———-
Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and it’s presented as such in this film. That alone is a welcome change–as others have stated–from recent film and television. Obvious comparisons have been made to Knocked Up and Juno, as both completely failed in their representations of options for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy (the former refusing to even speak the word abortion, and the latter representing a dumpy and disturbing clinic).
The star of Obvious Child, Donna (played by Jenny Slate), is a freelancer who lives in hipster Brooklyn. Others have mentioned the “indie sensibility” of the film, and Donna is the kind of privileged hipster many of us love to hate–and she’s a little bit like Juno in this regard, with toned-down dialogue and ten years added. She has an immature sense of humor (her use of “fart-face” and “fucktard” come to mind), and she just wants to go out and have a good time after the ugly end of her two-year relationship with Joe.
What is with you people who keep claiming Knocked Up didn’t mention abortion. Kathrine Heigl’s Character Allison meets with her mother early in the film to discuss the pregnancy. Her mother explicitly tells her to get an abortion bringing up a cousin who did just that and now has the husband/baby/white picket fence life that her daughter must surely want. Criticize the scene for being callous and presenting abortion as something unpalatable for it’s shallowness, but stop saying it never happened.
It’s not that ‘Knocked Up’ didn’t deal with abortion. It absolutely did albeit half-assed and very briefly. But that’s not what was asserted here. It’s that the actual word “abortion” is never uttered by any of the characters. And saying “shmushmortion” doesn’t count.