"Juno," Abortion, Elena Ferrante, "Gina/Diane" Linkage

“I never worry about constructing a story that illustrates, demonstrates, spreads some conviction, even if it’s a conviction that counted and counts for me,” Elena Ferrante told an interviewer who had questioned whether her first novel, “The Days of Abandonment,” was a feminist work.

I bring up that quote, which can be found in Ferrante’s “Frantumaglia,” because Diablo Cody recently expressed what might be considered regrets over having written the film-script for the 2007 Oscar-winning movie “Juno.”  That film was about a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby, and give it up for adoption, as opposed to having an abortion.

“I don’t even know if I would have written a movie like ‘Juno’ if I had known the world was going to spiral into this hellish alternative reality that we now seem to be stuck in,” she said in an interview on the “Keep-It”podcast. The interview was picked up by the Washington Post, which expanded on it.

Cody was referring to strict anti-abortion legislation that was very recently passed by legislators in states such as Alabama, Georgia and Missouri. 

The author said that when she initially wrote “Juno,” she was just trying to come up with “a story that’s never been told.”   

"I wasn't thinking as an activist. I wasn't thinking politically at all," she said.

But now, because the film has been depicted as sending a strong pro-life message in a highly charged political climate, Cody said “I think I probably would have just told a different story in general.” That's as opposed to the idea of changing the film so as to have its young protagonist grappling with legislation that would block a woman's right to choose.

From a literary point of view (and film scripts are literature), that’s the wrong attitude, as per the Ferrante quote that begins this posting. Stories should stand on their own inner truths.  If they don’t, they aren’t literature, they are propaganda. 

This issue is of interest to me because when I was writing my second novella, “Gina/Diane,” a story about a woman who had a life-affecting botched abortion when she was 17, I sent drafts to various friends for comment.  A couple women told me they didn’t like the story because it could be viewed as supporting the anti-abortion movement. In their opinion, publishing a book like “Gina/Diane” was an almost traitorous act.

I see the novella as one woman’s story, and the attempt of one man to come to terms with what happened to her. It is not a tract for or against the general proposition of a  woman’s right to choose.