Attorney General Curtis Hill continues to argue that the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a lower court’s ruling invalidating an Indiana law requiring fetal ultrasounds at least 18 hours prior to abortions. In July of 2018, a panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s injunction against the law, expressing the view that it placed an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

This week, Attorney General Hill filed the state’s latest brief in the case Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

The Indiana law at issue essentially combines two Indiana statutes that have been on the books for years. In 1995, the Indiana General Assembly passed the informed-consent statute, which specified that a woman must receive, in person, information relevant to abortion and childbirth at least 18 hours before an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar statute in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

Then, in 2011, Indiana legislators passed another law requiring an ultrasound be performed before an abortion. The law required medical staff to show the ultrasounds to women seeking abortions unless the women expressed in writing that they did not wish to see them. In 2016, lawmakers added the provision at issue in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, stipulating that the required ultrasound take place at the informed-consent appointment at least 18 hours before the abortion procedure.

“For women considering abortions, ultrasounds are an important part of informed-consent counseling,” Attorney General Hill said. “Anyone interested in protecting women’s health, including their mental health, should support giving them as much information as possible to aid their decision-making. Empowering women with knowledge is fully consistent with the U.S. Constitution.”

Unplanned: A Review of the Film – and The State of Our Culture

By Richard Moss, MD

I took my two youngest children to see Unplanned, a Christian pro-life movie.  It provided a different message then what is typical in our media and general culture.  We are a conservative Jewish home perhaps a little unusual in the American Jewish community, which is broadly Democrat and liberal. With so many movies and other aspects of our culture shifting ever more to the left, the opportunity to see a film that delivers a more traditional religious theme was welcome, rare as it is. 

The movie tracks the life of Abby Johnson, who early in the story has two abortions, including one chemically induced by the abortifacient RU-486, in a particularly agonizing scene.  She is recruited to be a volunteer at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Texas and eventually attracts the attention of the director, Cheryl.  We observe the arc of Abby’s thinking.  At first, she is comfortable in her role at the clinic, believing that she is helping women in crisis.  As she sees it, she is providing necessary reproductive health care and “family planning,” and thereby reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.  

There are conflicts with her family. Her parents are religious Christians and believe that life begins at conception. Her boyfriend who later marries her is also a Christian and pro-life. She goes on to have a daughter.  Her parents and husband had hoped that with the birth of her own child, she would change her mind, but does not.  She misses the inconsistency.  But then she is not alone; much of the nation and one major political party has been gripped by the rather vile idea that killing children or fetuses at any stage is acceptable, a matter of convenience. 

Cheryl tests her resolve by taking her into the POC room (“Products of Conception” or, as fellow workers refer to it, “Pieces of Children”); Cheryl shows her aborted fetuses, miniature babies, in effect, with all the likenesses thereof, and she clinically examines them; Abby is fascinated rather than disgusted.  She passes the “test” and Cheryl thusly welcomes her into the sorority.  She has found her future director.

There is a conflict, albeit kindly, with the pro-life Christian group, Coalition for Life.  They pray at the fence surrounding the facility every Saturday.  Abby develops a polite acquaintance with Shawn, who leads the group, and his wife, Marilisa.  As devout Christians, they are gracious and compassionate.  This allows them to cultivate a cautious friendship despite their differences. 

At one point, Abby is asked to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. She watches in horror as a 13-week baby fought for and ultimately lost its life at the hand of the abortionist.  She experiences a crisis of conscience remembering the baby being dismembered and sucked into a tube.  It’s a deeply unsettling scene that undercuts the accepted narrative that aborted babies are just fetuses unable to feel pain. 

Later, Cheryl, the former director now based at corporate headquarters in Houston, takes her to the task.  She is accused of being disloyal to the mission. She is advised that the purpose of Planned Parenthood is to provide abortions.  

“Abortion is what pays your salary!” Cheryl snaps, reminding Abby that “nonprofit is a tax status, not a business model.”

Abby meets with her Christian friends and joins them.  After some 22,000 abortions as director of the clinic, she resigns.

It is refreshing to see a film with a religious Christian message. We swim in an ocean of narrative created by the left, which controls the towering heights of opinion, education, culture, the economy, not to mention Big Tech and Silicon Valley.  They run our schools, colleges, media, entertainment industry, and, of course, Hollywood.  To have a movie espousing biblical, Judeo-Christian values with a message of Christian love and compassion is a welcome reprieve from the “pro-choice” culture that we must now endure – particularly as Democrat governors of New York and Virginia and the Democrat Party unabashedly support not just late-term abortion but “post-birth” abortion, in effect, infanticide.  

It is instructive to note the ratings and criticisms of the movie.  Film critics like so many of our cultural betters are far left.  Most panned it, with a varied array of put-downs and insults, citing its partisanship, oversimplification, and one-sidedness; decrying it as right-wing propaganda, preaching to the choir, pro-life talking points, rallying the base, absolutist, extreme, dim-witted Christian drama, shaming women, twisting facts, and so on.  Such critics do not appreciate their own privilege, the unending deluge of propaganda through TV, movies, and other forms of media that deliver their message and narrative every day to Americans.  They attack Unplanned as if this small, independent film would threaten their dominant position in our culture.  

Let me help.  Hey!  You guys have won, we live in your world, your narrative, your culture, the one you foisted upon us with the advent of the sixties, yes, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” the sexual revolution, promiscuity, radical feminism, cohabitation, the welfare state, secularism, the rejection of marriage, two-parent families, religion, and so on.  This is your universe, replete with the various lifestyles, destructive habits, attitudes, and ideologies you so lovingly promote.

Thanks to your policies and culture, we now have rampant out of wedlock childbirth, single-parenthood, fatherlessness, welfare dependency, high levels of criminality, incarceration, and drug abuse in certain communities; soaring domestic and sexual abuse, poverty, unemployment, educational failure, permanent underclasses, and, yes, many “unwanted” pregnancies and, thus, abortions on a grand scale, hence the consequent “need” for operations like Planned Parenthood – which you celebrate.

You won the cultural wars years ago; you control all the organs of power and culture with a firm Soviet grip.  Now witness the social calamity, chaos, and tragedy you have sown.  

This film is part of a rear-guard battle, a “Hail Mary” from a shrinking demographic appalled at what has become of the nation and a response to the culture the left has produced; it is one tiny bright spot in a dismal canopy of darkness, a miniscule salvo against the leftist barrage.  Unplanned is a small step in the right direction of reasserting the bold biblical truths that founded the nation.  Go see it.  And pray.

FOOTNOTE: Dr. Moss is the author of “A Surgeon’s Odyssey” and “Matilda’s Triumph” available on amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble in Evansville, IN.  For more information visit richardmossmd.com.  Find Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.