by Last week’s Jill Stanek article compared the movie March of the Penguins to the March for Women’s lives. In the movie, the fact that father and mother take turns giving up body weight, time, and travel to care for an egg are compared to women that will give up nothing for a child inside them.
As I watched MOTP, I wondered how people could ooh and aww when baby penguins pecked out of their shells, or cover their eyes when a giant petrel attacked a baby penguin, yet not give a thought to the dismemberment and killing of human babies.
I wondered, what would it take for people to connect? I juxtaposed the willingness of penguins to freeze and starve to death for their babies to the unwillingness of humans to forfeit any indulgence whatsoever for their babies.
One of the things that I looked at differently is her analogy about the beginning of Finding Nemo. I’m actually surprised that nobody at NARAL Pro Choice America got upset at this:
An early scene of “Finding Nemo” shows Nemo’s desperate father, whose wife and incubating eggs have just been devoured by a predator, spotting Nemo, his lone surviving embryonic progeny, in a see-through egg. Instantly his despair turns to joy. He certainly does not consider his preborn son a blob of tissue.
I’d go on to add that the way that Marlin and the mom talk about the eggs, naming them, the fact that she tells him to be quiet because they are sleeping– all of these talk about life before birth (or being hatched).
