Juno III

My third post on Juno. Can you tell I have it saved on TiVo, taking up way to much disk space than it should? I'd like to watch it again now; rainy days are perfect movie weather.

Tony Woodlief has this to say about the movie, to which I can only say "hear hear":

"The characters don't all find Jesus in the end. In fact, they never mention Jesus at all, except in vain. But one gets the impression that these are precisely the kinds of people in whom Jesus takes an interest. Perhaps that means that the rest of us ought not look at them, when we encounter such people in real life, as something that must be scraped off our shoes. We could all stand to be reminded from time to time that sinners are humans too, and further, that the open sin can more easily be healed than that which lurks in the dour hearts of the ostensibly sinless."

Read the whole thing, as Glenn Reynolds would say.

What is your reaction when you see the pregnant teenager at Babies-R-Us? When I went to register for One's arrival, there was only one other woman +20 - everyone else was there with their mom, not their husband or boyfriend. The other woman - 30-something with a shirt that said "baby" and an arrow down to a map of China (such an awesome shirt) - and I exchanged rolled eyes and tsks as we looked around the room.

I am ashamed of that now. Given my own experience, I have to say I wish these girls were thinking seriously about giving their child up for adoption rather than ooo-ing and aaah-ing over layette items. But at least they were there with their family - someone was there to help them. These moms had gotten over the shock they must have felt when their daughter came to them with this news, knowing full-well that a lot of the care for this coming child was going to fall on them, not their daughter - and they were still there.

Abortion isolates women from all that. You can see that played out in Juno: she's alone when she goes to the hideous clinic, but once she tells her parents, they stick to her like glue. The message of pro-abortion advocates is "this is your decision, this is your body". Instead of empowering women, that message leaves them to deal with the entire experience alone. Carrying a child to delivery - whether to keep or to give up for adoption - involves a whole host of people - and the redemptive power of the support and love those people can pour out on the mom and her child is truly great.