Abortion as a Front Line in the Culture Wars

NY Times ^ | October 3, 2007 | MANOHLA DARGIS

[neverdem]

MOVIE REVIEW | 'LAKE OF FIRE'

The first thing you should know about the documentary “Lake of Fire” — an unblinking look at the violent fight over abortion in the United States, including those homegrown religious fundamentalists who kill in the name of God — is that it was made in black and white. This is critical. Because the other thing you should know about this fascinating, discomfiting, at times unpleasant, confused and confusing film is that it sets off extremely graphic images of actual abortions against a notorious photograph of a woman who died after an illegal motel room abortion, visuals that are inflammatory if, for the most part, also germane.

Not everyone will agree about the abortion visuals, including, perhaps, those who worry that such explicit imagery can speak louder than any pro-abortion-rights argument. It’s an understandable concern. Because they are filmed (the dead woman is immortalized in a still photograph), the abortions are unnerving, which is why I suggest that the faint of heart skip the rest of this paragraph. After the first operation, a second-trimester abortion, the doctor sorts through a tray of fetal parts, including a perfect-looking tiny hand and a foot, to make sure that nothing has been left inside the patient, which might lead to poisoning or even death. The doctor then holds up the severed fetal head. One eerily bulging eye looks as if it’s staring into the camera and somehow at us.

My initial and admittedly angry first thought about these images was that the director, Tony Kaye, was just resorting to shock tactics. The film doesn’t employ narration or on-screen texts that reveal his views on abortion; instead, there are 152 minutes of talking-head testimonials, on-the-street interviews and archival and new visuals. This means that you have to pay extra-special...

[neverdem]

After the first operation, a second-trimester abortion, the doctor sorts through a tray of fetal parts, including a perfect-looking tiny hand and a foot, to make sure that nothing has been left inside the patient, which might lead to poisoning or even death.

How gross? I'm surprised it's in the Times. That makes it sound like an accounting of instruments prior to closing the incision after a surgical procedure.

ThinkFilm
An abortion protester from Tony Kaye’s film “Lake of Fire.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/movies/03fire.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

Use that URL for the, "Tony Kaye, director of 'Lake of Fire,' discusses his 16-year journey to bring the documentary to the screen." (mp3) 6 minutes and 2 seconds

[Arthur McGowan]

So, it’s “shock tactics” to show dead Jews stacked up like cordwood at Auschwitz. So unfair—because those photos “speak louder” than Mein Kampf.

This is a great example of how corrupt an intellect can become, and how intellects become corrupt. This is a woman who is so corrupted by rutting that she can look at the pieces of a dead baby and still insist that what is in the womb, what is killed by an abortion, is still a mystery.

What people do below the waist can rot their intellect. This movie review is a perfect example.

[GOP Poet]

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[cpforlife.org]

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[victim soul]

The lack of our humanity for feeling nothing for these innocent children is SHOCKING!!