Hallmark Channel Censors Pro-Life Movie “Unplanned” From Its Annual Awards Show

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Mar 3, 2020   |   1:36PM   |   Washington, DC

The Hallmark Channel is being accused of censoring the pro-life film “Unplanned” from an awards show last week.

Actress Ashley Bratcher, who stars in the film, said “Unplanned” was nominated for three Movieguide Awards, and Hallmark Channel recently aired the awards show. But while watching it afterward, Bratcher said she noticed something odd about the broadcast: “Unplanned” was not in it.

On Monday, she accused the popular channel of not only censoring her speech but also cutting out every mention of the film during the awards show, the Washington Examiner reports.

The Examiner watched a clip from the broadcast that Bratcher provided and confirmed that it did not mention her name or the film when the nominees for the Grace Award were announced. It contacted Hallmark for comment but did not receive a response.

“It’s one thing to cut the speech, it happens all the time, but the show completely erased us in the nominee announcements,” Bratcher told the news outlet. “Every other nominee was announced. There’s no excuse, even if they say it’s time. It takes a millisecond to show our nominee clip.”

In a followup post on facebook, Abby Johnson accused MovieGuide of being behind the censorship and said Hallmark ran the awards program as packaged by Movieguide.

I just got an update on the movie award debacle. It wasn’t Hallmark who cut us out!!! It was MOVIEGUIDE who cut us out!!!! So, they give us an award and then cut us out???? What the heck? They say it was for “time.” So they only cut Unplanned out…and didn’t show any of our nominations or our win…but it was “just for time.” Sure, Movieguide.

Movieguide awards recently aired on Hallmark Channel USA. Unplanned won an award…however, Movieguide sent the award show to Hallmark with every mention of Unplanned completely erased. They even cut out our win! We were the ONLY nominees who were not recognized.

Here’s the link to contact Movieguide.

Bratcher said she was outraged when she noticed that they were the only nominees who were cut from the Hallmark broadcast.

“Hallmark has erased us from the show and refused to acknowledge us as nominees,” Bratcher wrote on Twitter. “This is completely unacceptable.”

She urged people to contact Hallmark to complain.

The Movieguide Awards celebrate excellence in Christian and family-friendly entertainment. “Unplanned” received three nominations this year: the Faith & Freedom Award for Movies, Best Movie for Mature Audiences and the Grace Award for Bratcher’s performance.

“Unplanned” is based on the true story of Planned Parenthood director-turned pro-life advocate Abby Johnson. Despite censorship and a media blackout, the film debuted in the top 10 films in the U.S. last spring.

Just prior to its release, the producers said Hallmark, Lifetime and HGTV refused to run their ads promoting the film.

“We’re ‘shocked’ that the Unplanned Movie was censored yet again by Hallmark. Except we aren’t ‘really’ shocked because people don’t want to See What Abby Saw. Sometimes Truth Hurts but we know that Truth Wins,” And Then There Were None, Johnson’s ministry, responded on Twitter.

ACTION: Contact the Hallmark Channel (owned by Crown Media).