I realize that the movie October Baby has been out for over a year but I actually just watched it for the first time last week. I had been wanting to watch it for a long time but I finally got around to it this past weekend. I really loved the story and the pro-life message. I am staunchly pro-life so the message definitely resonated with me. I loved the story of overcoming pain and forgiveness and healing. I loved that Hannah Lawson was able to come to terms with her past and that she was able to forgive and move on with her life. I love that she was able to forgive her biological mother and the healing that took place in that relationship. From a pro-life perspective it was a great movie.
From an adoptive parent’s perspective, however, October Baby had glaring shortcomings. First of all, Hannah’s adoptive parents should have never kept from her the fact that she was adopted or that she was the result of a failed abortion or that her biological mother disappeared from the hospital or that she had a twin brother who died in infancy. Her adoptive parents should have been open with her so the fact that they kept this hidden from her cast the adoptive parents in a negative light. In the end, the adoptive father Jacob Lawson asked for forgiveness so one could say that he acknowledged this wrong.
There were several instances in the movie when Hannah said, “My life has been a lie. My parents are not really my parents.” Now, I can understand that she would say such a thing in the heat of the moment when dealing with such heavy news regarding her life history. However, the movie should have cleared up this point before it ended. The truth of the matter is that she meant that the parents she had been living with were not her biological parents as she had assumed. However, they WERE her parents and were NO LESS her parents than biological parents. They legally became her parents when they adopted her. The ones who brought her into the world no longer had parental rights to her but were still rightly called biological parents. So, her parents really were her parents (contrary to what she said over and over). Her adoptive parents were her parents. They were the ones who changed her diapers when she was a baby and held her and fed her. They helped her learn to walk. They were the ones who were there for her when she was hurting. They were the ones who dropped her off at her first day of school and went to her graduation. (All of this is hypothetical because we don’t know the actual details of Hannah’s fictional life) My point is that the adoptive parents were her parents and the movie October Baby should have corrected this error before they wrapped up the story. They should have done it for all of the adopted kids who would watch the movie and for the sake of the adoption culture who is constantly trying to educate the larger culture that adoptive parents are real parents and adopted kids are real kids.
Getting off of my soap box….
