If these walls could talk

Three short films made for television, centred around the theme of women and abortion, set over three decades with each story reflecting changing social conditions for women. “1952”: Claire (Demi Moore), a pregnant young war widow, is devastated by her lack of choices and unsympathetic views of her colleagues and family. After failing to induce a miscarriage Claire searches for an illegal abortionist, with dire consequences. “1974”: A mother of four’s unplanned pregnancy threatens her newly found emancipation at college. “1996”: University student Chris (Anne Heche) is pregnant to a professor who has no interest in her or the baby. Whilst Chris is deciding whether to keep the baby she is besieged by anti-abortionists at a clinic and faces being slighted by her moralising best friend. Chris becomes increasingly despondent as she tries to make a decision about her future. Although these three short films are melodramatic and fairly straightforward in both their presentation and dramatisation, the issues that they remark upon are compelling, particularly within the context of each decades shifting social mores and attitudes toward women’s issues.