Analyse and explain the way in which a religious theme of concern to Christians has been dealt with in a film or television answer.

The second story is set in 1974 when abortion is legal. There is now a family of six living inside. The mother is secretly pregnant and is looking up abortion in a book. Her daughter sees her looking at it and guesses she is pregnant. The woman then tells her husband she is pregnant but hides the fact that she is considering abortion. The husband assumes she is having and doesn’t think about abortion for a second. She secretly phones the hospital and asks for information on abortions. After this she tells her daughter unexpectedly that she has decided to have the baby.

The third story is set in 1996. The film begins with a man giving a woman money and he states that he’s leaving her. The woman lives in the house with a friend. The woman wants an abortion. Her friend is strongly against abortion and threatens to leave if she has one. The woman goes to a private clinic to have an abortion. She goes over all the options with her and decides to postpone it. She goes back to her house where there is a party and goes upstairs to find her friend waiting for her and has an emotional moment where she is reduced to crying where and she states she is scared. Her friend hugs her and says that shell go with her the next day. When she gets to the clinic there is a large protest going on outside. She gets inside with the help of 2 escorts. The doctor performs and as she completes the abortion a protester runs in with a gun and shoots the doctor who dies a few minutes later.

Abortion is a theme of concern to Christians as the fifth commandment states ‘Thou Shall not Kill’ and they class abortion as killing the child inside you which is against their religion and they also say that god gave life and that only he can take it away and thus killing the foetus inside you is murder in the Christian mind. This can be shown as psalm 139 line 13-15 talks of god creating you in your mother’s womb in various metaphors.

In the first two films I felt the theme of abortion was put across very realistically and effectively as in the first film it was understandable that in the times when abortion was illegal that people would be that desperate to get rid of their child. The second film is good as the woman decides not to get an abortion, which is believable as people do it all the time. The third film was believable until the doctor got shot at the end. I felt this was far too drastic and completely unnecessary and thought that it ruined the whole film.

If I could change anything in the film it would be the part where the doctor gets shot in the third film as it ruined the seriousness of it, as it was far too drastic. I think that the protester who shot the doctor would insult Christians. It was put across as a Christian protest outside of the clinic and it is being contradictory to their religion and the idea of abortion being murder when they murder a person to stop it when as the fifth commandment says ‘Thou shall not kill’.

On the whole I thought the film dealt with abortion well talking about the issues of how scary it can be and what women had to resort to stop themselves having a child as they maybe thought they couldn’t cope.