If you have been on social media recently, you may have come across the hilarious satirical video “The Magical Birth Canal.” The video, product of Canadian pro-life group, Choice42, lampoons the idea that a baby becomes a person at birth. They set out to make a viral video, and last week they succeeded:
The well-crafted comedic video is anything but amateur, with unmistakably professional production quality. Choice42’s Founder and Director Laura Klassen told Live Action News in an interview, “We believe that it’s essential for our videos to have high production quality because that’s what it takes to reach people online these days.” She added, “Our message is important, and the quality of our videos reflects that.” For this and previous videos, Choice42 has worked with pro-life professionals at discounted rates. As they continue to work with video, Klassen says her team is increasingly able to handle the technical aspects themselves.
After years as a professional opera singer, Klassen is also trained in acting and understands theatrical production, which comes through in the short piece. She said about shooting the videos, “It is nice being able to do a segment over and over until it’s perfect though, rather than only getting one shot at it during a live performance!”
Videos like “The Magical Birth Canal” are not the central focus of Choice42, though they certainly contribute. Klassen first started in the pro-life movement as a volunteer at her local pregnancy resource center, and that experience informs her work today. She told Live Action News, “I wanted to help bridge the gap between these centers and the women who could benefit from their services.” Choice42 (pronounced “Choice for two”), the group she founded, has compiled an extensive database of pregnancy resource centers and help for post-abortion healing across Canada. Through a growing online presence, they connect women in crisis pregnancies to resources available to them that they might not know about. The easily searchable database is continually updated as they find more resources.
READ: Here’s how the abortion industry uses euphemisms to sell abortion
Choice42 first produced a series of videos called “Choose Life,” which feature real women telling their stories of unplanned pregnancy in difficult circumstances. Klassen says, “The goal for this series is to reach out to women in similar situations to show them that there is hope and that they are strong enough to choose life.” Those videos have been very effective, and following the release of each video, Choice42 has received messages from women who have seen the videos and chosen life. Pregnancy resource centers around the world use the videos to help clients understand their options when facing an unplanned pregnancy.
“The Magical Birth Canal” is part of a second series, begun late last year, called “#JustSaying,” which aims to challenge what Klassen calls “the abortion status quo.” She explains:
We wanted to create videos that would catch people’s attention and hopefully make them re-think some of the issues surrounding abortion and the humanity of babies in the womb. Abortion is a human rights violation and the horror of it is hidden behind slick euphemisms – we want to bring that to light.
After the first video in the #JustSaying series, “Body Inside My Body,” which was released last fall, Klassen and her team were surprised by some of the responses. They fully expected backlash for posting a pro-life video, but they also received many outright threats of violence. Klassen says this influenced the way they approached future videos saying, “This is one of the reasons we’ve decided to use me in these videos rather than another actor because I don’t want to put someone else in such a hated position.”
So far, the reactions to “The Magical Birth Canal” have been much more subdued. A few pro-abortion commentators have attempted to say “The Magical Birth Canal” creates a straw man argument. They claim that there are no pro-abortion activists who actually believe birth creates personhood, yet high profile abortion activists have said exactly that. For example, Cecile Richards, the most recent former president of America’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood, when pressed on when her children’s lives began, said, “For me, life began when I delivered them.” With life comes personhood and human rights, thus implying that babies have no rights whatsoever in the womb. This is the case in Canada, where abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy without restriction.
Despite Canada’s total lack of protection for the preborn, innovative approaches like that of Choice42 are gaining momentum. Klassen says, “The pro-life movement is definitely growing in Canada, especially among the youth.” Fresh perspective like the #JustSaying videos are starting conversations, and Klassen said, “It’s encouraging to see people really get involved when they realize what is going on in our country.”
Klassen told Live Action Choice42 has two videos in the works, one for the “Choose Life” series and one for “#JustSaying.” She says, “I think we’ve figured out what it takes to make a video that will go far, and we plan to tackle some more abortion-related topics!” We look forward to seeing what they come up with next.
