Trapped writes a new narrative in pro-abortion propaganda

Trapped follows a handful of Alabama and Texas abortion center owners and workers feeling the pinch from tough pro-life state regulations. Dawn Porter—the documentary’s director, writer, and producer—sympathetically films owners cheerfully sorting through confusing paperwork and abortionists dutifully reading state-mandated warnings to patients. Porter even depicts abortion center employees praying and singing Christian songs.

Besides insinuating pregnancy always ensnares unsuspecting women, the documentary derives its title from “TRAP,” pro-abortion lingo for “targeted regulations of abortion providers.” From most pro-life perspectives, these laws (admitting privileges, ambulatory surgical center standards, mandatory waiting periods, ultrasound viewing, and others) slow the rush to abortion. But in the past few years, a number of abortion centers unable to keep up with new regulations have temporarily or permanently shut their doors.

In Porter, the centers find their avenging angel.

Instead of portraying women as victims of “coat hanger abortions” or abortionists as victims of “anti-choice” violence (statistical rarities trumpeted as pandemics in many early pro-abortion documentaries following Roe v. Wade), Trapped writes a new narrative in pro-abortion propaganda, casting abortion center owners as victims.

Victims of unfair and unnecessary laws, Porter’s interviewees claim.

Although the abortion industry has consistently attempted to obfuscate its business practices, Porter aims to show there’s no dirty little secret, no need for government oversight of centers apparently run by clean-cut medical staff and grandmotherly directors.

Of course, Porter ignores David Daleiden’s undercover work, Kermit Gosnell’s crimes, a long list of other abortionists’ abuses, and almost 60 million children aborted since 1973. Instead, between interviews, she inserts images of abortion centers nestled among tree-lined residential neighborhoods interspersed with cross-topped steeples. As these southern abortion center owners scramble to continue “serving” their communities, Porter attempts to Christianize abortion. Trapped’s velvety soundtrack and abortionists’ earnest pleas are spoonfuls of sugar intended to help the medicine go down.

Marva Sadler, a married mother of six and director of clinical services for Whole Woman’s Health (the plaintiffs in a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court), nearly chokes up as she bemoans the extra cost of complying with state regulations. Her Texas abortion center wastes $1,100 each month in unused drugs kept on hand by law but discarded when they expire, she says. Sadler fears for her center’s future like a mother mourning her dying child.

“I picked these cabinets out. … I worked so hard to make this place beautiful for these women,” she bawls. Then, referring to Texas lawmakers, she whispers through tears, “And they’re going to snatch it from me!”

Trapped also showcases abortionist Willie Parker, who travels to abortion centers throughout the South. Parker sports a Berea College sweatshirt and sings, “Oh, how I love Jesus” at New Elam Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. June Ayers recites the Lord’s Prayer in unison with orange-vested “clinic escorts” outside Montgomery’s Reproductive Health Services, an abortion center she has owned since 1985. One of Ayers’ employees, recovery room attendant Callie Chatman, places her hands apostolicly on a sobbing young girl who, just minutes before, surrendered her preborn baby to an abortionist.

“Father God,” Chatman intones, “in the name of Jesus, give her peace, God.”

It’s hard to know who’s to blame for the documentary’s lukewarm theology, Porter or the modern church. Probably both. Through a studio representative, Porter told me her great-grandfather pastored Harlem’s AME Zion Church, which she attended as a child.

“The God I was taught about was loving, forgiving, and kind,” Porter said. “That is the God I teach my children about.”

But the loving, forgiving, kind God teaches in Psalm 139 that He weaves together each child in his or her mother’s womb. If Porter can make the case for gospel-friendly abortion in the Bible Belt, it can fly anywhere. Viewers will have to decide, though, if Trapped (which opened in limited release on Mar. 4) is a con job or misplaced sincerity.

Open-minded viewers will notice Trapped’s one-way door: no dads, no mention of adoption, and just a three-second clip of an ultrasound on a small laptop. Porter films pro-lifers bellowing slogans, puffing cigarettes, and hoisting graphic images outside abortion centers, but she doesn’t interview pro-life legal, ethical, or scientific scholars. (She does cite debunked studies.) And Porter contrasts Parker’s low-key faith with Jesus-freak fanaticism.

But it’s interesting that the lifelong abortion profiteers in several interviews still must catch themselves from talking about their practice in terms that would humanize its true victims. Gloria Gray, owner of West Alabama Women’s Center, sits in her empty offices ruing the large number of clients she’s losing to the state’s two other abortion centers.

“There is no way they can take on the volume this clinic,” Gray says, pausing for a moment, “has seen over the years.”

Trapped (appropriate for anyone who can tolerate the theme and brief images of aborted babies) points to deeper dangers awaiting the American church—the visible church, anyway. A culture of legalized abortion now nearly 50 years old, is nurturing a hybrid religion in which its “believers” kill preborn children on Saturday and sing hymns on Sunday.