Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, And Abortion Politics

Ever since I’d heard of the subject matter of “Four Months, Three Weeks & Two Days,” I’ve been calling it “the Romanian abortion movie.” It’s essentially about two women and the lengths they must go to obtain an abortion in Romania in 1987. It is not a pleasant movie to sit through. I think the scene with the kittens is about the only “nice” thing to look at in the movie.

Because of the nature of my career I felt I had to see movie. I spend a lot of time working for reproductive rights but I think what escaped me about the movie, until I listened to an NPR interview with the director, was during that time period not only was abortion outlawed, but so was birth control. You can imagine for yourself what that would do the country’s population and what kind of position that would often put the women in. The director himself was part of the generation boom that Ceauşescu tried to achieve. (He’s of the age that the protagonists are in 1987. So in many ways it’s a period piece of some of what he experienced as a young adult. FYI, the name Ceauşescu is never uttered in the movie.)

We end up knowing almost nothing about the circumstances of the pregnancy or even any explicit reasons why the woman is desperate to get one. Partially I think the director didn’t explain or didn’t want to, was precisely because this isn’t an American “political” film about abortion. From the same NPR interview, its clear he’s pro-choice, but the movie feels like it’s more interested in preserving a part of Romanian history in people’s minds and talking about oppression. It’s about choices made by people living under oppression not just “Choice.”

As much as horrible things happen to the protagonists in this movie, apparently some of the real stories in Romania are worse. Its estimated that likely half of the women seeking an abortion in Romania died from it. One story the director mentioned in the interview, was a woman went to a man (not even a doctor) and the guy showed her two barrels. One was full of water, and the other was empty. The guy told her, if everything goes well, you’ll use the water to wash up. But if something goes wrong, I’m going to put you in the barrel and get rid of your body. Apparently she still agreed to have do the procedure and everything turned out okay. Not everyone was so lucky.

Still I came away from that movie feeling like because the desperation of the women wasn’t fully explored (we know what they are willing to go through with, without exactly knowing why) that an anti-choice person watching the movie might come away with different emotions. The director is showing the horror of abortion in places where it is outlawed. (They not only jailed doctors, but the women seeking abortions.) If you are supportive of keeping abortion legal to prevent such horrific scenes from happening in the U.S. then the movie can provide a motivation and greater understanding of what “choice” really means and why it is such an essential right.

But I think if you are anti-choice the movie could look like a morality play justifying the inherent “evilness” of abortion.

However, that’s just my opinion. My roommate who saw the movie with me, thought differently.
The problem is that most strongly anti-choice people wouldn’t see this movie anyway. So I’ll probably never know what it made them think.