The new box office phenomenon Juno is the most recent in a string of films to hit the theaters over the past year with a pro-life message. Fueled by word-of-mouth and Internet buzz, Juno ramped up from a limited release in December to #1 at the box office this week with over $50 million in ticket sales to date and no sign of slowing down any time soon. The film is about a high-school girl who becomes pregnant and has to decide what she’s going to do. Truly a sympathetic situation. Juno’s first inclination is to get an abortion. She heads off to an abortion clinic only to run into a girl from her high school protesting outside the facility. What her fellow high-schooler says along with the cold, nervous, impersonal atmosphere inside the clinic is enough to cause Juno to reconsider her decision and blast out of there without looking back. She then sets about the hard task of telling her parents about her situation and her plans not to abort the child, but put it up for adoption. Her father expresses concern at this decision, and her stepmother finds it ludicrous that she doesn’t want to get an abortion, but Juno holds her ground. Despite the serious subject matter being addressed, Juno is a quirky, fun film in a Something About Mary kinda way, with sharp, witty dialogue and the important message to, “Keep your baby.”

Another film with a pro-life message, which came out last spring, is Waitress staring Keri Russell. In this film, the situation is not a high school girl, but a woman, Jenna, in an abusive marriage with a hyper-controlling husband, who won’t even let her keep or own money for fear that she’ll run away from him (which in fact she plans to do). Then she becomes pregnant and feels trapped. Abortion comes up as a possibility when speaking to a fellow waitress friend, but that is not an option for Jenna. She hates every moment of her pregnancy, and the thought of being a mother, especially to this man’s child, is repulsive to her. More than once (as I remember it), she refers to the “d--- baby” inside of her. Despite all this, everything changes when she holds her new-born girl in her arms.

Bella (winner of the prestigious Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award) also centers on a waitress, Nina, working in New York City. In her case, there is no husband, abusive or otherwise, just a boyfriend who has abandoned her. Money is therefore a major issue. To make matters worse, Nina loses her job. She doesn’t want to bring a child into the world that she cannot afford. Like Juno, the film takes you into the cold, lifeless abortion clinic to help clarify the decision involved. A coworker, whose life was turned upside down years earlier through the death of a child, helps her make the decision to keep her baby. The film ends on a surprising and heart-warming note.

Finally, the low-ball comedy Knocked Up, from the man, Jude Apatow, who brought us The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad, though purveying an overdose of immorality, none-the-less contains a pro-life message. The female lead, Alison (Katherine Heigl from Grey’s Anatomy), becomes pregnant and also has her reasons, like those women above, to abort her child. She has just received her big break in show business: she’s moving from behind the camera to in front to be an on-air personality! She goes out to celebrate, drinks too much, has a one night stand…gets pregnant. In a sober state, Alison finds out the man that she slept with, though possessing some endearing qualities, is basically a low life, who does drugs, and has no job or ambition. In spite of all this, and her mother counseling her to get an abortion, and Alison not wanting to have a baby for another ten years, decides to keep her child and is happy that she did.

So whether the situation is high school girl, a wife wanting to break free from an abusive spouse, a single woman struggling to even provide for herself or someone just breaking through in her career or who has become pregnant due to a night of indiscretion, the message of these films is the same, “Keep your baby.” In all cases, abortion is directly addressed and rejected. Adoption is the alternative for those not ready or able to raise the child. If perhaps one, even two of these films had come out over the past year, it could be written off as a fluke, but four, that’s a trend. With such a high regard for life being shown on the silver screen, perhaps Hollywood values aren’t all bad afterall.

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