Another year, another male Hollywood actor makes a video for CRR to celebrate Roe

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | January 22, 2014

Many of us remember how the Center for Reproductive Rights proudly revealed an incredibly cringe-worthy video featuring actor Mehcad Brooks to commemorate forty years of legal abortion in the United States.  So negative was the reaction that CRR ended up taking the video down.  But as we all know, things posted online live forever:

watch?v=dHd7LiXJUZQ

Note to CRR: Maybe it’s not best to begin a video romanticizing abortion with the words “Oh…hey, baby.”

But there are other male actors willing to speak out for abortion on demand, and this year CRR has a clip featuring Mark Ruffalo (embedding not enabled).

He starts off by saying that he was hesitant when asked to make the video, because he’s a man and “this is really a women’s issue.”  If I were a feminist, I’d probably be furious that CRR went and hand-picked a man (again!) to be their spokesperson.  Even Mr. Ruffalo seems a bit uncomfortable about it.  On any other occasion, feminist outrage would probably ensue.

He talks about his mother having had an illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade.  “I saw the pain that it caused my mother,” he says, although he doesn’t mention any physical injury, only that she had to go to a closed doctor’s office or a motel room.  As Dr. Priscilla Coleman and others have shown, abortions don’t have to be illegal to be traumatic experiences.

He mentions his own two daughters as a reason why he “can’t stand aside” – reminiscent of then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama saying he didn’t want one of his own two daughters “punished with a baby”.

“It becomes kind of a moral issue about who you are.”  Indeed it does.  I’m sure Mr. Ruffalo has cause to be grateful that “who he is” is the result of a different pregnancy than the one his mother chose to end.

Roe v. Wade remains an important event in American history.  But as Mr. Ruffalo’s story illustrates, not all abortions before Roe resulted in women being injured or killed, and the law alone was not enough to save the life of his unborn brother or sister.

It’s not enough to “go back,” in CRR’s words, to a time before abortion was legal.  We must press forward to a time when it’s considered unthinkable.

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