The abortion support group met at the Jackson Center for Pregnancy Choices. The session—filmed on July 21, 2005—was titled “Grieving the Loss.” ^[13] Group facilitator (and center director) Barbara Beavers wanted to help the three women confront their feelings about the abortion and allow them to grieve, which in turn would help them move on. She explained the presence of the Frontline film crew as an opportunity for the women to give testimony, a common practice in evangelical Christian circles.

© WGBH Educational Foundation

The footage from the session contained numerous powerful moments. In one excerpt, a woman started to cry as she imagined what the baby pictures of her unborn child would have looked like. In another, Beavers asked: “What has prevented us from grieving our pre-borns in the past?” The women gave various reasons, including guilt. Another participant asked: “How could I do such a thing as murder my child?”

Drama. Aronson, Bomse, and Baxt could all see both pros and cons for including the scene in the film. One powerful argument in favor of using the scene was its sheer drama. “When you’re doing public affairs reporting, you’re desperate for scenes,” explains Aronson. “You’re desperate for anything that isn’t a sit-down interview and somebody looking blankly ahead telling you their story. It’s so hard to put any sort of movement or emotion or anything into these films.”

Baxt in particular favored using scenes with emotional content. “It is really hard to make a concept- or theory-based film. You always want people telling the story, not just talking about ideas,” she says. ^[14] The team repeatedly asked itself: “Where is the heart of the story? Why should this audience care about it?” In any film, she notes, “we need to engage with the human emotion of the story, or else why does the audience care? … Why else am I spending all my time on doing this? What actually matters to people in their lives? I tend to always push to get the human emotion of the story in there.”

Listen to Baxt on the importance of the emotional component.
Length: 1 min 6 sec

At the same time, the very emotion in the abortion support group scene was also an argument against using it. The filmmakers had to guard against being used. Center Director Beavers, recalls Aronson, ”was very passionate that she wanted me to see this.” Did that mean the resulting footage came too close to pro-life propaganda? Elaborates Bomse: “We were particularly watchful and careful about what emotional strings we were pulling because it’s such an incredibly emotional and personal issue.” ^[15]

Rare footage. Another pro-use argument was the unusual material in the scene—women from the South willing to talk about their abortions. As Baxt notes, “one of the things we struggled with in the film was getting women to go on camera and speak in the first person.” Aronson agrees. “The most compelling reason for me [to include it],” she says, “was because it had energy.”

It was raw, it was unusual. I had never seen anything like this on TV before… I’d never seen a room full of women actually saying yeah, this happened to me and I regret it. The powerful part for me was the regret.

Key point. The team also considered the fact that the scene illustrated a key plank in the pro-life platform—that pro-lifers cared equally about the woman and the fetus. “One of the most compelling reasons to use that clip would be to show you how the pro-life community was looking at this from all different angles,” says Aronson: protesting at abortion clinics, offering free ultrasounds, providing counseling, giving women baby equipment and clothes—and supporting women who decided on abortion. Bomse concurs that the scene made a significant point: “Here was what one group in Mississippi was offering to pregnant women. Part of their services… was these post-abortion support groups.”

Consistency. At the same time, Aronson felt there was something about the scene which did not quite fit the theme of the film. “We basically had a very strict story we were telling, which was—what happened since the states got more power?” she explains.

I couldn’t look at that pro-life support group and say, “Because of these laws or because of action by the Mississippi state legislators, they were able to have a support group for women who had abortions.” … We had to constantly be coming back [to ask] what’s the point? What’s the spine?

Bomse, too, asked himself whether the scene belonged. On the one hand, he comments, “it seemed outside the boundaries of where we were in this film… The question it’s raising really is simply: Is abortion good or bad?”

Listen to Bomse on choosing video.
Length: 1 min 8 sec

Placement. There was also discussion about where, if they used the scene, it should go. “One of the things that we asked is, does it belong in a different part of the film?” says Baxt. “It’s not just [whether to use] that bite, but where it’s placed in the construction of the film.” They could conceivably open with the scene, or close with it. Baxt adds:

It can be something that helps you fill in the background. It can be a last word kind of thing. It can be one of the stops along the way. There’s lots of ways it can be included when you’re doing something that’s nonlinear.

Time. Finally, they considered how much time they would have to allot to the scene if they opted to use it at all. The team had only 52 minutes for the film. “In order to do that scene right,” says Aronson, “my thinking was you would have to devote at least five to seven minutes.” In addition, Aronson felt that if she used the scene, she would need to interview in-depth at least one of the women in the support group in order to create a stronger emotional connection for viewers with that woman.