Interesting e-mail:

K-Lo,
I’ve been reading an acting manual (The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique by Ivana Chubbuck [New York: Gotham Books, 2004]). Two passages of interest:
1. (page 12) … Keeping it simple, we came up with the overall objective “to protect my unborn child.” … (it doesn’t get any more primal than protecting your unborn child). [parentheses in the original]
2. (page 83) She needed an inner object that would duplicate the severe trauma of a mother violently losing her baby. We’d worked together for many years and I knew that she’d had an abortion. This experience caused her such acute distress that it produced out-of-control shaking and weeping whenever she talked about it. I suggested she use the abortion as the inner object for the scene. She did and out poured all of her rage, sadness, terror and horrific guilt that most women feel when they have had to abort their unborn child. Although sometimes necessary, an abortion can be the cause of great strife. And, whether in your opinion this is politically true or not, it can also make most women and men feel like they have murdered their own child. [“inner object” is a Chubbuckian term of art]
Ms. Chubbuck also says that actors must be not judge their characters’ behavior — that everyone justifies everything they do, no matter how horrible. (Perhaps she’s read Paul’s letter to the Romans?) But she has also observed the real behavior and real emotions of real men and women (even Hollywood actors can be real!), and she clearly knows that the emotional reality of abortion is at odds with fashionable political opinion.
Merry Christmas!