Ever since it became legal for women to have abortions in real life, they practically quit having them in the movies. As a rule, if a woman in a movie has a legal abortion, she is portrayed negatively. "Obvious Child" is a major exception to this rule, for it not only portrays abortion in a positive light, it also expresses utter contempt for the pro-life point of view.
The movie was filmed in a 2.35:1 ratio, the widescreen format typically used for action movies, instead of the more common 1.85:1 ratio that tends to be used for romantic comedies. This movie intends to present its pro-choice message in a big way. Speaking of romantic comedies, that is exactly what this movie is. Donna is a struggling comedienne who does stand-up, and she is just as funny offstage as she is on. Her humorous take on life persists throughout the film, and even her abortion provides material for one of her comedic routines. People who are pro-life need the subject of abortion to be taken seriously, and this movie refuses to do that.
When the movie starts, her boyfriend breaks up with her right after one of her performances, and for a while she is upset. Then she meets Max, and she has the best one night stand you ever saw. But you know what that means. In movie logic, if a woman has sex with a guy just once, she gets pregnant. She goes to an abortion clinic to make sure, and when the test comes back positive, she says she wants an abortion. The doctor tries to talk to her about options, but Donna says she is not interested in hearing about those options, and simply wants an abortion. In this way, the movie snubs the pro-life alternatives. Speaking of which, we never see the outside of the abortion clinic, and thus we never see pro-life people hurling insults and carrying signs saying "baby killer" and whatnot. The movie ignores them, much in the way Donna ignores the options the doctor keeps mentioning.
Donna is a Jew. This is important for two reasons. First, it allows for a crucial joke to be told. Because Donna's humor is always about stuff going on in her life, when her boyfriend breaks up with her, her depression over the breakup enters into her performance. Supposedly she bombs, but actually her jokes are still funny. And one of her jokes is about the holocaust. If she were not a Jew herself, such a joke might have come across as anti-Semitic. But being a Jew, she is inoculated against that charge. So, why does the movie need a holocaust joke anyway? This movie makes its attacks on the pro-life movement not through direct argument, but through the association of ideas. A lot of pro-life advocates try to equate abortion with the holocaust, arguing that abortion clinics are like the showers at Auschwitz. This movie undermines that argument by treating the holocaust itself as material for humor.
Second, it allows for a cultural contrast between her and Max. When Donna first meets Max, a friend comments that Max is very much a Christian. This is ominous, because we associate the pro-life movement with Christianity. So, when Max comes back into her life after she has decided to have an abortion, we expect that when he finds out, he is going to take a strong pro-life position, waxing sentimental about the baby, and being appalled that she would even consider doing such a thing. But as it turns out, he is all for it. In a similar way, when Donna tells her mother about her situation, her mother tells her about the illegal abortion she had in college, which worked out fine and was for the best. And Donna's roommate Nellie is also an abortion veteran, with no regrets. In other words, no one in the movie represents the pro-life position. It is deemed unworthy of consideration.
Much of the humor in the movie is scatological. There were several fart jokes, on and off stage, including a scene in which Max urinates outside while accidentally farting in Donna's face. There is a joke about what fluids do to a woman's panties, a joke about diarrhea, a joke about anal sex, and a funny scene in which Max steps on a dog turd. When Donna's boyfriend breaks up with her, he does so in a unisex restroom, and there are several references to his "dumping" her. Furthermore, when Donna and Nellie are in the bathroom doing a pregnancy test, Nellie sits down on the toilet to have a bowel movement. I have no problem with bathroom jokes, but they keep appearing so relentlessly throughout the movie, that it becomes clear that they are intended to have some kind of significance. Their purpose is to get us to form an association between the embryo and fecal matter. The message of this movie is that having an abortion is just a way of taking a reproductive dump. Therefore, whereas the pro-life people argue that the embryo is a human being and that killing it is murder, this pro-choice movie answers that the embryo is just waste material that needs to be excreted.
Finally, abortion is shown to be perfectly compatible with romance. The abortion takes place on Valentine's Day, and Max brings Donna flowers and accompanies her to the clinic. He says it is the best Valentine's Day he has ever had. Later, when they are back home and she is recovering from the procedure, they decide to watch "Gone With the Wind." This, coming at the very end of the movie, is emphatic by position. They are going to watch one of the great romantic movies of all time, and it is just the right movie for these two lovers who we believe will eventually get married and live happily ever after.
