Unplanned (2019) on Netflix
At a career fair, a Planned Parenthood recruiter tells Abby Johnson the group wants fewer abortions, and she volunteers. She takes a paid job there, though her mother opposes abortion.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb5.5/1012,180 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes42%
Trailer
Plot summary
Abby Johnson joins a Planned Parenthood clinic as a volunteer while she is a junior at Texas A&M, after a recruiter at a career fair tells her the organization aims to reduce the number of abortions. She works as a clinic escort, walking women past anti-abortion protesters, and meets Cheryl, the clinic's director. Abby comes to accept the organization's positions, among them that a fetus feels no pain, though her mother holds an anti-abortion stance. She takes a paid post, and the job becomes her career even though people close to her disapprove. She has had two abortions herself, one while she was in college and one after a marriage that ended in divorce. She marries Doug, who objects to her work, becomes pregnant, and carries the pregnancy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Unplanned (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Abby Johnson said the abortion that prompted her to quit involved a Black patient at 13 weeks pregnant, but Texas Monthly's review of the clinic's own records found only one Black patient served that day, and she was six weeks pregnant, not thirteen.
- Fearing protests over its subject matter, the production worked under the title Redeemed, had everyone involved sign a confidentiality agreement not to post about the film on social media or speak to the press, and shot secretly in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
- Unplanned received the first R rating ever given to a film from evangelical studio Pure Flix, with the MPAA citing its graphic abortion scenes and telling producers the rating would stand unless those scenes were cut.
- Twenty-nine public figures, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, commentator Glenn Beck, actor Kevin Sorbo, and Oscar-winning producers Gerald R. Molen and Gray Frederickson, formally complained to the MPAA over the R rating, but the board refused to revoke it, noting the filmmakers never used the appeal process.
- The producers accused Canada's dominant theater chain, Cineplex, of effectively banning the film by refusing to show it, prompting Christian activist Faytene Grasseschi to organize a petition threatening to boycott Cineplex unless it agreed to screen Unplanned.
- Over opening weekend the film's official Twitter account was suspended and then reinstated, its follower count appearing to spike to nearly 200,000 before dropping to about 16,000, prompting Senator Josh Hawley to publicly accuse Twitter of censoring conservative voices and to demand an independent audit from CEO Jack Dorsey.
- Producers warned potential cast members that appearing in the film could hurt their future job prospects in the industry because of its subject matter, but unlike the then-upcoming Roe v. Wade, which lost crew members once they learned what it was about, no one quit Unplanned since everyone hired already knew its focus.
- Music labels refused to license mainstream songs for the film, including The Fray's "How to Save a Life," Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and One Direction's "Story of My Life," so Christian singer Matthew West wrote an original title track called "Unplanned" instead.
