It Rhymes with Shmashmortion...

"Tell me you don't want him to get an 'A' word"

The year is 2007. June to be exact. A young(er) Jonah Hill is set to become a fast rising star in two months when his co-starring vehicle Superbad is set to release. He had been a stand out in a lot of other minor roles prior, including The 40 Year Old Virgin. And yet another in a little Apatow production called Knocked Up, which if you haven’t seen, I’ll simplify it as an “out-of-her-league” stoner type (played by Seth Rogen) 'knocks up’ a beautiful, Hollywood reporter (played by Katherine Heigl) who is now beginning to rise up in her career. Hilarity ensues (or it doesn’t because I don’t know you.)

There is a particular scene when the unemployed Rogen sits with his mooching housemate losers in their dirty living room to discuss what to do about his one night stand becoming pregnant after a misunderstanding with the condom. The scene starts out with Rogen being berated for not wearing a condom but quickly devolves into an argument between themselves. The obvious answer, which the movie does eventually get to is: be supportive. But the answer is not one that is going to come up in a scene full of geniuses claiming that if she’s on top she can’t get pregnant because: gravity. Obviously.

But then comes up the big ole bad word that no one in the movie dare say. The dirty A-word. No, not that other dirty A-word. Or that one. And I’m not sure what that one is, but no. It’s abortion. Of course the easiest way to get around outright saying it is by doing what Jonah Hill’s character suggests, “Take care of it” and he doesn’t mean in a nurturing kind of way.

“…it rhymes with shmashmortion,” he eventually says much to the objection of a pro-life, stoner, loser played by Jay Baruchel whose only “pro” besides “life” is that Rogen's Ben Stone (just looked that up on IMDb and….it’s a little on the nose, Apatow) gets to play with toys again like when he was a kid. Which as we all know that from a woman’s perspective, having to deal with more children, man or otherwise, is just living the dream.

“Tell me you don’t want him to get an A-word", Baruchel’s “Jay” (Spoiler Alert: the entire couch gang’s characters names are just the actor’s first names. Perhaps it’s a meta-subtext commentary in which the laziness of naming these characters coincides with their personality…or something.) Also “him to get an A-word.” We know what he means, but the word choice is still something that’s so deeply and wrongly ingrained when it comes to the discussion of abortion.

So to quickly recap: we have a bunch of man-children discussing what should be done about a pregnant woman, who is not currently present and whose opinion is not taken into consideration in any form. Sound familiar?

Ultimately the discussion of abortion in the movie ends with a whimper. After all it is called Knocked Up (and we can thank God that my Chumbawamba biopic “Knocked Down” is safe for now.) Some of the ignorant man-children in Knocked Up do experience growth in maturity, especially Ben Stone and they all live happily ever after as romantic comedies are wont to do. Meanwhile, in reality the twenty-five men in Alabama who saw fit to pass a near total abortion ban aren’t ignorant like our comedic stoner friends. Willful ignorance at best. They don’t have hearts of gold shimmering just below the surface despite all their faults. Pace makers at best.

Ben Stone learned to be supportive. Supportive of a girl he cared about. Despite not wanting the baby, despite wanting an abortion, he ends up respecting her wish to keep the baby. He respects her. Maybe not right away. And not in the right kind of ways. But he’s trying. The difference between him and those twenty-five? Despite not wanting something, they allow the person who is being affected to choose. Mind blowing stuff. Imagine if Heigl’s character wanted to go to the “shmashmortion clinic”?

“Blessed be the fruit, Ofstone”

Isn’t it romantic? Imagine all the remakes they’d have to go through.

Oof.

Everytime the abortion debate comes up I’m always reminded of the “shmashmortion” scene. One because I thought the whole movie was funny when I first saw in 2007. But mainly because of the idea of this group of men, ignorant of female anatomy and only looking out for their own selfish interests, discussing what should or should not be done to a woman. Imagine if Jay were pregnant. He’d choose to keep the baby (allegedly). Imagine if Jonah were pregnant. He’d choose to shmashmort it (allegedly). In these imaginary scenarios they both have that option because a man would never outlaw abortions if they knew they would be forced to go through with a pregnancy to full term.

Women haven’t lost their voice but it sure feels like men have amplified theirs’ and then took it a step further and plugged their ears up. Maybe we should leave the shmashmortion debate to the ladies.