I’ll admit this upfront: I was extremely reluctant to see this film. Why? Its premise is thoroughly upsetting.
October Baby follows 19-year-old college student Hannah Lawson (played by Rachel Hendrix) who, when the film starts, is plagued with serious health and emotional problems that she doesn’t quite understand until her parents finally tell her that it’s all related to what happened to her when she was born. The thing is, she wasn’t supposed to be born. Her birth mother had gone to a clinic to have an abortion and, for reasons not made entirely clear in the film, the abortion was “botched.” Hannah survived and now carries around with her the physical legacies of that procedure.
Watching Hannah embark on her heartbreaking journey to unearth the real story of her birth and track down her biological mother, only to be crushingly spurned, felt like watching someone kick adorable puppies around, with Hendrix playing the role of the radiant, put-upon victim.
I had never seen a film with a premise quite like this one before and I’d, frankly, never heard of the term “abortion survivor.” So when I sat down to watch the movie at whose center is a young woman who learned that was never supposed to live, I was prepared to be depressed. By the end of the movie, there was a positive message about forgiveness and redemption that seemed to lift all of the characters’ spirits, though I was still sitting there feeling pretty bleak, particularly after learning that the film was inspired by the story of Gianna Jessen, a woman who travels the world telling people about what happened to her after she survived an abortion.
Hendrix carried the film well, emitting an all American gal kind of vibe, whose idea of being edgy is playing a cut-throat game of Scrabble. Her close childhood friend Jason (Jason Burkey) was a perfect, scruffy-looking gentleman who nobly slept in a separate hotel room from his girlfriend — who wasn’t Hannah — when a bunch of college buddies took a road trip to New Orleans for spring break. (Unfortunately, Jason’s girlfriend was a cardboard, mean girl stereotype. It would’ve been more interesting if she had more depth instead of just resorting to being a nasty person who was jealous of Hannah’s connection to Jason.)
None of the college students in the movie swore, which, along with the overpowering use of mellow pop music that occasionally threatened to swallow up some of the dialogue and the too frequent scenes of Hannah walking alone along picturesque landscapes while the wind blew her pretty hair across her face at times made this feel more like something I might see on ABC Family rather than in the theaters.
John Schneider (from The Dukes of Hazzard) was Hannah’s adoptive father Jacob and did a decent job of depicting the angry and confused dad who was ticked that he couldn’t protect his daughter from learning about what really happened to her when she was born extremely prematurely. His overprotective paternalism was finally trumped by Hannah’s mother Grace (Jennifer Price) who believed that Hannah could handle the truth.
While October Baby is certain to be controversial, as is anything regarding abortion — particularly in this political climate where contraception health insurance coverage, the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke controversy, and funding for Planned Parenthood have become contentious presidential campaign issues — the film itself took pains not to demonize any of its characters, including Hannah’s birth mother and the nurse who worked at the abortion clinic (Jasmine Guy) when Hannah was born. In fact, the hot-button word “abortion” was used rather sparingly, which was surprising for this five-hankie flick.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Mar 23, 2012 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
