Almost Born

Almost Born

United States - 1998

Director - 

Liberty Alliance, 1998, VHS

Run Time -

Hosted by the Reverend Jerry Falwell and featuring the expert and totally unbiased testimony of one Rick Santorum, Almost Born is a textbook example of exploitation cinema. 

What!??! Surely you're joking Lost Video Archive! I am not.

If you will recall the golden age of the grindhouse, your hazy memory may conjure the pre-credit disclaimer that was popularized by such gruesome films as Cannibal Holocaust and it's ilk. Almost Born does the very same thing even before you slide that tape out of the box. It sounds very official and experty, lending a great deal of intimidating authority to your name to call yourself a "doctor." If you hadn't earned a PhD however and went around calling yourself a doctor in real life, you would at best be laughed at, but in movies that's okay! It certainly lends a sinister authenticity to fiction doesn't it? If we're perfectly honest, we'll admit that Falwell did have three honorary doctorates, in Theology, granted by Christian colleges. But that's not what the picture suggests.

Even the term 'partial birth abortion' is a fiction, invented by the Right to Life Coalition in a (successful) attempt to make the procedure sound more objectionable and frame a political discussion rather than expound any medical accuracy. Still, while this video may be exemplary "faction," it also contains a great deal of truthiness as well. While repeatedly lamenting the poor women who are forced against their will by boyfriends or parents to undergo this procedure, Almost Born's panel of "experts" simultaneously decry a woman's right to choose. So which is it Almost Born? Are you for the right to choose, or against choice? But this internal contradiction reveals the true intent of the argument which is no choice at all. Well, not for you anyway, but for the good Doctor. He gets to choose for you because even though God made you in his image, he didn't mean for you to think for yourself.