Washington Post Profiles Romanian Abortion-Related Film

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 06 Feb 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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The Washington Post on Friday profiled the Romanian film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," in which a college student undergoes an illegal abortion in communist Romania in 1987.

According to the Post, the film, which won the Palme d'Or last year at the Cannes Film Festival, "graphically depicts an abortion and its aftermath" and "less graphically, but no less troubling" also depicts the student and her friend being sexually assaulted by the abortion provider. The film provides U.S. audiences that have "been treated" to the "consoling" pregnancy-related films "Knocked Up" and "Juno" with an "example of filmmaking that dares to be honest about the high stakes of women's reproductive lives," the Post reports.

The film is "by no means an abortion movie" but conveys the characters' survival in an "oppressive system" that criminalized abortion in an effort to increase the country's population, according to the Post. According to Cristian Mungiu, the film's writer and director, the film aims to demonstrate the lack of connection between abortion and morality in communist Romania. "Lack of moral perspective was one of the worst things" of the communist regime, Mungiu said. He added that the "long-term consequences" are evident today and that abortion is the most widespread form of contraception in Romania (Hornaday, Washington Post, 2/1).

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