"Roe v. Wade" follows Dr Bernard Nathanson (Nick Loeb), the narrator of the 1984 anti-abortion film The Silent Scream, from his first interaction with abortion in 1949 - when his girlfriend at the time terminated her pregnancy - to his conversion to a virulent anti-abortion stance in 1985."
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The 2020 "Roe v. Wade" is co-directed by Nick Loeb and Cathy Allyn. The writing credits go to those two and Ken Kushner. Vewers are subjected to 112 minutes of poorly staged treacly, unconvincing monologues, delivered by a motley crew of actors from a very bad script.
Among the veteran actors are Robert Davi ("Die Hard") as Justice Brennan, Jamie Kennedy ("Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell") as Larry Lader, Steve Guttenberg ("Three Men and a Baby") as Justice Powell, William Forsythe ("Cold Pursuit") as Justice Stewart and Jon Voight ("Midnight Cowboy") as Justice Warren Burger. Former Fox news personality Stacey Dash ("Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens") appears as Dr. Mildred Jefferson.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the lead, is portrayed by Nick Loeb (Loeb is also the writer/director and producer). It seems to be Loeb's vanity project for personal and philosophical reasons.
The character of Larry Lader (Jamie Kennedy) convinces Dr. Nathanson, who is, at first, very enthusiastic about earning blood money by providing abortions on demand, to perform them. The script unwisely has Nathanson (Loeb) and the others in the room sing a song about abortion as follows: "There's a fortune/In abortion/You never bother/The real father."
None of the people in the scene can sing and Loeb can't act. The scene is excruciatingly bad, but it's not the worst in the film.
The writer/director/producer and actor are all Loeb. Loeb's tuneless off-key serenade was just a small taste of the bumpy road ahead. It was really a chore to get through the scene with the actor reading as though he were an unborn fetus.
Speaking of "determining when to bear children" and having a pro-choice right to determine what happens with your own body, there has been speculation that Nick Loeb's desire to make this film stemmed from his failed 4-year relationship with Sophia Vergara ("Modern Family"), which ended in 2014. (A year later, she would marry Joe Manganiello).
Vergara and Loeb, when a couple, froze her fertilized eggs, undergoing IVF together in 2013. In 2017 Vergara filed legal documents to block Loeb from being able to use the embryos without her written consent. Loeb fought for the right to bring the embryos to term via a surrogate. Recently, a California judge has permanently blocked Loeb from using the embryos without Vergara's permission. The entire dispute embodies, in a microcosm, the film's main theory about who should have total reproductive control.
Despite my Catholic upbringing, I think women deserve a choice in what happens to their bodies (and their eggs). The ultimate decision should be between the woman and her physician, with strict guidelines (as has always been the case), not a decision by a group of old white men like those portrayed in this film, or by just one party in an IVF scenario.
