Over at Pullquote, the Cinetrix has reminded me of one more movie that fit in with this so-called “Year of the Unplanned Pregnancy” trend: Shoot ‘Em Up. She doesn’t really go into details, though, of how it fits in. So, allow me to elaborate. First off, as far as I recall, the pregnancy isn’t actually unplanned. But no matter, I’m going to have fun with this anyway. So, let’s pretend that Shoot ‘Em Up is a pro-life movie. Despite the fact that the baby in the film is already born, there’s a bad guy trying to kill it. Let’s call him the abortionist (aka the pro-choicer). Then there’s a do-gooder hero who aims to keep the baby alive. Let’s call him the pro-lifer. Guess who wins out in the end? And you thought the movie was just a silly take on the gun control issue. There’s political topics all over the place!

As you can probably tell, I’m being a bit ridiculous. But sometimes it’s important to get absurd when you’re dealing with too many serious people out there, and too many year-end labels and summaries. Yes, there were surprisingly a lot of preggers movies out in 2007 (Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno), but there’s much more to mention than simply lumping those similarly themed movies together and clapping your hands and saying “yeah!” The more significant thing to address is how these movies and others this year provided balanced discussion fodder for the abortion issue. Each of those unplanned pregnancy comedies could be interpreted as being pro-life, yet each could also be interpreted as being pro-choice (don’t forget, choice can also mean choosing not to abort).

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