When Juno (2007) came out, there was no small amount of controversy surrounding the film.  It is about the title character, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), becoming pregnant at sixteen years of age.  Before continuing, what I will not be wading into is any discussion of gender or sexuality.  Please reference Catholicism’s teachings on these matters for my stance on them.  It is not that I am running from it, I just feel it is not germane to what this Catholic would like to say about the movie.  The uproar it caused was about glorifying underaged promiscuity, and there was some connection to then vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin’s daughter being in the same delicate condition.  Interestingly, the movie’s writer, Diablo Cody, said that she would not have penned it if people would have interpreted as “anti-choice.”  She made this comment after getting a letter from her Catholic high school thanking her for her work.  As somebody who is pro-life, that odd wording is difficult to contend with in modern times.  Read on to find out why Cody is not seeing her production for the value it adds.

For Juno, it all started with a chair, a recliner to be specific.  She stares at it in the opening scene, remembering the activity in it with her best friend and boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera).  Their intercourse has led to her becoming pregnant.  She confirms this by drinking more Sunny D than a human body should be able to handle and urinating on three different pregnancy tests.  With the final positive indication, she finally lets Paulie know about the situation.  He wonders what they should do, but she seems to have the situation under control.  The next person she turns to is her classmate and friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby).  You might be asking yourself what about her parents, Bren (Allison Janney) and Mac MacGuff (J. K. Simmons).  Keep in mind that she is sixteen, and she is hoping to take care of these things in that irresponsible way young people do who panic about suddenly being accountable for another life.  What I am saying is that Leah recommends an abortion clinic that does not require parental consent.  Yet, on the way in, she encounters another person she knows from school, Su-Chin (Valerie Tian).  Su-Chin is having a one-person pro-life rally there, and reminds Juno that the baby inside her has fingernails.  Since Bren is a fingernail technician, this revelation gives Juno pause, even if Bren is not Juno’s biological mother.  Instead, Juno makes the decision to carry the baby to full-term and give it up for adoption.  Once more, it is Leah and not Paulie that helps Juno find a suitable set of parents for the child.  Before she meets with the adopters, Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner), Juno finally tells her dad and step-mom about her condition.  When they bring up the possibility of ending it, she responds by telling her parents about the Lorings.  They are a bit shocked, but take it well, giving their support through cracks about making poor choices.  Mac says that he would like to meet with these people with her to make sure they are not taking advantage of his daughter.  At one point, Juno steps away to use the restroom and comes face-to-face with Mark on the way back to the living room.  It becomes clear that while he is giving lip-service to Vanessa’s desire for the baby, he is basically a grown-up kid himself.  Juno simply sees this as somebody who is into alternative music and slasher films like her, and thinks the fact that she is giving them her baby entitles her to hang out there whenever she likes.  Bren tries to point out the awkwardness of doing so, but is angrily rebuffed.  Further, Juno is growing more distant from Paulie.  Even though she scoffs at school dances and suggests that he goes with another girl, she gets jealous when he takes her at her word.  This causes her to go back to the Lorings house where Mark informs Juno that he is leaving Vanessa.  This does not fit with the happy home that Juno intended for her baby, even if he cannot understand why she would react in this manner.  Put differently, he feels like she has been coming on to him, and he expects her to be excited for him.  Instead, she leaves just as Vanessa comes home from work, Mark chalking up Juno’s emotional state as pregnancy hormones.  Juno seeks out advice from Mac, wondering if there is such a thing as two people being happy with each other for the rest of their lives.  He gives an honest answer, qualifying it by referencing his own bad luck with marriage, but sticking to the fact that they take a willingness for that other person to accept her throughout all life’s challenges.  She, of course, realizes that this has been Paulie the entire time.  Therefore, after dropping off a note to Vanessa to reassure the soon-to-be divorcée that Juno’s baby will still be hers if she wants it, with some help from Leah, Juno makes amends with Paulie by filling his mailbox with his favorite Tic Tacs.  With these issues settled, the only thing left is the actual birth, which turns out to be a boy.  Juno wants Paulie to concentrate on his track meet that day, so she does not tell him, but he figures it out and comes after it is over.  It is Bren that witnesses Vanessa holding her son for the first time.  The final scene is of Juno going over to Paulie’s house and together playing a song on their guitars.

There is a moment in Juno when, after she has delivered her child, Paulie joins her in bed and we see them spooning.  She is crying, not for sadness, I think, but because of the happiness of a job well done.  You can accuse me of Catholic bias, but I cannot imagine this being better if she had gotten an abortion.  Never mind the death of an innocent child, as if that is possible, but you would not have strengthened the bonds between Juno and her family and Paulie, Vanessa would have been without the baby she so clearly desired, and years later (as is statistically likely) Juno would have felt the pain of the loss.  The best way to avoid either scenario, or all of them, is the tried-and-true Catholic method of abstinence, which, I know, is hard in our modern world.  It is because it is difficult that I would like to devote more time not so much to Juno’s choice from an abortion perspective, but the fortitude it takes to carry a child at that age despite the disapprobation of her peers.  This is a subtle, though present aspect of the film.  The more overt references are when Juno complains about everyone staring at her, or makes flippant comments about her classmates seeing her as a “cautionary whale.”  The less obvious ones are to be found in the shots of her walking through the halls of the school.  In these, she is the only one going in her direction, a small person bravely wading through the tide against her.  Yet, she is not alone.  God is with her, though she would probably find such a comment laughable (the character or the actor playing her).  Nonetheless, there are instances where her pregnancy is referred to in Christian terms, such as when she thinks of herself as needing to be canonized for her selflessness.  Unfortunately, she is not being that way for most of the movie, instead making everything more difficult by trying to carry all the responsibility on her own.  It is when she realizes that she has others in her life that love and support her that she breaks down in tears.  I have seen the same thing in people I know when they have that proverbial coming to Jesus moment, but in a good way.

Ultimately, one cannot escape the pro-life context of Juno, no matter Cody’s opinions.  Su-Chin is right when she says, despite her grammar, “All babies want to be borned.”  Life is worth a chance, and so is this movie, even if it is messy.  That is okay, too.  God wants to help our mess.