

– Christopher Schwinger

Eye-opening true story of Abby Johnson’s experience working at Planned Parenthood. The movie is well done with great acting by Ashley Bratcher as Abby Johnson and Robia Scott as Cheryl, the clinic director. Abby’s story begins with her heartfelt desire to help women which led to working at the clinic and her journey from believing abortion is necessary to suddenly having a horror of the procedure. The movie shows seeds of her inner struggle as she sees inconsistencies of Planned Parenthood’s methods, has two abortions herself and is even pregnant while working at the clinic. Abby is determined to stick with her beliefs in spite of these experiences until her heart is changed when seeing an abortion via ultrasound.

The movie portrays both sides with respect. The patients at the clinic are portrayed as women seeking help in a difficult situation and are not treated in a judgmental way for considering an abortion. It shows the clinic workers and abortion protestors in both good and bad light. Some protestors do not have real compassion towards patients while others are seen truly caring about the women. The clinic director is harsh with Abby at times and particularly after she questions a Planned Parenthood procedure at a seminar. The abortion facility looks clean and efficient while the workers at the clinic appear like typical employees you’d encounter at a medical office.

The movie Unplanned had limited show times in our area and unfortunately was removed from theaters while still doing well at the box office. The ‘R’ rating is surprising to me and is unjustified given I’m a lightweight and cannot even handle the violence of many ‘PG-13’ films. The only difficult parts to watch are when Abby aborts her baby at home after taking an abortion pill, a young woman suffers during a botched abortion procedure at the clinic and when Abby witnesses an abortion on the ultrasound monitor.

This movie is highly effective since its based on an actual autobiography and shows Abby’s transition from supporting abortion to suddenly struggling with the issues surrounding the procedure after many years of justifying it within herself. I learned several new things from this movie and didn’t know that Planned Parenthood employees escort women from their cars to the facility so they are not influenced by abortion protestors. This is an important movie to see if you care about women who must make the heart wrenching decision of whether to keep or abort their babies because it reveals the inner workings of an abortion facility and shows what happens to women during the entire abortion process. The fact that this story is told from a former clinic director’s experience during her eight years at Planned Parenthood makes it very compelling.

– Skylark

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Ashley Bratcher
Directors: Chuck Konzelman
Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 1
Rated: R-Restricted
Studio: Unplanned Movie, LLC
DVD Release Date: August 13, 2019
Run Time: 110 minutes
ASIN: B07STGYH7T