by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 10, 2004
Venica, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- Actress Ellen Barkin, who stars
in the film "Palindromes," startled those attending the Venice
Film Festival this week by saying she would force her daughter to have
an abortion.
"I
am the mother of a 12-year-old girl and I can tell you unequivocally
that if my daughter was pregnant, I would take her kicking and screaming
to have an abortion," Barkin said at a press conference Tuesday
to publicize her new movie.
In the film, Barkin, who starred in "The Big Easy" and won an Emmy in 1997 for her role in "Before Women Had Wings," plays the mother of a teenager girl who is forced by her parents to have an abortion.
The heroine, 12 year-old Aviva, wants to be a mother. After a neighbor impregnates her, Aviva's mother (Barkin) insists on the abortion.
Aviva runs away from home and stays with a loving Christian woman, Mama Sunshine, who takes care of the adolescent and protects her unborn child.
Pro-life groups are already up in arms about the movie Palindromes, with its images of dead unborn babies in medical pans and its distorted portrait of those who oppose abortion as violent extremists.
In the film, directed by Todd Solondz, pro-life proponents are responsible for the assassination of an abortion practitioner and his child.
Because the content of the movie was so controversial and potentially offensive, big budget film studios in Hollywood refused to bankroll the movie, so Solondz paid for it himself.
"This movie was made for very little money ... nobody would touch it," Solondz told the London Guardian newspaper.
In an interview with the Guardian, Solondz says he's tired of the pro-life movement's success and that appears to be his motive for making the film.
"They [the pro-life movement] have been
winning the war for a long time," he said.
"In our country, we have ... this movement which is just growing
exponentially and creating its own base to set policy," Solondz
told the London newspaper. "And what sets policy in the U.S. of
course has ramifications throughout the world."
After the role in "Big Easy" with Dennis
Quaid, Barkin landed a sexy leading lady role opposite Al Pacino in
"Sea of Love." She is married to multimillionaire Revlon owner
Ronald Perelman.
