A FAMILY’S PAIN ECHOES IN ‘CHOICES’

Retired judge Evan Granger (George C. Scott) is in a tough position.

His 19-year-old daughter, Terry (played by Melissa Gilbert), has just learned she is pregnant. Terry does not want to have the baby. She doesn’t want to marry the baby’s father. She does want to finish college and go to law school. Her father opposes abortion, insisting that it is immoral and unethical to take the life of an unborn child.

Granger, after all, had made an agreement with second wife Marisa (Jacqueline Bisset) that they would have no children. When he learns that 38-year-old Marisa has inadvertently become pregnant, the anti-abortion resolve of 62-year-old Evan appears to crumble.

Such is the premise of “Choices,” an ABC Theater presentation to air at 9 p.m. Monday. Lest anyone question the credibility of such a plot, the film’s 62-year-old producer, Robert Halmi, was prepared at a screening here not long ago to set the record entirely straight.

“This film was born not because the choice issue is an explosive one and a controversial one,” Halmi told an audience composed of leaders from both sides of the abortion debate, as well as members of the press. “I did not want to take advantage of that kind of exploitation.”

“Choices,” said Halmi, “is completely autobiographical. I am Evan. It happened to me.”

At virtually the same time three years ago, Halmi said, both his much-younger second wife and his grown-up daughter became pregnant.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “I was not as tolerant as Mr. Scott.”

Halmi said he scheduled the screening as a gesture of what might be called creative self-interest. Critics will talk about the performances of the stars, Halmi said, and they’ll discuss lighting, timing, the script and so forth.

“But I am also interested in the basic issue of the film,” he said. “I basically wanted to hear for myself the comments on both sides.

“In my own view,” he said, “I think it was handled with tender loving care.”

But Father John Woolsey, representing the archdiocese of New York, countered firmly that “this film does not objectively portray this issue. It is very, very slanted to the pro-choice side.

“The whole film leads to the fact that you have a choice in this issue,” Woolsey said. “I am coming from the position that there is no choice in this issue--that we are not choosing whether my hamburger is medium or rare. We are dealing with the life of a child.”

“It brought out the complexities of dealing with the issue,” rejoined Arlene Schwartz of the New York-based National Abortion Rights Action League.

“One of the things I appreciate in the film is that even a very loving, concerned father makes choices for the women in his life, and his is not the choice that they’d make for themselves.”

But Kay James, director of public affairs for the National Right to Life, blasted the Scott character as “shallow, strident and with no compassion for the women.” As such, she said, “Choices” feeds into “one of the caricatures of the pro-life movement, that we lack compassion for women.

“I felt that the pro-abortion arguments were done well, articulated well,” James said, but “I don’t think it made the pro-life arguments well at all.”

On the contrary, said Adele Nathanson, wife of “Silent Scream” narrator/creator Dr. Bernard Nathanson, “I think that with the title alone, you set the whole tone for the movie. ‘Choices’ would imply that there is an ethical decision to be made. But if one of the choices is the destruction of a human life, then there is not a choice to be made.”

Halmi’s film “threw a bone to the pro-lifers,” Nathanson said, “but it didn’t make it.”

Indeed, said Marie Zaccaria, coordinator of anti-abortion activities for the archdiocese of New York, “I would suggest that this film is nothing more than a propaganda film for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”

But Douglas Gould, Planned Parenthood vice president for communications, said that he too had his reservations about “Choices,” primarily because of its “ ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ setting.” Unlike the Granger family, Gould said, “most people who have abortions don’t live on Fifth Avenue and don’t travel in limousines.”

On the other hand, Gould had praise for the fact that both women in the film had used contraception, albeit unsuccessfully. “It was nice to see that you didn’t portray the women as irresponsible with regard to contraception,” Gould said.

“The fact is that you do have a choice,” said Jennifer Brown of the National Organization for Women. “Intrinsically, every woman has a body that she can control in the decision to have a pregnancy.”

In addition, Brown said, “I was glad to see specific references to the realities of women who have children alone.” Referring to a character who remarks that her estranged husband is seeking custody of their small daughter and then adds “but I think it’s just a ploy,” Brown bowed in the direction of producer Halmi.

“How true!” she said. “I don’t even know how you knew about that.”

But sadly, Halmi said, he and his wife had come to regret the decision they made to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.

Said Halmi, producer of some 115 movies, “I always say truth is much more dramatic than fiction.”