If These Walls Could Talk
If These Walls Could Talk is a 1996 madeforcable film, broadcast on HBO. It follows the plights of three different women and their experiences with abortion. Each of the three stories takes place in the same house,years apart 1952, 1974, and 1996. All three segments were cowritten by Nancy Savoca. Savoca directed the first and second segment while Cher directed the third. The womens experiences in each vignette are designed to demonstrate the popular views of society on the issue in each of the given decades.
The 1952 segment deals with Claire Donnelly Demi Moore, a widowed nurse living in suburban Chicago, who becomes pregnant by her brotherinlaw Jason London and decides to undergo abortion in order not to hurt her late husbands family. However, abortion at the time is strictly illegal. Claire eventually finds another nurse CCH Pounder who provides her the phone number of a woman who can find her someone to perform the abortion. The woman on the phone tells Claire that the only trustworthy abortionist she knows is located in Puerto Rico, and Claire cannot afford the travel costs. After a failed attempt to end her pregnancy with a knitting needle, Claire eventually contacts a man who comes to her home and performs a clandestine procedure on her while she lies on top of a kitchen table. Claire finally manages to abort, but dies shortly afterwards due to hemorrhage.The 1974 segment deals with Barbara Barrows Sissy Spacek, a struggling and aging mother with four children and a policeman husband who works the night shift, who discovers she must welcome another addition to the family, despite having recently gone back to college. She considers abortion with the support of her teenage daughter Hedy Burress but ultimately chooses to keep the child. ........
Source: Wikipedia
