Filmed in Dallas, 1982’s Deadly Choice tells the story of a doctor and his daughter.
Dr. Bob Reasoner (Robert Ginnaven) is outraged that abortions are being performed at the hospital where he works. The film opens with a patient dying during an abortion and then cuts to Bob and a group of other doctors discussing how a premature baby was allowed to starve to death because the mother didn’t feel that she could care for it. Apparently, the policy of abortion and infanticide is an unofficial one, but it’s something that all the doctors know about. Bob and his colleagues decide to write an official statement opposing the hospital’s policy.
Meanwhile, Bob’s teenage daughter, BJ (Geraldine Leer), is pregnant. She hasn’t told her father because she’s scared of how he’ll handle it. Bob is religious while BJ is not. However, BJ has told her school’s guidance counselor, Vicky Stewart (Doris Hargrave). Vicky tells BJ that she needs to get an abortion and even drives BJ to the clinic. When BJ expresses doubts about going through with the procedure, Vicky is there to assure her that her baby isn’t even human yet. In fact, Vicky describes it as being “a cancer.”
I’ve seen a lot of movies about abortion. I’ve seen Pro-Life movies and I’ve seen Pro-Choice movies, and almost all of them have one thing in common: somebody has to die. In Pro-Choice movies, the death usually happens due to a back-alley abortion. In most Pro-Life movies, the death happens because the trained doctors who performed the abortion were dangerously incompetent and just didn’t care about the health of the woman getting the abortion. Deadly Choice changes things up a bit. BJ doesn’t die during the abortion. Instead, suffering from a huge amount of guilt, she takes an overdose of pills after the abortion.
Bob rushes BJ to the hospital, where he frantically tries to save her life. He desperately tries to get her heart beating again, just to be told that she’s dead. Dr. Leventhal (Hal Bennett), who earlier defended the hospital’s abortion policy, is the one who tells Bob that she’s dead, and he sort of smiles when he does it. (I imagine that has more to do with the actor than the character. This is Hal Bennett’s only credited performance and, watching this movie, I could see why.) Bob finally steps away from BJ. As soon as he does, her heart starts to beat and BJ comes back to life.
So, yes, BJ dies, but then she’s revived. Of course, even though she’s alive, she’ll always have to live with the guilt of her actions.
There’s nothing subtle about this Pro-Life film. It’s only 55 minutes long and it has the look of a television medical drama. Robert Ginnaven gives a good performance as Bob. For that matter, both Geraldine Leer and Doris Hargrave give good performances as well. That said, it’s definitely a film that was made to preach to the converted, and how you react to it will largely depend on whether or not you agree with the film’s message. It’s not a film that makes a case for its beliefs as much as it’s a film that says, “We’re right and they’re wrong.”
