I Failed Lent Within 13 Minutes
Some secular filmmakers have latent pro-life instincts, and I can prove it! Here is a list of secular films that offer a subtle pro-life or pro-family message without meaning to be.
(Minor spoilers in all of these, and disclaimer: I will not be adding any content warnings in this article, so as always, discretion and discernment is needed for you to decide if some of these movies are for you.)
There’s a scene in Disney’s Cruella that reveals that the villain of the story asked a bodyguard to do away with (kill) her newborn daughter so that she would have the prerogative to run her business without being a mother. Luckily, the bodyguard will have nothing to do with it, but still—having a cutthroat villain do something so heinous (at which the heroes are horrified!) sounds like a subtle plug against abortion to me.
In Disney’s Moana, the demigod Maui reveals that his human parents decided they didn’t want him and threw him in the sea. (Thankfully, he was rescued.) Yet again, viewers are shocked and sickened at the idea of selfish parents trying to kill their baby—and that applies to abortion as well.
In this movie, our heroine, Nanisca, was attacked at a young age and became pregnant as a result. She gave the baby away but is later reunited with her daughter and tells her, “You are not the thing that hurt me. You are Nawi. You are my daughter.” This gorgeous scene (tearjerker) gets to the heart of the matter: a baby is always priceless, a person with a name and infinite worth and beauty, no matter the circumstances.
In an apocalypse where aliens with acute hearing terrorize the earth, a family is still open to life—the wife and mother gives birth to a baby even though she can’t make even the slightest noise that will alert the creatures. (I will die on the hill saying this family is actually Catholic.) This is the epitome of trust in God and valuing receptivity to new life even in the hardest circumstances.
The whole movie is about our favorite superheroes stopping Thanos from snapping away half the universe in the name of population control. That sounds like a pretty awesome fight for life and a serious analogy against contraceptive or abortive population control today.
Have you found any movies with subtle pro-life themes or scenes? Let us know below!