Talk:Unplanned

Reverted Edits...

@Onel5969: OK, just why do you keep reverting my edits without any proper explanation? Do you really think there's something wrong with any of them, or are you just spamming me?--Neateditor123 (talk) 17:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

You've been given explanations in the edit summary. The term in this article is the term used in the vast majority of the sources. Changing a term used in the sourcing to one you prefer might be construed as POV editing. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:45, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Trailer/Marketing section

@Neateditor123: You asked me to explain my restoration of my previous edits: I added my edits pertaining to the Unplanned trailer back in because I thought that whoever reverted them had an issue with how many sources I cited and/or the Trailer subsection being in the Production section. I attempted to fix both possible problems in my last edits. It just seemed to me that if Tolkien (film) can have a legitimate section dedicated to its trailer, this film article could add well, especially if it has interesting and/or informative information relating to the Unplanned film. Do you think any of these to be legitimate reasons?

Thanks for your edit summary informing me of why you reverted my edit. EomereofRohan (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

@J.S. Clingman: While I do understand your argument and appreciate it being explained here, the thing is, as Erik already said, that information is not acceptable per WP:FILMMARKETING. Additionally, just because the page for Tolkien (film) has information like that (which I have now removed) isn't an excuse to put similar info on other Wikipedia pages.--Neateditor123 (talk) 22:16, 22 March 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

@Neateditor123: Well thanks for the explanation. It makes sense to me now why my edits were reverted. I'll keep that in mind as I edit other film articles. Dia a bheith leat! (God be with you!) EomereofRohan (talk) 23:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

There is a 1RR restriction on this article

Which so far as I can see should have been on here from the start, might have solved some problems. I need to sort out some technicalities as it appears the community sanction is now part of the ArbCom sanction, but in any case, it exists and I've added an edit notice to the main page that you will see when editing. Doug Weller talk 12:13, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Removing the line about Johnson witnessing an abortion

In these two edits, 2601:8c3:4100:303c:e039:75c4:f26c:beb1 (talk · contribs) edited the paragraph

One day she is asked to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion at thirteen weeks gestation. Johnson witnesses a fetus struggling for its life as it is dismembered by an abortionist's tool. She resigns, becoming an anti-abortion activist, and founds a ministry to assist former Planned Parenthood employees turned anti-abortion after their own experiences.

to remove the bolded portion, replacing it with Personally offended, she resigns, then She instead resigns. The problem with both (especially the second) is that they make it sound as if, in the movie, she resigned rather than assisting. It doesn't matter whether you believe that the real-life Johnson actually assisted in an abortion: the point of the plot section is to explain what happens in the film; and this is a major plot point in the film, according to the trailer and reviews.

Here's one from LifeSiteNews:

As depicted in “Unplanned,” Johnson would later assist an ultrasound-guided abortion of a 13-week-old preborn baby. Witnessing the horror of the abortion was a watershed moment in her life.

Aleteia:

Johnson, a volunteer who rose through the ranks to be director of a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas, quit her successful career after witnessing an ultrasound of an unborn baby struggling to escape an abortionist’s suction tool.

Newsmax:

After working at an abortion clinic for eight years and winning an “Employee of the Year” award, Abby had the enormously disturbing yet incredibly enlightening experience of having to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. What she witnessed was absolutely horrendous: a tiny baby inside the womb, who was in the struggle of his or her life, having to suffer through the gruesomeness of dismemberment.

I can understand why someone would object to the wording of the removed sentence, and I'd be happy to discuss changing it; but I think that bowdlerizing the plot summary is absolutely the wrong way to go. Cheers, gnu57 10:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

References

In light of the ip violating the 1RR rule, I've requested that the article be page protected. I agree that removing a vital plot point is incorrect.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:17, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

'The factual basis of the memoir has been questioned...'

While rebuttals often provide a useful and informative difference in perspective, this particular line seems both low in content and unnecessarily contentious. The citation from an opinion piece at Slate is not new information and does not add to the article. True, it challenges Ms. Johnson's claim that her higher-ups made abortion-related financial requests, but given that the private verbal business communications involved would be onerously difficult to prove or disprove either way, it doesn't add anything to the article.

The challenge that Ms. Johnson could not have witnessed an African American patient on the particular day she claims seems especially frivolous.

I am a new user here and don't want to edit articles right out of the gate, but I think this is worth looking into.

Prudecru (talk) 02:04, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Looking into this more, I would like to request the two challenges in the article and also the claim that these challenges are based on Planned Parenthood clinic record data be removed or edited. Otherwise it can wait until I am autoconfirmed.

First, we should note that the claims in this paragraph are cited in footnotes 12, 13, and 14. However, the article in footnote 12, the Slate article titled "The Abortion That Never Happened," is simply repeating / reporting on the existence of the article in 14, a Texas Monthly article by writer Nate Blakeslee, so the Slate article appears to be a redundant citation.

The article in 13 appears to be a blog post on ReWire (at least, the author calls it a post) and it repeats Blakeslee's claim that she appeared on the talk show in favor of abortion. Given it uses language like "It seems Ms. Johnson’s conversion wasn’t so sudden, huh? I’d love to know how these events went down," per WP:RS this appears not to be a good source. Also, I'm not sure it specifically supports the claims made in the paragraph.

The Texas Monthly article is, then, the primary challenge the article cites. In it, Mr. Blakeslee argues that Texas health department records (not PP records) show only one African American woman had an abortion that month, who he concludes could not have been Abby Johnson's patient. However, looking at the Texas Department of State Health Services Induced Abortion Report Form, the portion on race must be completed by the patient. It is plausible that the patient may have self-identified their race differently than Ms. Johnson may recall in her momentary meeting. Further, reading the IARF instructions, it does not appear that individual patients are listed in state records at all, but rather that a tabulation is made of all abortions performed by month. I don't wish to debate the line of argument he uses itself, but simply wish to show this does not appear to be a serious scholarly challenge; Mr. Blakeslee's article seems somewhat antagonistic in general. At this point we may be in danger of forming circular citations from contentious media. We should either sum up the fact that Ms. Johnson's story is challenged at all without getting into details, or use a more impartial secondary source. Prudecru (talk) 17:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

All good points, @Prudecru:. But I'm not certain that another impartial source we can use exists, to be honest. Abortion is a rather controversial issue, and it is extremely difficult to find a neutral voice on the subject, even among journalists. As to whether the paragraph belongs in the article, I was thinking that it would probably be best to at least give it its own section, as it doesn't seem to belong in the "Production" section.

But I'd be curious to see what other editors think of what you've said here, as you seem to have made a good argument. —J.S. Clingman Fëalórin, A Child of God (talk) 00:49, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

I checked out WP:RS, especially the section on "Scholarship". The 6th point caught my eye, and is quoted to say: "Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals." This point seems to describe the sources you cite, @Prudecru:, as I don't think the Texas Monthly article received any peer review. On the other hand, however, the article may or may not be considered "scholarship"; I don't think WP:RS gives a definition.—J.S. Clingman Fëalórin, A Child of God (talk) 01:03, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Plot summary...

@Abecedare: As I said in my edit summary, "She witnesses a fetus struggling for its life even as it's sucked into an abortionist's vacuum and killed" is not subjective "propaganda" as some users have said, but an accurate and objective description of what happens in the film. Therefore, it should be included with the plot summary and not censored to "She finds the procedure she witnesses to be gruesome".--Neateditor123 (talk) 12:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

I don't think that to be a neutral or encyclopedic description especially the use of the loaded term 'abortionist' and describing the 'fetus struggling' in wikipedia's voice instead of attributing it to Johnson's interpretation, or the filmmaker's depiction. See also the section above dealing with the same issue.

More broadly, since the film has now been released, it would be good to develop the current Premise section into one covering the whole plot. However, given the likely POV concern it would be best to propose and discuss the language here on the talkpage before adding it to the article. Abecedare (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

@Abecedare: If the term "fetus struggling for its life" is too controversial or (to some people) subjective to include in the article, fine. At the very least, I think "She witnesses a fetus being sucked into a vacuum used for the abortion and killed" is uncontroversially accurate enough to be used to describe that particular scene.Neateditor123 (talk) 16:48, 31 March 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

I frankly prefer the current version for reasons described in the edit-summary. But will let others weigh in. Abecedare (talk) 16:51, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm pretty satisfied with the current wording (After witnessing the procedure, which she finds to be gruesome)—I think it's an evenhanded way of summarizing the premise. If you're considering changing it, though, how about After witnessing the death of the fetus, which she finds to be gruesome and disturbing? Cheers, gnu57 16:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I still think my suggested version is slightly better, but I guess the one suggested by gnu57 is acceptable enough. Hopefully, using that will put an end to any remaining arguments surrounding this particular topic.--Neateditor123 (talk) 19:36, 31 March 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

I've added a plot summary for the whole movie. I've tried my best to descibe it in neutral terms, describing the sequence of events as presented in the film and Abby's reactions to them. Others are free to improve it. -Thunderforge (talk) 20:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 April 2019

To clarify that an actual abortion is not shown in the movie, in the section on production, insert: According to Abby Johnson, the brief abortion scene shown in the movie is: "a CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) recreation of what I saw on the ultrasound screen when I assisted in the abortion procedure that convinced me of the humanity of the unborn. ... It is important for you to know that this was a CGI recreation and NOT footage from a real abortion." http://thecatholicspirit.com/news/nation-and-world/an-open-letter-from-abby-johnson-regarding-unplanned-r-rating/ Lincolninpeoria (talk) 02:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. NiciVampireHeart 21:15, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Early Release Location Specification

Because this is a film motivated by Christian/Catholic beliefs (in large part), I think it's important to add that the early screening of the film in Indiana took place at the University of Notre Dame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Union1298 (talk • contribs) 02:41, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 April 2019

Please change: 'The factual basis of the memoir has been questioned,[12] specifically her statements that "higher-up at Planned Parenthood encouraged her to increase abortions for financial reasons".[13] Johnson also stated that the patient in question was a black woman. However, based on reporting by Texas Monthly, which relied on Planned Parenthood clinic records,[14] only one patient from September 26, 2009 was black, and she was in the sixth week (not the 13th week) of her pregnancy.'

To: 'The factual basis of her narrative has been questioned, specifically by investigative journalist Nate Blakeslee of Texas Monthly in a piece titled The Convert[14].'

Please see my comment above at 17:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC) for clarification and justification. Prudecru (talk) 17:48, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. NiciVampireHeart 21:15, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Cited POV/Conjecture

@Onel5969 and Kappacheeno813: This is about this edit removing information about numbers of moviegoers and reviews with the comment "even though cited, it's still pov conjecture". I think I agree with Kappacheeno813 and would like to restore that information, specifically because it is cited. The reviews are definitely POV, that is what reviews are, that is the point of reviews. The conjecture is conjecture from Deadline Hollywood, a 13 year old reliable source specializing in the entertainment industry, which is valuable. --GRuban (talk) 20:20, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@GRuban: The first half of the sentence However, despite an impressive opening for a small-budget Christian film, the number of actual movie-goers may have been much lower than the number of tickets sold, as it was reported churches across the country had bought out entire screenings for the picture. is pure OR: there's nothing in the cited article about the number of actual moviegoers being lower than tickets sold. (It does say that churches bought out showings, but nothing about whether or not they actually sent people to fill the seats.) Cheers, gnu57 21:49, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Good point, that should be rephrased to more closely reflect the source. --GRuban (talk) 21:56, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

My apologies, GRuban - I didn't look at the entire edit, and didn't realize that there were also reviews, I only saw the first portion of the edit which Genericusername57 addresses above. As long as the reviews are cited in a neutral tone, and are balanced by a similar number of positive reviews (since the critical reviews are pretty much split 50/50), I have no issue with re-adding them. However, since there are positive reviews out there, and this editor chose to only add 2 negative reviews, definite pov issues. Regarding the small budget commentary, Genericusername57 has already stated what my objection was. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! I restored the part of the first portion backed by the source. I also restored the reviews, and looked for others. Here are a few others I intend to add over the next few days unless someone beats me to it. I think the best way to describe them is split according to ideology; however the main stream ones (Chicago Tribune, Guardian) do seem to be on the negative side, so I'm not that worried about leaving the current article looking as if the reviews were more negative than positive until the others are added.

• https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900063389/movie-review-unplanned-pureflix-a-planned-parenthood-supervisor-changes-her-mind-pro-life-abortion.html - mixed
• https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/unplanned-review-nobody-ever-said-abortion-was-pretty/ and https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/abortion-debate-unplanned-movie-will-change-minds/ - positive
• https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/27/unplanned-courageous-abortion-film-weve-waiting/ - positive
• https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/28/unplanned-review-anti-abortion-propaganda-is-a-gory-mess - negative
• https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/2019/03/28/review-pro-life-drama-unplanned-rallies-base/3297365002/ - negative --GRuban (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry to quibble, but the sentence Multiple reviews describe the film as "preaching to the choir." seems a bit iffy to me as well: I would have no objection to including a summary of each of those reviews, but I think that we shouldn't combine them to suggest critical consensus without "meta-review" sources like Rotten Tomatoes. Cheers, gnu57 17:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

They do actually all say that, but I do agree that's not a fair summary of their reviews. I'll remove until we have time to summarize each review, but, honestly, once we do, I suspect we may want to put that back, since a phrase shared among multiple unconnected reviews is something that we probably do want to at least mention. Even most of the other reviews I list containi that basic thought even if they don't use that exact phrasing. --GRuban (talk) 18:23, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

GRuban - I didn't see your list earlier, but I added the Deseret review. When I went looking, the issue I had with the reviews is that many of the ones I looked at weren't really reviews of the films, but commentaries about the film's subject. I think that any further reviews should be about the film. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:13, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 April 2019

I reviewed this film for Catholic World Report and would like to add a quotation in the Reception section from my review. You can see the review here: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/04/02/beyond-abortion-polemics-unplanned-gets-personal/

Thank you for your important service in providing a universal encyclopedia Professor1951 (talk) 21:23, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: Wikipedia is not a place for self-promotion Breawycker (talk to me!) 18:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

New category: Propaganda films

I would like to add the Propaganda films category below this page. It's time to show the movie for what it truly is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MattNor91 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Mattnor91, please take a look at Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. It isn't up to Wikipedia editors to determine whether or not a film is propaganda: our job is to report on what reliable, published sources say about the film. Please also familiarize yourself with the policies on edit warring; in particular, note that this page falls under the one-revert rule. Cheers, gnu57 15:26, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

If the film is going to be in the Propaganda Films category, shouldn't that also be mentioned in the lede?? -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 22:36, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Canada

Although the article now mentions a single screening in Canada, this (https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/gabriel-hays/2019/05/22/canadian-cinemas-effectively-ban-film-unplanned-over-pro-life) source claims that the film is 'effectively banned' in that country. 37.99.48.133 (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Anti-abortion or pro-life?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should this film be described as anti-abortion or pro-life? An IP editor keep changing it to say "pro-life". The corresponding wiki page is called "anti-abortion". -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 22:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

This has been discussed on Wikipedia many times. One relevant example is Talk:Abby Johnson (activist)/Archive 1#Anti-abortion vs. pro-life, where I and other editors have said that this is euphemistic and ambiguous. As an encyclopedia, we should strive to use clear, neutral language whenever possible. "Pro-life" is neither. The issue is not life in a general sense, but abortion, specifically induced abortion. Grayfell (talk) 23:15, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

To be honest, I think Grayfell's right. "Pro-life", though popular and generally accepted to be pretty objective, is a pretty loaded term; and as such, it shouldn't really be used here (just like any specific details of the abortion were changed to "Abby finds the process [of it] gruesome and disturbing" for the same reasons; something I have actually argued about in the past).Neateditor123 (talk) 23:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Neateditor123

Both "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are subjective terms, used by their prospective proponents. The objective terms would be "pro-abortion", or this case, "anti-abortion". I'm the editor who first worked on the page, and I carefully used anti-abortion in order not to express a point of view (see here). Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:41, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Again, to reiterate, anti-abortion should be used in describing the activity. That being said, another editor has added the term to describe the author of the memoir, which imho is adding POV to the article.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:04, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I was only adding the label to make it distinct to the other Abby Johnsons in the dab page; I was not trying to push POVs or nothing. As far as the "pro-life" label is concerned, it should be dropped in favor of "anti-abortion" which is much more neutral and less BS, much like I would prefer "abortion rights activist" than "pro-choice" (at least within the confines of this site). NatGertler and I are actually in agreement with this. Slightlymad (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:15, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Actually, "pro-abortion" is problematic as well, because most folks who support the availability of abortion would rather see folks who don't want to get pregnant just not get pregnant in the first place, so it's more "pro-legal-availability-of-abortion". We tend to cast it as supporting "abortion rights" on Wikipedia. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

There are varying degrees of opinion on both sides of the issue, such as when abortion is appropriate or should be legal. So, neither "anti-abortion" or "pro-life" is really accurate, since even "pro-life" people generally (but not all) agree that abortion in certain situations is OK. The easiest way would be to compromise and use "anti-abortion/pro-life". AppliedCharisma (talk) 15:26, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Using both terms is not a compromise it is a kludge and results in very poorly written prose. There isn't going to be any satisfactory agreement on this but the least worst option is to respectfully use what each group calls itself, which is "pro-life" and "pro-choice". It is not perfect but it is what objective journalistic sources do. -- 109.76.223.71 (talk) 15:15, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

No, we do not go with the spin, we go with clarity. AP Style Guide says anti-abortion, as does The Guardian. It's what objective journalists do. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

You think the Guardian is objective, that's cute. -- 109.76.223.71 (talk) 23:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

At least it's what journalists who try to be objective do. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 23:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Projection

For some reason, people keep deleting even the request for who made the "projection" as to what the film would earn. A projection is a prediction, and if there's any value to be placed in it, it's based on who made that projection. Whose model was being used? Having said that, I'm not sure there's even much point in having that projection in there. Such projections become rather useless once there are actual figures on hand; after that, it's just commentary on how accurate the projection was. It doesn't actually tell us anything more about the movie. --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:32, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Usual problem

We seem to have the usual problem of propaganda films: it's being represented as if it were a documentary. We have multiple sources that identify it as anti-abortion propaganda (which is what it is), and numerous sources to the effect that the events as portrayed, never happened. It is not a documentary based on a memoir, it's a propaganda film (the dirrector admits it) based on a polemic. As Variety points out, it's good propaganda, effective propaganda (at least if you're sitting in the choir) but propaganda nonetheless.

As a start I have added a section under Plot outlining the fact that the events as portrayed appear to be a fabrication, and noting comments from medical professionals critiquing the splatter-movie portrayal of abortion. Guy (Help!) 11:01, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

NPOV

My sources:

Unplanned is a 2019 American anti-abortion propaganda film written and directed by Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman, based on the disputed memoir Unplanned by Abby Johnson. The film stars Ashley Bratcher, Brooks Ryan and Robia Scott, supposedly following Johnson's life as a clinic director for Planned Parenthood and her subsequent conversion to anti-abortion activism, though perpetuating "distortions and potentially dangerous myths" about abortion.

Competing version:

Unplanned is a 2019 American biographical drama film written and directed by Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman, based on the memoir Unplanned by Abby Johnson. The film stars Ashley Bratcher, Brooks Ryan and Robia Scott, and follows Johnson's life as a clinic director for Planned Parenthood and her subsequent conversion to anti-abortion activism.

There are no sources cited. My version has multiple sources. It's quite possible that neutrality lies somewhere betweent he two, but it certainly does not lie in the unsourced verison that fails to mention the well-attested fact that this film is anti-abortion propaganda.

Several other sourced changes are also being challenged, e.g. the fcat that its presentation of abortion is misleading, cited to articles by, e.g., an OB-GYN directly commenting on the film (this is absolutely routine for a pretended documentary that turns out to be inaccurate). Also a rejection of the Texas Trib's investigaiton that found no evidence that this procedure happened on this day, and other sources noting that the subject of the movie was under disciplinary measures and at no point mentioned their supposed epiphany. Guy (Help!) 18:20, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• Agree Looks good to me. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 19:19, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
• Question are administrators exempt from complying with the 1RR rule which this page is under? Onel5969 ^{TT me} 19:18, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I suppose the issue here is, do these sources meet WP:RS? So we will have to hash that out here. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 19:21, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

There's a bit of a struggle in that reviews are inherently by their nature opinion pieces, making it difficult to address their labels as facts rather than opinions. But if all the reviews said a film was a comedy, then we would be comfortable placing that descriptor on it. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

IMO the Huff Post article is usable for this article. It would not be called an "opinion piece" since it uses an expert quoting facts. When HuffPo uses a guest editor they are not OK, but in this instance the author is a "senior editor". Gandydancer (talk) 20:17, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I do think that "propaganda" can sometimes be used as a neutral descriptor (e.g., "WWII propaganda posters"), but in these reviews it's clearly being used as a value-laden label. Even if, say, all critics agreed the film was "hackneyed", it wouldn't be appropriate to put the label in Wikipedia's voice (and there isn't a clear-cut critical consensus for "propaganda" in this case). gnu57 21:17, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• Response The sources for "propaganda" are opinion pieces which use the term as a value-laden label: as such, it should be attributed (..."several reviewers described the film as..."), rather than used in Wikipedia's voice. Same with "distortions and potentially dangerous myths".
  • JzG added the "propaganda" descriptor to the lead earlier this week; since then, he's reverted 1, 2, 3, 4 times to keep it in the article, including twice today.
  • No links to the Texas Tribune appear in this article, and Johnson isn't mentioned on their website: you may be thinking of the 2010 Texas Monthly article (Planned Parenthood says their records don't include the abortion Johnson says she saw), which contradicts another 2010 debunking by the Texas Observer (Johnson's coworker Kaminczak says Johnson told her about the abortion immediately afterwards in positive terms). Obviously these aren't reviews of the 2019 film.
  • Forbes contributors have no editorial oversight. The author of the Forbes review, Luke Y Thompson, is a freelance journalist and blogger. Given the many more-prominent reviewers who have weighed in on the film, I see no reason to give particular weight to his assessment.
  • I have nothing against using the HuffPo interview appropriately with attribution, but the accuracy of portrayal paragraph is currently full of unattributed POV statements and synthesis. (The struck statements are not supported by the cited sources, the underlined portions are synthesis):

  • Texas Monthly attempted to corroborate the film's narrative. It found that Johnson's resignation letter, tendered at a time when her job performance was under question, did not mention any crisis of conscience.

    The porrayal of the first abortion is highly unreralistic, and there are doubts as to whether this procedure ever took place at all: no ultrasound guided abortions took place in Johnson's clinic on the claimed date. The movie highlights complications of abortion, but these are rare - abortion is 14 times safer in the US than giving birth. Planned Parenthood is falsely portrayed as primarily a for-profit abortion business. There is no one agreed measure but the proportion of Planned Parenthood's activities that are abortion related is probably between 12% and 37%, but may be as low as 7% of all treatment events. Abortion procedures are portrayed as long, painful and bloody, but in reality, most abortions last 3-10 minutes and are "well tolerated". Practitioners are portrayed as callous and inhumane. This is disputed. The claim of 75% drop-out from abortions when clincs are picketed is also disputed.

    Cheers, gnu57 21:15, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

We certainly shouldn't be using articles that were commenting on the book as reference for the movie. Saying that criticisms of the book are criticisms of the movie is WP:OR. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:14, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

But we have sources commenting directly on the movie that say its portrayal of abortion is inaccurate, and that's what is being disputed here. There's even one paper that went and got an OB-GYN to watch and comment on the film. That's fact-checking. Guy (Help!) 18:57, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

References

• So let's start at the top. All film criticism is opinion, so if you're going to use "it's opinion" to wave away all criticism then you're inventing a new rule for Wikipedia that would need wider discussion. Globe and Mail, New Statesman, Guardian, National Post, Toronto Sun and dozens of others. The question then falls back on how to cover the fact that it is propaganda. I am certainly happy to discuss how we represent that.

Accuracy of portrayal, siure, let's tighten it. The basic facts as established by sources are: (a) Johnson resigned while under disciplinary measures and there's no independent evidence that she cited her new-found religious convictions at the time, and some evidence that she did not. This is covered in more than one of the sources; (b) journalists who tried to verify her story found that no such procedure took place on that date; (c) the movie's portrayal of abortion does not remotely resemble what actually goes on, as again attested by multiple sources. The Guardian calls it a "gory mess". I think I erroneously wrote Tribune not MOnthly. The Texas Monthly story ([2]) says The rollout of Abby Johnson as a culture-war celebrity got off to a rocky start. In early November, the online magazine Salon reported that on September 27, the day after Johnson says she witnessed the ultrasound-guided abortion and had her epiphany, she appeared as a guest on the Bryan public radio program Fair and Feminist to discuss her work at the clinic. In the hour-long interview, Johnson gives an enthusiastic defense of the clinic and ridicules the 40 Days for Life protest. She doesn’t sound like someone who’d had a life-changing experience the previous day or who had soured on her employer’s mission , and Johnson’s departure from Planned Parenthood turned out to be a more complex story than it first appeared. At a court hearing for an injunction sought by Planned Parenthood to prevent Johnson from divulging confidential information to her new allies, two of Johnson’s former co-workers testified that she told them in the days before she resigned that she was afraid she was about to be fired. The movie has her presented Planned Parenthood Employee of the Month, but in fact it was only for the regional affiliate. on October 2, Johnson was summoned to Houston to meet with her supervisors to discuss problems with her job performance (Salon repeated after checking by Texas Monthly). She claims she was disciplined because she was not upselling abortion. PP say Citing company policy regarding confidential personnel information, Planned Parenthood declined to specify why Johnson was disciplined, other than to deny that it was due to any conflict over the number of abortions performed.. Who to believe? Johnson's credibility is less than that of Planned Parenthood here: on resigning {tpq| She never mentioned being pressured to increase abortions, having witnessed the ultrasound-guided procedure, or having suffered a moral crisis}}.

What almost certainly happened is that anti-abortion activists seized on a vulnerable woman who was resentful of Planned Parenthood. I have no objection to presenting both sides, but the fact-checker should get at least parity with the narrative from anti-abortionists, because, let's face it, they do have a bit of history here. And I am not particularly inclined to believe that Planed Parenthood is suffering massively due to the recession, as most of the damage done to Planned Parenthood is due tot he deliberate actions of religious zealots in legislatures in the Bible Belt. Fighting unconstitutional restrictions on abortion has cost them a lot of money.

It's undeniably effective propaganda, at least for the target audience. But to claim it as anything other than an anti-abortion propaganda film is to grossly fail WP:NPOV. It would be stunning if any movie about abortion made by a fundamentalist Christian movie house would be anything else, after all.

I presume that the CDC's finding ont he relative safety of abortion and childbirth is not being dismissed as an "unattributed POV statement". I don't have a problem with attribution for statements of opinion, that one is obviously a simple fact. Guy (Help!) 23:35, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Good overview Guy - thanks. Gandydancer (talk) 00:43, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

A good overview and analysis, and would probably make the basis for a good article... somewhere else. But sourcing an article that is currently about a film to material that is clearly not about the film goes against our standards, including WP:OR. --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:22, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• Regarding the radio interview that Johnson conducted on September 27, 2009, she discusses this in her memoir. Johnson did not quit Planned Parenthood and turn 180 degrees to being pro-life immediately after witnessing the ultrasound-guided abortion; she struggled with what she had seen for a week, weighing her desire not to be part of any further abortions against the good that she felt she had accomplished treating her patients and the disdain she still felt for the anti-abortion movement. It wasn't until the following Monday, October 5, that she finally left her job for good after realizing that the clinic was still handing out medication to perform RU-486 abortions.

In the meantime, as she describes:

I was determined to find a new job within two weeks and be out of Planned Parenthood before we performed surgical abortions again.

But I only had a few hours to devote to my hunt. Months before I'd committed to a KEOS radio interview with the host of the program Fair and Feminist. It was a program very sympathetic to Planned Parenthood, and I'd been a guest on the show before. We'd planned this one knowing that the 40 Days for Life campaign would be in full swing -- the perfect opportunity to attract new supporters to the pro-choice cause.

"Doug, you know I've got that radio interview tonight."

"Oh, I'd forgotten all about it. What are you going to do?"

"Well, I don't see I've got much of a choice. I'm committed. But I don't have to talk about my personal feelings on abortion. I can just stick to the talking points, like I always do. I'm still representing Planned Parenthood. I'll follow my usual script and get it over with."

That is just what I did. The program's host was a friend, a volunteer at the clinic even. She and I had shared our dislike for the Coalition For Life's views, and frankly, I still disliked them. It was the oddest sensation to do the interview that night. On the one hand, it was surprisingly simple to slip into the role of media spokesperson and use the well-rehearsed words I'd said a thousand times. But on the other hand, this time I felt that I was acting a role rather than speaking from my heart. It wasn't a feeling I liked, not one bit. I came away from the interview feeling a bit sick to my stomach.

- Unplanned, chapter 12

Johnson also responded in this editorial in The Federalist to the Texas Monthly article claiming that there was no ultrasound-guided abortion performed on a 13-week patient on September 26, 2009. She says that:

• The document provided to Texas Monthly purportedly containing that day's abortion records came from Planned Parenthood (not exactly an unbiased source), not from the Texas Department of Health, which does not release reports about individual abortions in order to protect patient privacy.
• The document was some sort of manually-compiled spreadsheet, not the actual Induced Abortion Reporting form required by the state of Texas for any abortion appointment.
• The document has discrepancies suggesting that the information on it may have been falsified, such as leaving out required information (anesthesia type, complications) and stating that a surgical abortion was performed on a 4-week fetus when the minimum for this procedure is 5-6 weeks.
• If it wasn't falsified, it would have to have been generated by Johnson herself, since it was dated September 30 (at which time she was still working at and in charge of the clinic). So she would have known better than to invent a fictitious abortion for the sake of inventing a conversion story.

Richferrara (talk) 13:31, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I love the fact that she hides behind HIPAA to defend violating HIPAA...

However, for Wikipedia's purposes only one thing matters. Texas Monthly is a reliable independent source, and Johnson isn't. Guy (Help!) 18:59, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I mean like it or not, the film is just a biopic drama about a topic that happens to be hot button. If something with a clear bias like Fahrenheit 11/9 or Death of a Nation don’t get labeled propaganda, why would this? TropicAces (talk) 05:51, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

There's a difference betweeen POV and proaganda. Michael Moore's films are often agit-prop, but Roger And Me and Bowling For Columbine are proper documentaries, as is Fahrenheit 11/9 according tot he critics (it gets a high rating, the commentaries note that the Hitler rhetoric is a bit overblown, but don't criticise factual accuracy). D'Souza's work is fiction really, like Ann Coulter's books. Again, the critics make this clear. It's been eviscerated by real historians, too. This movie, though, is naked propaganda, made and distributed by anti-abortionists for the express purpose of scaring girls out of having abortions. Guy (Help!) 08:40, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

The editing of the page and Content "Accuracy of Portrayal"

It says that the film is "factually inaccurate" Planned Parenthood is "falsely portrayed". Unplanned was based on the book of a woman's testimony. We shouldn't say what really happened if we weren't there. It also says that the first abortion scene was unrealistic when it isn't. There's a documentary called The Silent Scream that shows an abortion recorded from an ultrasound. The documentary was narrated by a medical doctor, Bernard Nathanson. Former abortionist and professional OBGYN, Dr. Anthony Levantino, who had a cameo in the film, said that abortion can be dangerous and many other problems to it. Dr. Haywood Robinson and his wife, Dr. Noreen Robinson, are former abortionists and discuss what's bad about it. I know that I am a man, and people say that men shouldn't have a say in this topic, so I assumed that it is only up to a woman to have a say. However, this film is largely based on a woman's experiences, and she's being portrayed as a liar? That doesn't make sense. To be honest, this editing of the page is just politically biased and it is ridiculous and hateful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thartley1018 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

These statements are based on reliable independent sources. Do you have any reliable independent sources that contradict them? For example, any gynaecologists who say the film's portrayal of abortion is accurate, to offset the numerous professionals who say the opposite? Guy (Help!) 23:06, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

@JzG: I found this article, written by a retired OB/GYN, which says the film was accurate. aboideau^talk 19:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

In the Washington Examiner? Was it also published in any reliable sources? Not that it's a surprise to find two apostate abortionists turned evangelical christians agreeing on an anti-abortion propaganda film. Guy (Help!) 19:06, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Unsure. I just saw that it was written by a gynaecologist and thought I'd ping you. Still a bit new here, sorry. aboideau^talk 19:10, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Sure. And if there are such commentaries in reliable sources, we can say that there are differnces on whether it's accurate or nto. this says not, as do mostmainstream sites that target a female audience, as far as I can see. Not a surprise: abortion is extremely popular among American women, so they are going to be interested in something specifically designed to threaten access to abortion. There's a vast moutain of data showing that suppressing abortion kills women. Guy (Help!) 19:15, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia constantly says what happened without the article authors having been there. Do you think Julius Caesar was written by Romans 2000 years ago? Curiosity wrote its own article? That woman says something, the film repeats these claims, and the references show it is factually wrong in many aspects. Is your argument really "a woman said that, therefore it must be true"? --mfb (talk) 10:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

References

The WaPo opinion piece is not a valid source for this article.

The WaPo article cites a statistic (that abortion makes up only 3% of PP services) that was debunked with 4 pinocchios. As a newspaper, the WaPo is a heavily left-biased publication. The presence of that easily verifiable falsehood calls into question the validity of the entire piece. The citations of that article are also heavily editorialized and that one opinion piece is cited repeatedly throughout the current version of this article and treated as authoritative. That citation should not be used and the editorialization that is occurring in this article should be removed. 137.241.250.130 (talk) 20:29, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the Pinocchio-givers found the 3% figure accurate, but misleading, which is why they gave it not 4 but 3 Pinocchios. "When all services are counted equally, abortion procedures do account for 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total services."

And when you're complaining about the WaPo as a source, realize that when you point to Pinocchios, you are pointing to the issuer of Pinocchios: the Washington Post. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I believe the poster above was referring to the HuffPo piece, which does present the 3.4% figure in a misleading way. gnu57 22:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I included a full analysis with error bars, so the inclusion of the figure within sources being cited for other facts is irrelevant really. Guy (Help!) 08:29, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Opening sentence

The opening sentence of the lead section, per WP:FILMLEAD, needs to mention "the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified". Here, "drama" is the genre (as edited by TropicAces), and this does not mean nothing can follow calling it a drama film. The current version shows it being called "anti-abortion film", which is not in itself a particular genre. Per WP:LEAD, considering that it is primarily notable for the anti-abortion theme, it should still be mentioned in the opening sentence. (E.g., "drama film produced by proponents of the anti-abortion movement".) By comparison, the directors and the underlying memoir do not even need to be mentioned in the first sentence, but rather the second and/or third. As for the "propaganda" description that has been used in the opening sentence, it has not been used as a genre label. It does not mean it cannot be mentioned in the lead section at all. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:30, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

(I don’t want to get too deep into this page and its edits because of how hot-button it is and how easily some people are set off, but) I still don’t see how “anti-abortion” is a genre of film, you know? I’m not saying it can’t be noted in the lead or plastered throughout the article, the film is inherently, unabashedly an anti-abortion film, but just don’t think it’s a genre of film in line with comedy, war, thriller, etc. At the end of the day, intentions and controversy aside, it is still only a movie, if that all makes sense. Not about to revert or try and make my case here, though haha. TropicAces (talk) 15:32, 25 August 2019 (UTC)tropicAces

It's an anti-abortion film. That's it's purpose. Applying our manual of style to obscure what it is doesn't make sense. Guy (Help!) 15:44, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

There is no obscuring happening here. I clearly said that it should be in the first sentence. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:55, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions

Reviewing this article, I have several suggestions:

• "Accuracy of portrayal" subsection is awkwardly shoehorned in under "Plot"; suggest a standalone section (like what has been done with "Historical accuracy" or "Scientific accuracy" per MOS:FILM) and perhaps have subsections of "Biographical" (for covering memoir details) and "Medical" (for covering medical procedure details)
• In the "Critical response" section, professional film critics and Catholic outlets are mixed together. I suggest a subsection focusing only on professional film critics (essentially, people who review films for a living -- the ones shown on Metacritic's page) and another focused on religious and/or conservative outlets that don't normally review films
• Have a "Marketing" section to house content from the "Release" section to capture more in general the marketing strategy and efforts. I found this that would be useful to include
• In the "MPAA rating" section, it's unnecessary to template-amplify the two quotes as significant; just include them as part of regular prose
• Have a "Social and political commentary" section that pulls from mainly non-review commentary about this film's presence in today's environment. The Harper's Bazaar article compares it to The Silent Scream, for example.

Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:51, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

This makes sense, except that I would avoid any critical reception other than from professional critics - every anti-abortion zealot will give it five stars regardless of how shitty it is, so those are not worth beans. Guy (Help!) 15:02, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

POV text in reviews

Folloing on the section above, in among the mainly negative professional reviews we have:

Audiences polled by [[CinemaScore]] gave the film a rare "A+" grade, and those at [[PostTrak]] gave it an overall positive score of 80% and a 65% "definite recommend".<ref name="opening" /><ref name="THR2" />

This movie is, as is clearly identified, anti-abortion propaganda watched almost entirely by anti-abortionists. As such, it would be astounding if they did not love it. So to say it got "a rare A+ grade" (text not in the sources, in fact) is WP:UNDUE and POV: of course the target audience loved it, it would be the same if you asked neo-Nazis to review Triumph des Willens. The difference being that Triumph is considered a masterpiece of propaganda by independent reviewers, whereas this is considered clumsy. Guy (help!) 09:25, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

AGREE. This film IS propaganda and IS comparable to Triumph of The Will, except in quality. Please make your counterarguments here if you disagree! -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm starting to change my mind here, after reading what CinemaScore and PostTrak are actually for. Judging the reaction of the audience that just saw the film is literally what they are for. They are often used to judge a film's box office potential. In this case the film's relative success, making back over three times its tiny budget, may be directly related to its CinemaScore and PostTrak results. It pleases the target audience. I think the CinemaScore and PostTrak scores should be in the article with a brief explanation of their significance. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 15:23, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Whether Wikipedia editors think the film is great, is awful, or is propaganda should have absolutely nothing to do with this article. Guy and Doctorx0079, please leave your POVs at the door when editing this page. You don't get to define something as "propaganda" just because you disagree with it and then declare any mention of viewers' responses to the film to be undue on that basis.

Guy, any factual basis in reliable sources for your argument that the film was watched "almost entirely by anti-abortionists"? Even if that's true, why would viewers' reactions to the film not be relevant to this article? It appears you are correct that the quotation about the A+ grade is not accurate and should be edited and paraphrased. Also, the dispute sentence isn't relevant to the section. I will be editing a section heading to fix that problem. But otherwise, the material belongs in the article. SunCrow (talk) 21:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

It is propaganda. That's an objective fact. Everyone who goes to see it agrees with the POV of the filmmakers and doesn't care about the film's quality. Groups bought out whole showings just to support the film's POV. Implying that this is indicative of the quality or entertainment value of the film is misleading. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 15:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

It is proper to include CinemaScore and PostTrak per MOS:FILM#Audience response. The reliable source The Hollywood Reporter reported on it here. If a clarifying note needs to be added, this can be referenced, "The CinemaScore letter grade is a useful piece of information, but it’s important to know its limitations. Keep in mind that the respondents are self-selecting, meaning that everyone who fills out a CinemaScore ballot has already chosen to spend the time and money on attending a film in the theater on its opening night, and to stay for the length of the film’s runtime... Such an audience is likely to be biased toward the film before they show up in the theater — unlike, for instance, critics, who see a wide variety of films whether or not they would choose to see it in their free time." This happens everywhere, though. Superhero movies get attended by superhero fans. Like the aforementioned source says, "What that means for a movie’s CinemaScore grade is that the expectations these viewers bring into the theater likely exert some effect on the grade: The audience member will be very happy if the film meets their expectations, or, if it doesn’t, potentially very disappointed." A final note: the content does not belong in "Critical reception" because that is about response from critics. It belongs in "Box office" because these are polls directly connected to who showed up on opening weekend. Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Doctorx0079, "Everyone who goes to see it agrees with the POV of the filmmakers...?" Really? Not one single person who saw the film was undecided about abortion, or got invited by someone else who was pro-life, or was pro-choice but wanted to hear the other side of the story? No one at all? And no one who saw the film "cares about the film's quality?" Where does that idea come from? Are you listening to yourself right now? These are your assumptions. The encyclopedia is not about your assumptions or mine. Unless you have reliable sources to corroborate these assumptions, they have no bearing whatsoever on the encyclopedia. This is absurd. We shouldn't have to be having this conversation. SunCrow (talk) 16:17, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Erik, no it's not. There's a massive disparity between the cinemascore and professional critics' ratings, and the one passing mention with zero context does not even attemtp to explain this, so it's WP:UNDUE. Guy (help!) 23:15, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it is proper to include it because of the MOS and because The Hollywood Reporter is an eminently reliable source in the film industry, one that cannot be readily dismissed. I disagree with you that it should be added with zero context; that is why I provided context with another reliable source that contextualizes CinemaScore. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 00:14, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Practically every movie is propaganda of some sort and this one is certainly no exception. I don't think that fact invalidates the audience's reception, and frankly I doubt that everyone who attended the movie agreed with the movie's POV (most did, probably, but that's something we can't determine without a source). aboideau^talk 16:41, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Aboideau, what are the Marvel movies propagandising? How many of them result in girls being frightened into having rapists' babies, or states pushing legislation to close the US' largest provider of women's preventive healthcare?

This is a long-form Project veritas re-enactment. Guy (help!) 23:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I've never seen any of the Marvel movies (or Unplanned either for whatever that's worth) so I don't know offhand. I agree with you that probably none of them promote anti-abortion. aboideau^talk 15:54, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Aboideau, or anything else, as far as I can tell. You said "practically every movie is propaganda". That is true only of movies made by True Believers. Most movies are clearly not propaganda, and that was rather a silly point. All "based on a true story" movies are trying to persuade you of something, was that what you meant? Though to be fair most such movies are based on a true story. Guy (help!) 18:29, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

No, that isn't what I meant. All movies have a certain viewpoint that they are pushing. This is perhaps not what most people would consider "propaganda", but it is propaganda nonetheless -- a slightly (or extremely, as the case may be) biased viewpoint intended to change the viewpoints of others; this viewpoint is generally presented far more subtly than it is in Unplanned. You are free to hold your own opinion, of course : ). aboideau^talk 19:11, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, I do know some people who watched it who are not anti-abortion. They got tutted at for laughing out loud in all the wrong places. This is a propaganda film and nobody other than anti-abortionists or critics of anti-abortion activism would even want to see it. Guy (help!) 23:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy, do you want the encyclopedia to say that your friends "got tutted at for laughing out loud in all the wrong places" during this film? If not, why waste time telling the rest of us about it? Obviously, you hate the movie and you hate what it stands for. You have every right to your opinion (even the really bizarre part about rapists' babies, which is just "out there"). But your negative opinion is not a valid reason to remove reliably sourced content from the encyclopedia about positive audience responses. You have no real argument here, so what's the point in continuing the conversation? SunCrow (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, no, I want the encyclopaedia to be based on reality-based context. One passing mention that does not include any context whatsoever about the reason for the audience score diverging so markedly from the critics' ratings, is UNDUE. I'm happy to include it in the context of some reliably sourced analysis of the disjoint between critics' and audience's ratings, if you can find it. As-is, it's a factoid devoid of context that inspires a "wtf?" reaction. Is this movie really "better" than Rise of Skywalker? Clearly not, in any objective sense at all, but that's what we're saying. Guy (help!) 09:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I believe that we should keep "Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade, and those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 80% and a 65% "definite recommend" without explaining that they may be biased. Our readers can figure this out if need be. I did change the lead a tad as I feel that a lead should not use an opinion of one MD that performs abortions in the lead. Gandydancer (talk) 16:45, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

JzG, how are we saying that Unplanned is better than Rise of Skywalker? We're saying that the audience perceived the movie to be better than Rise of Skywalker (while the critics, of course, did not) and then we leave the reader to form their own opinion. Interestingly, the section "Audience reception" for Rise of Skywalker says that children under 12 years old...gave it a full five out of five stars (on PostTrak). It doesn't say due to the commonly accepted fact that most children under 12 will like any movie that features their favorite character, children under 12 years old...gave it a full five out of five stars. Readers are left to extract that for themselves. aboideau^talk 16:48, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy, there is nothing objective about movie ratings. They are inherently subjective. Also, it's not that unusual for critics and audiences to disagree about a movie, and the encyclopedia doesn't have to explain that disagreement--especially when the "explanation" being offered lacks any basis in reliable sources. You are crying "UNDUE" just because the audience response doesn't match your POV, and you want the encyclopedia to "explain" why it doesn't. In essence, you want the encyclopedia to reflect your value judgments about this film. That is not what the encyclopedia is for. The disputed sentence should be edited for accuracy and included in the appropriate section alongside the Rotten Tomatoes information regarding audience response. SunCrow (talk) 16:57, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, Le sigh. Professional critics' ratings say one thing, audience ratings say something utterly different, and it's a propaganda film. Without the context of why the audience ratings differ so much from the critics' ratings, including the audience rating - especially with a peacock modifier not in the source - is UNDUE. With context - such as an article commenting that it's popular with the target audience of evangelical anti-abortionists - it would be fine, but right now it looks like we're using the fifty billion flies argument. Guy (help!) 18:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy, your argument is based on your opinion of the film (that it's propaganda) and your unsourced assumption about its audience (that the audience consisted of people who agree with the film's perspective on abortion). That's why your argument is flawed. At this point, it appears that the consensus points toward inclusion of the sentence whether or not it's accompanied by an explanation that confirms your assumptions. The "peacock term" you mentioned (the word "rare") will be removed. SunCrow (talk) 19:16, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Doctorx0079, FWIW, I am fine with the idea of adding a brief explanation of the significance of CinemaScore and PostTrak. SunCrow (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, so am I as long as the context is present. The audience rating is UNDUE unless we know what proportion of the audience are anti-abortion zealots. Guy (help!) 23:59, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, no, the fact that it's propaganda is reliably sourced. The assumption about its audience is indeed synthesis (from the fact of it being propaganda plus the high audience rating) but this is a talk page so that's fine. What's required, per policy, is context. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts, we need to explain the relevance of everything we include. In this case we have professional reviewers saying the movie is poor and the audience giving it a Trumpian double thumbs-up., That needs explanation. Professional reviewers, we can quote anyway, but the A+ comes from a single passing mention with no context at all, so is textbook UNDUE. Guy (help!) 23:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Aboideau, right, "children under 12 years old". In this case if we had a source saying that anti-abortionists gave it A+ then that would be fine. As would the fact of A+ with an analysis saying what proportion were anti-abortion zealots. We have neither. Guy (help!) 00:02, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Why is the first reference (footnote) in this article numbered 3?—Torontonian1 (talk) 15:53, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Torontonian1, I believe it's because there are two references in the infobox, which is technically before the article body. aboideau^talk 16:17, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Yup. The numbering is generated automatically; it's not something that the editors set. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Plot

Plot sections drawn from personal observation of a film, with no independent sources, are kind of tolerated a lot of the time, mainly because nobody can be bothered to try and stop it. In this case, however, we have credible sources saying that the film is propaganda, and we have extensive secondary coverage of the movie, so we should either stick to the overview in secondary sources or exclude personal observations of the plot. Wikipedia is here to describe propaganda, not promote it. Guy (help!) 08:51, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:FILMPLOT the film itself is a perfectly acceptable source for the plot of the film. --GRuban (talk) 16:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's not just a matter of "kind of tolerated". --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:11, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

(EC) Guy, If you consider any sections to be personal observations, feel free to edit those, but that is not an excuse to delete the whole plot section, any more than an error in one sentence would be an excuse to delete an unrelated sentence. I'm not going to edit war here, but, dude. Dude. DUDE. DUDE. You know this stuff. You're a respected (heck, I respect you!), experienced editor, an administrator even, you've been here for years, and here you are, deleting a whole section, edit warring to keep it deleted, making comments like why do we have an entirely unsourced "plot" section for a film that pretends to be a documentary?, when at no point does it pretend to be a documentary, it's got professional actors and everything; and Would we do this for Triumph des Willens? - come on, bringing in Nazis now? Godwin's law, so soon? By the way our article on that film, Triumph of the Will has a perfectly fine plot synopsis section; yes, unsourced to anything other than the film itself. If you want to make this one look like that, and have seen the film, go ahead. I haven't, so can't; but neither can either I or you go to any other article and delete all their plot sections outright. You know this stuff. --GRuban (talk) 16:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the sourcing requirements for movie plots, (other than what I've now read here) so I'll let others decide that, but wouldn't it be helpful to at least leave the "Accuracy of portrayal" section in? It is reasonably well sourced...could be better sourced and written to sources. ---Avatar317^(talk) 19:13, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd be glad to rewrite/to source/improve the "Accuracy of portrayal" section if we agree to have it in.---Avatar317^(talk) 19:19, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@JzG:? --GRuban (talk) 16:59, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:RS: everything must be drawn from reliable independent sources. Film fans have invented an exception for plots - basically WP:PRIMARY. Fine, as long as it's not contentious, but, per standard Wikipedia practice, anything contentious, you fall back to secondary sources. This is contentious. The movie is propaganda, and to describe tis plot from the primary source is WP:PROFRINGE. Guy (help!) 17:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Not only does WP:RS not say that everything must be drawn from "reliable independent sources", it specifically includes a section discussing when non-independent sources can be appropriate (WP:SELFSOURCE.) Do you have any sources contending what the plot of the film is?? --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, yes, as a qualified exception to independent sourcing for uncontroversial information.

"Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

From WP:V: "Base articles on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

Personal observations of a film have been allowed to slide by. When the film is (a) propaganda and (b) very unlikely to be watched by any editor who does not already agree with its premise, independent sources are a must. Guy (help!) 17:54, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

"When the film is [...] very unlikely to be watched by any editor who does not already agree with its premise"??? That's a huge slide in WP:V; now to be verifiable, the source not only has to be available, it has to be to the taste of the editor who wants to verify it? No. A film is a direct source on its own plot. That you don't want to verify it does not make it contentious. If there are things that you feel are inherently subjective in the description, you could edit those rather than trashing an important aspect of the article. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:06, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to have to disagree just a bit with one sentence there: the film is pretty clearly contentious, I think both people who support it and who oppose it will agree on that, that there are strong views on both sides. However, WP:FILMPLOT doesn't make an exception for contentious films. They're still films, and a perfectly good source for their own contents. --GRuban (talk) 18:34, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

GRuban, See WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Filmplot can't override WP:V and WP:RS. It carves out an exception basically giving carte blanche for original research in plot summaries, and that's not a problem for an ordinary movie, but this is not an ordinary movie, it's a propaganda film, and you can't have a self-sourced plot summary without basically repeating the propaganda. Exactly the same as something like Vaxxed.

Everywhere on Wikipedia where self-sourced material is used, it's understood that if it's challenged, an independent source is needed. Why would that be different for movies, and especially movies that are designed to promote a fringe agenda? Guy (help!) 18:41, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, the relevance is this: this is an anti-abortion propaganda film. Describing the plot from the primary source is, inherently, anti-abortion propaganda. It might be that an editor who (like the supermajority of Americans) is not anti-abortion might watch the film and summarise the plot here, but it's unlikely, and even if they did it would still be an in-universe summary because the film is anti-abortion propaganda.

If, however, we rely on professional critics and reviewers, we can get a fully WP:NPOV description of the film which notes its factual inaccuracies, distortions and absurdities.

A plot summary of a Star Wars movie is uncontentious because it's openly fictional. This is semi-fictional pretending to be fact. Why would we override WP:V/WP:RS to allow us to override WP:NPOV by directly summarising it from the primary source? That seems like pretty much the worst thing we could do here. Guy (help!) 18:48, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

You're not challenging it, in the sense that you disagree with what it says, you're deleting it outright, without distinguishing between perfectly innocuous sentences and sentences that you might actually have a problem with, then sticking your fingers in your ears, and saying "I refuse to view the movie, so am challenging that it has any content at all". Note that WP:FILMPLOT specifically says not to draw any conclusions, so if you think any of the plot section does that, feel free to edit. The place for professional critics and reviewers is in the section on their opinions. The plot section is there to relate what the movie actually says. That doesn't mean we endorse that as true. --GRuban (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If we were saying that the plot of the movie was what happened in real life, you might have a point. We're not. We're saying it's the plot of movie, and we are specifically saying that there is contention on its accuracy in depicting real events... or at least we were, until you decided to edit war away the section documenting the contention over its accuracy. The idea that you don't want to verify it means that we've overridden WP:V suggests a very odd view of verifiability. Do you have any actual corrections to the specific description that was contained in the plot section??? Or are you just making believe that it's contentious? --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:01, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Adding: in this edit summary, you ask why do we have an entirely uinsourced plot drawn entirely from personal observations of what is clearly identified as propaganda? Would we do this for Triumph des Willens?. Well, in the "Synopsis" section of the Triumph of the Will article, there are zero sources listed. It is presumably a description of the film done by an editor here. So apparently, yes. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, ugh. At least that article has the benefit of being unambiguous about it being propaganda and the Nazis being evil. Perhaps if we put that context in here the blow might be softened. Guy (help!) 12:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Let me instead compare it to a Wikipedia:Featured article: Boys Don't Cry (film). Also a dramatization of actual events. Also highly controversial - it's about a murder after all. Also prominently criticized for not portraying events accurately. Has a plot section. Not cited to anything other than the film. Another: The Whistleblower, featured article, about a dramatization of actual events, plot section, no third party citations for the plot. There are probably others; clearly citations are not required for the plot section of a film. These have been judged to be the best articles on films Wikipedia has. We have the trifecta: policy on our side; precedent on our side; and more participants who believe the section should be restored. Guy, I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see if you have other arguments, but if you don't I'm going to restore the deleted sections. Please feel free to edit the to add any third party sources you believe to be required (no objection, just not required), or even remove the specific parts of the sections that you believe are not an accurate portrayal of the plot, but don't just delete it wholesale, or we'll have to go to other methods of dispute resolution. --GRuban (talk) 21:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to thank you all for this discussion, because it brought up many good points. Now that I have actually READ the plot description, I agree with JzG that it doesn't belong in the article. Before I read the plot summary, I thought that it could be written in an objective way, but now I don't think it can be included without furthering the propaganda of the film. Here's some examples:

• the boyfriend which gets her pregnant and pushes her to have an abortion is described as a "deadbeat". Maybe he's protrayed as that, but this is propaganda: the new husband with whom she now gets pregnant but disapproves of her career "loves her."
• "and is told it will "gently empty out her uterus and there will be a little bleeding", but the experience is painful, resulting in extreme bleeding and eight weeks of cramping." a very misleading and false depiction. In an entertainment movie, "inaccuracies"/"movie physics" isn't put in to psychologially influence a belief in the viewer, but in this movie it is, and repeating it in this article would do the same.
• "she is concerned when she sees the fetus on the ultrasound, which is moving away from the suction tube." The criticism from independent sources say that this is not an accurate description, yet it is described to the reader as fact. Again, many viewers understand that movie-physics isn't real, and even if they don't, it doesn't change their beliefs in anything, and isn't intended to; this movie is.

To me, including this would be the same as giving a plot description of the Vaxxed2 movie, where parents state that "my kid got an MMR vaccine, which CAUSED my kid to get autism".

To conclude, I don't think this plot summary belongs without INDEPENDENT sources because I think it is impossible to remove the propaganda from the plot description. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

All right; restored plot section, all cited to reviews per talk page requests. Removed a few sentences I couldn't cite, replaced with others I could. --GRuban (talk) 02:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

GRuban, no consensus for this yet. See above. Among the bits you left in is the "non-profit is a tax status not a business model" line, which is pure anti-abortion propaganda. Planned Parenthood does not drive abortions as a business booster, its money comes mainly from preventive healthcare and uncontroversial (other than to the wildest evangelicals and Catholic leadership) family planning.

The implication that Planned Parenthood are increasing abortions for financial motives has been rebutted in numerous independent sources, so including it as a "plot point" without rebuttal violates NPOV.

That is virtually impossible to fix, as Avatar317 points out. Better to summarise it from independent sources with context rather than try and present it as a plot summary which necessarily give priority to the propaganda and talking points the producers want you to focus on. Guy (help!) 12:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The implication that Planned Parenthood are increasing abortions for financial motives is indeed a baseless conspiracy theory, but that the movie was intended to promote. As such, per fringe guidelines, it would be better to describe it as such using an independent source than to uncritically echo their claims. —PaleoNeonate – 04:32, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

GRuban, the core issue there is that Boys Don't Cry and The Whistleblower are made by mainstream studios with mainstream actors and mainstream distribution. They are emotive depictions of controversial subjects, but they adhere to norms of cinematic production and finance: the film was made to make money, not converts.

Unplanned is made and distributed by evangelical fundamentalist anti-abortionists. Its goal is to bolster anti-abortionism and, where possible, scare vulnerable women out of having abortions. They do not care iof the film makes $0 at the box office, they are running a religious mission, not an entertainment business. Guy (help!) 12:22, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Your objection seems to be "I don't like this movie". I cited every sentence from independent sources, which is what you and Avatar demanded. You are quite right, we can't describe the plot without describing the plot. And yet, that is what we need to do. --GRuban (talk) 13:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The idea that we should not discuss the content of a work because it was not made for financial profit seems ridiculous, and would call for deleting descriptions of many of the most important works in history (and indeed, of Wikipedia itself.) Your ongoing edit war to remove the plot barring any consensus to do so is not appropriate. I suspect that the makers of Boys Don't Cry (activist Kimberly Peirce) wouldn't agree that her film wasn't trying to convince you of anything. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I think a brief description of the story is consistent with Wikipedia's mission. Isn't the purpose to allow a reader to get a general idea of what happens in the movie without having to watch the whole thing? Since the movie is presented as fiction, isn't it safe to assume that readers won't take it as literal realism? After all, there is a listing of criticisms and other disclaimers. Maybe it would help to have a "NOTE: " at the beginning with a brief disclaimer, followed by a brief summary of the events in the story. Otherwise it just seems like burying knowledge in the name of silencing a controversial agenda. The goal should be to explain different views to the readers and let them make up their own minds, not assume that they are fools who take everything at face value. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 16:11, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd be ok with the plot as newly added if we also used the info in the sources to include fact checking and neutral wording of the deceptive/propaganda parts, most notably something like: the characters portray PP as making money off of abortions, and trying to increase the number of surgical abortions as a profit driver--this claim has been refuted by Planned Parenthood and others. (better to paraphrase than use the movie quote and repeat their propaganda) and the movie depicts a fetus attempting to move away from a suction tube. (This depiction has been criticised as false or misleading, since fetuses at that stage do not have neurological systems, and therefore cannot react to their surroundings. (These are examples, not necessarily the exact text of my preferred wording.) ...and same for the mifeprestone section, as I believe that plot part is also likely exaggerated/false, but have not read enough references yet to see if it was criticised in the references. One reference I did read also criticised the movie for making abortion seem much bloodier than it is (obviously a motivation of anti-abortionists)....so the blood on shoes statement might be another case of questionable propaganda.

My preference would be for all those criticisms to be incorporated into the plot section as stated above, so at least three places for criticism/fact checking to keep NPOV. To have a propaganda plot section FIRST and a criticism section after, would be biased toward propaganda for those who partially read the article.---Avatar317^(talk) 00:21, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Just putting in the lead that the film has been criticized for the accuracy of its portrayal of events should be sufficient; the criticism section that JzG has been trying to edit war away works fine after the plot. The two sections should not be confused, for claritiy's sake. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:02, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. A brief disclaimer should be sufficient at the beginning. More specific criticisms should be after the story synopsis for the sake of clarity. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 02:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd also prefer the plot to describe the plot and the criticism to be separate. (Though I admit, I mainly just want some reasonable plot section, in an article of this length about a film.) Avatar, is there a way we can satisfy the "those who partially read the article" concern? How about if we put the criticism first, would that suffice? --GRuban (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, no, that's insufficient. It amounts to: "What follows is propaganda" then repeating th epropaganda. Guy (help!) 20:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

That is essentially what should be done. As long as the summary isn't so detailed as to overdo it, this is a perfectly reasonable standard. No literate person should be having their mind unduly poisoned from reading a brief story summary. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: With all respect, if you actually make a specific proposal, such as inserting what you're like the Plot section to look like instead of just deleting whatever anyone puts in, we'd have something to work with. Wouldn't you agree that Doctor No was just a movie, not a suggestion of how to behave in an editing discussion? @Avatar317: What do you think about the "criticism section before plot section" suggestion? --GRuban (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I would be fine with having an "Accuracy of portrayal" section just BEFORE the plot section, with the three or four items I talked about above maybe bulleted in order of occurrence in the movie. I agree that if we can neutrally relate what the plot is from the independent sources you found, it would be nice to have a plot section. I just want the inaccuracies pointed out so we don't use Wikipedia to re-promote the movie's propaganda. And I agree with JzG it would amount to "What follows is propaganda" then repeating the propaganda.", but I don't have a better solution.

Maybe we could have a less detailed plot section, kind of like the "Overview" section in The Silent Scream ? ---Avatar317^(talk) 22:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Though what I'm proposing isn't just a "What follows is propaganda" warning, but a comprehensive listing of the several points misrepresented in the movie with a fact checking of each, in the "Accuracy of portrayal" section. (I do agree that it is more like The Silent Scream than a standard Hollywood movie)

Additionally, an "Accuracy of portrayal" section as I describe would rebut the falsehoods from the movie, which right now are not mentioned/rebutted in the article. ---Avatar317^(talk) 22:27, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

GRuban, I did make a specific proposal. Don't treat this dreck like a movie. Treat is like the agit-prop it is. Describe it by reference tot he reliable independent sources, and don't include a "plot" section. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So what if a MoS says movies should have plot sections? We are free to ignore that when it's likely to promote dangerous fringe ideas. Guy (help!) 22:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy, with respect, have you considered whether the intensity of your antipathy toward this film might be interfering with your editing? SunCrow (talk) 22:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, My problem with this film is simple: it is propaganda in service of a fringe agenda. It would be the same if it were climate change denial, Velikovskian catastrophism or homeopathy. Guy (help!) 23:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The idea that we should not describe the contents or pretend that it's not a movie are anathema to an encyclopedic mission. The idea that opposition to abortion is "fringe" in a country where close to half of people think there should be some restriction on abortion and a fifth believe it should be banned outright is misunderstanding "fringe". --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:34, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

As far as calling it a "movie" goes, is NOT a standard Hollywood ENTERTAINMENT movie. It wasn't created or released with the goal of making money or entertaining people, it was created and released for the same reasons as Hillary: The Movie and should be treated as such.---Avatar317^(talk) 00:21, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

"It wasn't created or released with the goal of making money or entertaining people"? Source on that? It had the format, distribution, and much of the promotion of many a for-profit film; Pure Flix released the highest-grossing indie film of 2014. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:55, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, PureFlix is a religious ministry, not a film production company. It makes money, but that's not its core function. If they wanted to really make money they would not allow David A. R. White anywhere near the product. Guy (help!) 15:38, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

They are actually indeed a film production company, one that happens to cater to a certain market. I've deal with people in the Christian media business before, and believe me, they knew they were in a business. (Don't mistake being a registered non-profit with not being a business and not seeking to make profit off of certain operations; the difference is in what they do with the profits from each effort, not in not seeking to bring in money. In the words of a PureFlik, "non-profit is a tax status not a business model".) --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:29, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

The removal of the entire plot section was inappropriate, and I am reinstating it. GRuban is correct in asserting that the plot section should describe the plot of the film, not argue with it. Per WP:FILMPLOT, "Since films are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source." The plot section can and should be worded in a neutral manner so that the assertions made in the film are not expressed in Wikipedia's voice. Critiques of the film's factual accuracy or disagreements with its content have no place in the plot section; they can and should be included elsewhere in the article. Sanitizing the plot section would run afoul of WP:NOTCENSORED, and adding disclaimers to it would likely violate WP:NPOV. SunCrow (talk) 22:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Treat it like we treat Vaxxed

Vaxxed is another film where if we simply do like we do on many films and present the plot with no real sourcing other than the film, we will be uncritically inserting material that violates NPOV. In that film, we created a "Narrative" section that documents what various secondary sources said about the plot.

Compare what we say about the following films:

Tremors (film):
"As they leave, they discover the dead body of another resident, Edgar Deems, perched atop an electrical tower, still grasping the tower's crossbeams and his .30-30 Winchester rifle. Jim Wallace, the town's doctor, determines that Edgar died of dehydration, apparently afraid for some reason to climb down"

No source needed. The film is the source. No source is needed because the film does not claim that Edgar Deems actually existed.

Vaxxed:
"According to Variety, the film 'purports to investigate the claims of a senior scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who revealed that the CDC had allegedly manipulated and destroyed data on an important study about autism and the MMR vaccine.' The film features the so-called 'CDC whistleblower' narrative that is based on anti-vaccination activist[21] and associate professor Brian Hooker's paper..."

Here we have a source which disputes the film's claims about the whistleblower

I say we do the same basic thing with this film. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:37, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree. I would be completely happy with this style.---Avatar317^(talk) 06:32, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good, yup. Perhaps a rider should be added to MOS:FILM as a reminder that plot summaries can't be used for an end run around NPOV. Alexbrn (talk) 06:42, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

This sounds appropriate and within policy. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:31, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, yes, works for me. Guy (help!) 15:36, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I respectfully disagree with your suggested approach. The plot section--whatever we call it--should be about the plot, and should not turn into a battleground on which to fight about others' reactions to the plot. I would say the same thing regardless of the subject matter. Here, the "accuracy of portrayal" section provides space for claims about, and reactions to, the material presented in the film. I support sticking with the existing format. SunCrow (talk) 13:00, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

First. Let's all agree that WP:NPOV -- a Wikipedia policy -- always overrides WP:FILMPLOT, which "is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." Any objections to that?

So this hangs on WP:NPOV. My position is that using the FILMPLOT "no reliable secondary sources required to demonstrate accuracy, notability or weight" rule works just fine on films like Tremors or Jurassic Park (which make no claim to be factual), but my position is that allowing unsourced and dubious claims of fact into the encyclopedia just because they are part of a movie plot (Movies that make such claims include Hillary: The Movie, Vaxxed, Unplanned, and Triumph of the Will) is a clear violation of WP:NPOV. In fact I plan to wait until we finish our discussion here and propose a change to WP:FILMPLOT to remove the loophole, a proposal which I expect to pass.

You appear to be saying (please clarify if I got it wrong) that not allowing unsourced and dubious factual claims of fact into the encyclopedia just because they are part of a movie plot violates WP:NPOV. Is that an accurate description of your position? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:14, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Saying that describing a film's plot is the same as claiming the plot is accurate fact is bewildering. Under that call, we'd basically have to excise plot from all fiction works. We don't give that sort of treatment to other dramatizations like Green Book (film), we give the sourced controversy over the accuracy of the depiction later in the article. We don't do it for the bad science in Gravity (2013 film), we give the description of the inaccurate science later in the article. Your desire to use the plot section not for plot but to push your anti-anti-abortion POV is inappropriate. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:57, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Please provide evidence that I am either anti-abortion or pro-abortion or retract your accusation. As far as I know I have never expressed an opinion on the subject privately or publicly.

I would never suggest putting my POV into this or any other Wikipedia article. The only POV that should be allowed is that of reliable secondary sources. I have on multiple occasions fought long and hard to have an article reflect the sources even when what the sources say is the opposite of my personal view. This is an important skill to have when writing an encyclopedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:50, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

My apologies, I was confused by the two Guys in this conversation. That accusation in your direction is withdrawn. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:13, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, anti-anti-abortion is the same as anti-anti-vaccination. It's not an endorsement or promotion of abortion, it's a position against advocacy of coerced birth.

I would be as adamant if this was pro-abortion propaganda (if such a thing existed). The issue is that the film includes falsehoods designed to coerce vulnerable women into making health choices that align with the preferences of the film-makers, not with their own medical needs. Women with unwanted pregnancies need neutral advice, not propaganda, and they can get this from medical professionals (except in states where anti-abortionists have prevented this). Guy (help!) 19:55, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

You think vulnerable women are thinking "where should I go for my information on abortion? Let's check out the Wikipedia article about a movie that the lead casts as inaccurate and ignore all the other parts of the article?" I'm all in favor of having a section that discusses the errors and the controversies (that section that you repeatedly deleted.) But we should also have the plot of the film. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:12, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I think it should be possible to summarize the story of Unplanned WITHOUT promoting any propaganda. I don't see how a bare summary of a story, in and of itself becomes propaganda. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 16:56, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

"I don't see how" is not a very convincing argument. Most of Infowars[3] consists of "stories". --Guy Macon (talk) 19:20, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

What I'm getting at, is that a bare summary of a story IS NOT PROPAGANDA, by the very DEFINITION of propaganda. The actual work itself may be propaganda, but a simple description of it is not. Another example: a Soviet novel may very well be propaganda, but a brief summary of its contents is not propaganda itself. It's important to make clear that the novel is propaganda and why it's propaganda. There is no problem with summarizing propaganda if its nature is clear. Indeed, a summary of the content may be part of the evidence of why it is considered propaganda. It's not some kind of poison that is unclean to even touch. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 19:33, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Your use of ALL CAPS does not strengthen your argument. Your basic premise (The actual work itself may be propaganda, but a simple description of it is not) is not convincing no matter how many caps you use.

I don't know how I can make it any clearer then. Maybe there's no hope for you. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 21:24, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

This reminds me of a film I recently saw. It was a documentary about how George Spelvin is a Nazi pedophile bed-wetter. The film showed a video of him speaking at the annual "We love National Socialists" convention, showed interviews with several urologists about George's involvement with the bed-wetting acceptance movement, and a spokesman for the FBI talked about him being the first pedophile to make the FBI's ten most wanted list, an honor usually reserved for terrorists, bank robbers, and murderers.

What's that you say? None of the above is true? Hey, I never said anything bad about George Spelvin. I just described the plot of Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas ...oops. Strike that. I just described the plot of Evil: The George Spelvin Story... --Guy Macon (talk) 02:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

What's wrong with including that in the summary of Evil: The George Spelvin Story? I don't really see anything wrong with including what you wrote in that article. I'm serious. Maybe it could use some slight adjustments, but I don't really see a problem there. I also don't understand the reference to "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas". I literally don't know what that is. I suppose I could wiki it, but I'm not in the habit of looking up Kirk Cameron movies. I read that Left Behind was pretty lame. Are you assuming I'm a Kirk Cameron fan or something?? I think you're just being paranoid now. Are you assuming I agree with Kirk Cameron about abortion? I doubt that very much. I'm pro-abortion rights but it shouldn't really be relevant. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 00:41, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I also take exception to the idea that falsehoods "coerce". Ideas do not coerce, including false ones. Coercion NECESSARILY requires PHYSICAL FORCE to be used. It's not coercion unless physical force is used. A film does not coerce, and neither does a stage play, a book or a Chick tract. I may strongly disagree with the content, but expressing an idea is not "coercion". The viewers are not physically being held there as far as I know, so no coercion is involved. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 19:33, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

You might want to crack open a dictionary and look up the meaning of the word "Coercion". --Guy Macon (talk) 02:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

"Coercion - the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats." - Oxford English Dictionary. No force or threats are involved in people watching this movie. I don't care what your professor said. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 21:23, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, no, Guy Macon addressed exactly that point. It's not a problem for fictional films because the content doesn't pretend to be fact. It's not a problem for documentaries, either. It's only a problem for propaganda - and that should be called out in FILMPLOT. It applies as much to the work of Michael Moore as it does to that of Dinesh d'Souza, or to this. Guy (help!) 19:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

That's a fine reason for us not saying that the film is fact... which we don't. It's a dramatization of a book, and we have, before the plot, indicated that the claims of both the book and the film have been challenged. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to make believe that we've said that the film is fact, or that we haven't cast shade upon it. Just about every major dramatization has doubts cast upon it for accuracy. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:07, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

• I am in favor of Guy Macon's approach. jps (talk) 19:24, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I agree with Nat Gertler and Doctorx0079. A plot section is a plot section. It is not a fact-checking section or a POV-checking section. It should just straightforwardly describe the film's plot. For reference, I would respectfully refer you and other editors to The Hurricane (1999 film). In that article, the plot section straightforwardly lays out the film's plot. Issues with the film's factual accuracy are addressed in a separate section (Controversy:Film accuracy). While I'd prefer to avoid using the term "controversy", I think the overall approach makes sense and should be emulated here. So my answer to your question is "yes". If necessary, in articles about controversial films, a footnote could be dropped in the plot section to indicate that the description of the plot is not intended as an indicator of its factual accuracy. SunCrow (talk) 19:47, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, you're missing the point. Yes, a plot section is a plot section, but when the plot is dangerous fiction pretending to be fact, that violates WP:NPOV. A stylistic preference cannot override core policy. Guy (help!) 19:49, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy, I believe you may be missing the point. Your belief that the film is "dangerous" has nothing to do with the encyclopedia. It's not the encylopedia's job to include or exclude information based on editors' subjective viewpoints about its dangerousness. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the protagonist's father (hilariously) uses Windex as a "personal-care cure-all" (see https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/lowdown-windex-seizes-big-fat-greek-wedding-sequel/303245). If that information were included in a plot summary, would you have us remove it? Or add a disclaimer to the plot section about the appropriate uses of Windex? (If not, someone might read the plot summary and start Windexing themselves for poison ivy, right? Dangerous!) I hope you wouldn't do that, but it's very similar to what you want to do here. No one is trying to remove any mention of the issues with the film's accuracy; I'm certainly not. Those issues belong in the encyclopedia. They just don't belong in the plot section. That's not what it's for. So why not take "yes" for an answer and move on? SunCrow (talk) 20:16, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, nobody is going to take healthcare advice form My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The anti-abortion religious group that made this film absolutely wants women to take medical advice from it. And given the documented inaccuracies and distortions in the movie, that is a clear problem per WP:NPOV.

NPOV is policy. We do not promote dangerous fringe views, we describe them by reference to reliable independent sources. That's what makes us an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source. There's a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS around movies to include plot sections written direct from personal observation of the film. That's not great, but it doesn't violate policy when describing obvious fiction. This does: it gives an uncritical presentation of propaganda that endangers lives. Guy (help!) 21:43, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

The plot parts which I described above in my comments which I see as propaganda are an attempt to push FRINGE conspiracy theories of 1) Planned Parenthood ENCOURAGES abortion BECAUSE they make profit from it and 2)abortion is (harder/more bloody/less safe) for women than most people believe. The first is more fringe conspiracy, while the second is more an attempt to push the status quo belief more toward anti-abortion by using false depictions. (The medical abortion Abby has and the lots of blood and gore in the movie.) Per NPOV, we don't use Wikipedia to help others push their fringe theories.---Avatar317^(talk) 03:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Good grief. Summarizing the plot of a film does not promote anything. Get a grip. SunCrow (talk) 05:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

No one here gets to scream "propaganda" as an excuse to load their POV into the plot section of an article about a film. Some of you are so inflamed about this topic that you're not thinking clearly. SunCrow (talk) 05:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

It really depends on the way the summary happens. If the summary is including excessive details included in the movie that both (a) intend to show things as the filmmakers believe they actually occurred (b) may be at odds with the way most WP:MAINSTREAM understanding of what happens in such contexts, there is a legitimate case to be made for keeping the summary more concise. I am of the inclination that right now the plot description may be a bit overdeveloped, even as I see some parts of the film which are not currently discussed (such as the murder of George Tiller). What I think may need to happen is a careful investigation of which scenes in the movie are most noticed and which ones are glossed over. A good case could be made that because Wikipedia is supposed to be thoroughly lacking in innovation, we should emphasize plot points that are emphasized by independent sources and de-emphasize or even excise plot points that are marginalized or completely ignored by independent sources. jps (talk) 13:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The issue here is neither scientific nor ideological, but is merely about the angst resulting from quoting reliable sources fully and accurately. I think we are done here. - User:JGabbard JGabbard (talk) 14:58, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

The issue here is neither scientific nor ideological, but is merely about citing reliable sources fully and accurately. I think we are done here. JGabbard (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

What propaganda is and what coercion is

coercion - the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. Source: OED. Printing or showing propaganda does not normally involve using force or threats. There is nothing inherently coercive about propaganda. There is no force or threat involved in a person willingly reading a propaganda book or going to see a propaganda movie. It's really a freedom of speech issue.

propaganda - information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Source: OED.

Unplanned may very well be propaganda. It does not follow that anyone is forced to believe it or take its story as literal truth. I think its reasonable to assume that adults in the industrialized world realize that a movie that tells a story is made by people to tell a story and should not be automatically taken at face value. This goes even more so for a brief text summary of the storyline of that movie.

As I indicated further back, if you disagree with such basic facts as these, then I don't think there's much else I can say to convince you. We simply are going to disagree no matter what. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 21:45, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

A plot summary at least needs to summarize what actually happens in the film

I see there are some good heads working on this, but just a quick note to explain what I tried to do. If you're going to summarize the plot of the movie, you ought to summarize the actual plot of the movie. Not the book it was based on, and also not the testimony of the person who wrote the memoir. I was appalled that it appeared whoever penned the plot synopsis wrote it as though it were a history rather than focusing on the movie as it was presented.

It may need to be culled further, but at least now it is telling the reader what actually happened in the film in part.

jps (talk) 19:22, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree summary should indeed summarize what actually happens in the film. What else would a summary be for? -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Excellent question. I hesitate to guess what the motivation may have been to do something other than summarize the film. jps (talk) 23:25, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

No need to suppress the plot summary

I get the impression that some editors believe that the plot summary needs to be suppressed, because of some pressing political issue. I'm not convinced of this, even though I'm an advocate of abortion rights. As always, Wikipedia is not censored. To me this is similar to censoring the Muhammad article. -- Doctorx0079 (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

"Who performs abortions"

The text "Jennifer Villavicencio, an obstetrician who performs abortions" is framing language designed to poison the well. The correct medical term for an obstetrician who performs abortions is: an obstetrician. It is the default position - training in terminations has been mandated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education as part of the core curriculum for Ob-Gyn residents for over twenty years. Some obstetricians may refuse to perform abortions, and that might be notable, but the fact that an obstetrician performs a set of procedures that is part of the standard mandatory training for an Ob-Gyn seems designed solely to allow anti-abortionists to discount her opinion. Which is of course what they will do. Guy (help!) 19:45, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy, it seems to me that the fact that Dr. Villavicencio performs abortions is relevant. It indicates that her perspective on abortion may be influenced by her involvement in it. SunCrow (talk) 19:50, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Wow! If that's what is being indicated then JzG is right. jps (talk) 21:05, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Wow wow! What a concept--someone who makes money off of a procedure might, perchance, have an incentive to describe that procedure in glowing terms!! SunCrow (talk) 05:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not the place of Wikipedia to determine, and be careful because you are walking a thin line of a WP:BLP violation as you are referring to a living person here. jps (talk) 13:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

jps, I'm not walking a thin line of anything. I want the article to include a piece of information about Dr. Villavicencio that is relevant and sourced. You want to omit that information. SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

You've been warned. Ignore the warning at your own peril. jps (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Dial down the drama. SunCrow (talk) 00:45, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, she's an obstetrician. Obstetricians all perform abortions unless they explicitly decide not to. It's like an article on an anti-vaccine movie talking about "a paediatrician, who administers vaccinations". Guy (help!) 21:38, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Not true, Guy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 54% of obstetricians in private practice do not perform abortions (see https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/most-us-obstetrician-gynecologists-private-practice-do-not-provide-abortions-and). SunCrow (talk) 05:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, read what I wrote. Abortion is a mandatory part of Ob-Gyn training. Whether one's practice includes performance of the procedure or not is dependent on two factors: one is where you practice (for example, an outpatient midwifery centre will typically refer terminations elsewhere), the other is personal choice. Personal choice not to perform terminations is a minority position. Guy (help!) 14:11, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, I read what you wrote. Any basis for your assertion, which (for obstetricians in private practice) is flatly contradicted by the source I offered? SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The prefix "Dr." or the suffix "M.D." are sufficient to establish what kind of bias the reader can expect. Adding a qualifier that is standard equipment among obstetricians is indeed framing language designed to poison the well, just as "Jennifer Villavicencio, an obstetrician who has saved the lives of numerous unborn children" (also a completely accurate statement and also normally true of any obstetrician) would be. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:13, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, as JGabbard mentioned in an edit summary, "'Poisoning the well' is defined as irrelevant negative info, such as 'an obstetrician arrested for shoplifting'. This tidbit, however, is both relevant and pertinent because it reveals inherent bias, and concealing that fact is disingenuous". SunCrow (talk) 05:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

If there are no reliable sources which say that the "tidbit" is relevant, pertinent, or reveals inherent bias then it is not our place to declare that this is so. jps (talk) 11:15, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The NYT quotes Dr. Villavicencio as an authority on abortion in an article about a movie that deals with abortion. In what galaxy is the fact that she performs abortions not relevant or pertinent? And if that fact is so irrelevant, why does the NYT even mention it? SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

What does NYT call her? jps (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

It calls her Jennifer Villavicencio, a fellow with the nonpartisan American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who performs ultrasound-guided abortions but has not seen the film, gnu57 17:43, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

That's quite the mouthful, but, sadly, in cases where WP:ASSERTions are problematic, it is sometimes best to just quote the source directly. jps (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Fixed. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:40, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

BullRangifer, for the reasons noted above, I have undone your "fix". SunCrow (talk) 05:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

You do realize that you are disagreeing with three editors, and that you're a minority of 3 to 1? My "fix" resolved the issues described above, and your insistence on including unnecessary wording seems to be POV editing. Those are the reasons why I agree with the other two editors and made the edit. I suggest you self-revert. The addition of those words is awkward, highly unusual, and unnecessary, except for making an editorial non-NPOV point, and we don't do that here. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

BullRangifer, no dice. I suggest you check your own POV. You want us to believe that you want to omit the fact that Dr. Villavicencio performs abortions because including it would make the sentence awkward? Another word beginning with "bull" would seem appropriate. SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

BullRangifer: Count again, 3 to 2. "Obstetrician" by itself is to some extent an obfuscation, just as it would be if she were referred to only as "a doctor." How about we just come right out and say "abortionist"? That is clearly what she is, because she is drawing upon her 'professional' experience. There, awkward wording solved. - JGabbard (talk) 12:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

JGabbard,: yes, that is exactly what the message is intended to be. Unfortunately for the anti-abortion crowd, WP:NPOV prevents it. Guy (help!) 14:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, WP:NPOV applies to the pro-abortion crowd just as much as it applies to the anti-abortion crowd. SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

JGabbard, adding Avatar317, per their edit and edit summary, makes the tally 4 to 2. My point is that editors who are in the minority should be careful how they edit. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:03, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't know, is abortionist a term in use by anyone other than anti-abortion activists like yourself? Do you think it is neutral? jps (talk) 12:58, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

jps, do you want other editors to call you a pro-abortion activist? If not, reconsider your description of JGabbard. SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I presume most people who self-identify as being pro-life on their userpage may not be aware that there are other points of view on how various terms and labels are appropriately used. As far as I know, the term "abortionist" is essentially only used in those anti-abortion activist circles. Do you think that is not true? Incidentally, the idea that an editor is an WP:ACTIVIST is well-trodden ground, which is exactly the issue here. There is even a problem below where I think I may end up having to take this particular user to WP:AE. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but not surprising. jps (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

You may have a point, jps. I suppose 'terminator' won't do. How about 'abortion doctor' as a compromise? No awkward wording, no obfuscation, and no non-NPOV. - JGabbard (talk) 14:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I think that abortion doctor (note the redlink which perhaps indicates a neologism) is overly limiting in describing Villavicencio's particular expertise in these areas. After all, she's talking about more than just abortions in her critique. I'm unclear why obstetrician is objected to... what do you think obstetrics obscures? Do you really think there is a meaningful professional separation between abortions and other procedures of obstetrics? I don't see any indication of that in the professional literature which defines these disciplines. jps (talk) 14:25, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

While all obstetricians have training in abortion procedures, most do not perform elective terminations. The objection to using the more general term should be self-evident, because it serves to conceal the inherent bias and lack of objectivity from any source speaking about a topic from which they derive their income. - JGabbard (talk) 15:17, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, we cannot accommodate concerns about source bias unless we have reliable sources which indicate that this may be an issue for that particular individual. So far, I've not seen any source which indicates that Villavicencio is possibly inherently biased or lacking in objectivity in the way you and others are claiming that she may be. We are not empowered as editors at Wikipedia to make such a call. jps (talk) 15:43, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Making such a call would violate NPOV by introducing editorial bias. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

BullRangifer, editorial bias is the only reason you are trying to remove a relevant and sourced fact from the encyclopedia. SunCrow (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, it's WP:UNDUE because it is poisoning the well. As above: this is like saying "X, a paediatrician who administers vaccines" in an article rebutting antivaccinationism. Guy (help!) 09:06, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, the Wikipedia page on "poisoning the well" (to which you wikilinked in your comment) says: "Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where irrelevant adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say". OK, then. The first question is: Is the statement at issue here--a factual statement that someone performs abortions--"adverse information"? If your answer is "no", the inclusion of the statement cannot be considered "poisoning the well". The second and more important question is: Is the statement at issue here "irrelevant"? It most certainly is relevant. If Dr. Villavicencio were being quoted on her views about opera or winetasting, that would be a different story, but the NYT article presented her as an authority on abortion and on fetal development. Therefore, by your own proferred definition, the inclusion of the statement cannot be considered "poisoning the well". SunCrow (talk) 00:42, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, The information is designed to frame the criticism in such a way as to allow anti-abortionists to dismiss it. That is clearly deliberate. It is functionally equivalent to framing criticism of an antivax film as "X, a paediatrician who administers vaccines, criticised the film..." Gynaecologists are all trained in abortion care (or should be - it is a mandatory part of their residency). Performing abortions is a normal part of gynaecological practice. Guy (help!) 08:03, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, without being rude, your assertion about obstetricians is inaccurate (see https://rewire.news/article/2019/07/05/medical-residents-struggle-to-find-abortion-training-as-statewide-restrictions-tighten/) and your argument doesn't make sense. SunCrow (talk) 02:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, the entire reason this is a problem is that it is a mandatory part of residency. There are several news stories covering the fact that trainee Ob-Gyns are struggling to fulfill this element which has been mandatory since 1996. And that is precisely why it (and indeed this film) is a problem. Anti-abortion zealots are deliberately and proudly working to eliminate abortion as an available option. Guy (help!) 09:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with SunCrow and JGabbard; it's worth the three words. It is not an accurate assumption that all obstetricians actually and regularly perform abortions. The fact that someone is trained to do something is not the same as saying they actually do it. All soldiers and police officers are trained to shoot people, most do not do so regularly, and many have never actually done it; if we're writing an article about shooting people it's not enough to specify that someone is a police officer without specifying whether or not they have. Personally I'm a computer programmer, I'm trained in writing compilers, it's part of the required curriculum for computer science, and I wrote a couple in college courses. But I haven't done it in 20 years, and mentioning me in an article on compilers just as "a programmer" without specifying whether or not I actively work on compilers would be actively deceptive.

Our article for Obstetricians defines it as "the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period", and the whole article, which is not short, mentions "abortion" exactly twice. There is a lot that obstetricians do without providing abortions. Our article Abortion clinic says "90% of all counties in the United States do not have a provider in 2014" (not just a clinic, any abortion provider), so unless the assertion is that all US obstetricians work in 10% of US counties, it follows that many obstetricians do not, in fact, perform abortions regularly, and a noticeable number do not do so at all; not as a minority, or due to "explicitly deciding not to", but due to numerous reasons, not least due to the legal difficulties involved in multiple US states (also detailed in that same article). --GRuban (talk) 17:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The question as to whether a person performs abortions or not is not the subject of any of the sources as I read them. Do you have a quote from the sources where she is cited indicating that her work with abortion is worthy of demarcation? jps (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Er; what? It's a direct quote in the article, and Gnu57 quoted it above, to you. And you responded to it, even! When the NYT brought it up. "Jennifer Villavicencio, a fellow with the nonpartisan American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who performs ultrasound-guided abortions". They've got more space restrictions than we have, and they considered it worthy of the 4(-5) words. --GRuban (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I read that to indicate that NYTimes thinks it is relevant to have a doctor who has performed the specific procedure to comment on the procedure. That's a bit hard to get across in nuance and is a rather different motivation from the one you outline. Still, if we must argue perhaps a blockquote is best like the one I inserted? jps (talk) 18:15, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I actually didn't say anything about motivation, and neither do the three words as the title of this section. It is certainly relevant whether the commenting doctor has performed the specific procedure, but "performs" is even more than "has performed". I'll accept the full quote, though it's a bit lengthy, just the three words would suffice. --GRuban (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, there is perhaps some (unintended?) motivation one can read into your use of police and soldiers shooting people as an exemplar, but it seems reasonable at this point to start with full quotes and then pare down when people can agree on how to summarize without bias. jps (talk) 19:40, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Concur with GRuban and SunCrow. It is transparently disingenuous naïveté to obtusely deny the potential, if not likely, conflict of interest such a person working in the industry would have. - JGabbard (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

This is a BLP violation. Strike it or I will report you to WP:AE and ask for a topic ban from abortion-related pages. jps (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Altered accordingly. - JGabbard (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. jps (talk) 17:51, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

GRuban, you missed the point that abortion care is a mandatory element of the training of Ob-Gyn residents. Guy (help!) 09:09, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure most of my post was directly addressing that, actually. --GRuban (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I entirely agree with GRuban. This information is quite relevant and should be included in the article. aboideau^talk 15:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Aboideau, in the same way that a paediatrician giving vaccines would be relevant when trying to dismiss their opinions on an anti-vaccine movie. Guy (help!) 22:59, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure how saying that someone performs abortions could be construed as "dismiss[ing] their opinions." aboideau^talk 15:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Because it's a form of ad hominem tactic, as seen in our WP:NPA policy: "Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream." It's an attempt to poison the well against them in an ad hominem manner. Context matters, and there are plenty of comments here which reveal the reasons why some editors insist on including that wording. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

BullRangifer, what "affiliation" are you referring to? Saying that a doctor performs abortions has nothing to do with an affiliation. You are grasping at straws here. Also, see above for my debunking of the "poisoning the well" argument. SunCrow (talk) 02:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, Here is what is going on with that statement: File:Donald Sutherland bodysnatchers scream.jpg. Guy (help!) 09:08, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Attempt to reach a resolution: At present, the article contains a block quotation from the NYT that includes the following paragraph: "Given a description of this scene, Jennifer Villavicencio, a fellow with the nonpartisan American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who performs ultrasound-guided abortions but has not seen the film, said that while an ultrasound of a 13-week-old fetus may show a visible head and body, the notion that it would be 'fighting for its life' is misleading". The NYT's own description of Dr. Villavicencio should be something everyone can live with. Let's agree to leave the description in its current form, shall we? SunCrow (talk) 00:49, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, that's even worse. Guy (help!) 08:05, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, worse in what way? Please don't tell me you're going to argue that the NYT's description is pushing an anti-abortion POV. That would really be off the wall. SunCrow (talk) 02:14, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Once again, concur with SunCrow. The description of the source is accurate, sufficiently descriptive, and should stand without further dispute. I appeal to Guy to WP:DROPTHESTICK. - JGabbard (talk) 11:15, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

JGabbard, unfortunately this parses to me as "leave the militant anti-abortionists to control the message". That's unfortunate since I hope nobody here is an anti-abortionist (that's a fringe position, whereas debate around term limits and such is entirely mainstream). Guy (help!) 13:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Seriously? SunCrow (talk) 16:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, yes, seriously. Even Ireland, a Catholic country, permits abortion. Abortion bans kill women. Guy (help!) 07:32, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

The issue here is neither scientific nor ideological, but is merely about angst resulting from quoting reliable sources fully and accurately. I think we are done here. - User:JGabbard

Yep. SunCrow (talk) 16:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Safety issue

The following sentence cannot remain in the article in its current form: "The movie has also been criticized for depicting abortion as very dangerous, when, in fact, abortion is significantly safer than childbirth". While the sentence reflects its cited source accurately, it must--for reasons of NPOV and factual accuracy--be qualified to make clear that the source is only considering the safety of women. (This, of course, begs the question.) My edits to the sentence were reverted. Trying again, I recommend that the sentence be reworded as follows: ""The movie has also been criticized for depicting abortion as very dangerous, when, in fact, abortion is significantly less medically hazardous to women than childbirth is". SunCrow (talk) 02:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Citing Vox that abortion is safer than childbirth might be a WP:MEDRS issue. --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:42, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

NatGertler, we already have MEDRS for that anyway. But we don't need it for this being a criticism of the movie. Guy (help!) 09:49, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The source doesn't term it as proposed. We also don't need to attribute the safety statement as a person's opinion. —PaleoNeonate – 08:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Paleo, we do need to attribute it because it is a highly debatable assertion in its current form. Otherwise, it needs to come out altogether, which it probably should because the POV of the source makes it unreliable on this point. SunCrow (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

How so? As Guy said above, the critic is about the movie, so on topic, and its medical claim is mainstream (hence WP:YESPOV)... —PaleoNeonate – 18:08, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@SunCrow: you stated ...the POV of the source makes it unreliable on this point. - Per WP:RSP: "Vox is considered generally reliable." So if you want to question the reliablity of the source, the proper place to do that is WP:RSN, not here. ---Avatar317^(talk) 19:38, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@Genericusername57: I don't disagree with your change. —PaleoNeonate – 19:58, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, folks. To review, the sentence currently reads:

"The movie has also been criticized for depicting abortion as very dangerous, when, in fact, abortion is significantly safer than childbirth".

The factual claim in the second part of the sentence necessarily leaves the safety of the fetus out of the equation. I have brought the issue up on the talk page. I have tried a total of four different sets of edits to the sentence to fix the problem. They are:

"The movie has also been criticized for depicting abortion as very dangerous, despite the fact that the mortality rate of women who undergo legal abortions in the United States is lower than the mortality rate of women who give birth in the United States".

"The movie has also been criticized for depicting abortion as very dangerous, when, in fact, abortion is significantly less medically hazardous to women than childbirth is".

"Anna North of Vox criticized the film for depicting abortion as very dangerous and asserted that abortion is significantly safer than childbirth".

"Anna North of Vox criticized the film for depicting abortion as very dangerous".

All four of my proposals have been nixed by other editors. Leaving it the way it is is not an option. Either the assertion has to be omitted, it has to be qualified, or it has to be placed in the author's voice instead of the encyclopedia's voice. It's almost impossible to imagine a more unbalanced and debatable assertion. So, what do the rest of you propose? SunCrow (talk) 03:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

SunCrow, not an option for you, perhaps, but the reality-based contingent don't have an issue with it. Guy (help!) 08:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, if you have to resort to childish insults and name-calling to try to win an argument, you probably don't have a strong argument. SunCrow (talk) 21:13, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Ethics of suffering and related science may apply but the concept of "safety to the fetus" seems misplaced in the circumstance... —PaleoNeonate – 22:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate, The context here is, of course, the US, where childbirth is actually unusually dangerous, especially among the groups who are most impacted by attempts to shut down Planned Parenthood (low income women and women of colour). The states which are most zealously targeting PP have among the worst maternal and neonatal mortality rates in the developed world, largely due to lack of affordable healthcare. The actions of anti-abortionists actually contribute to the statistic that the anti-abortionists dislike so much. Guy (help!) 09:27, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes I understand, maybe my comment was not specific enough, by ethics of suffering I meant in relation to the fetus (but here again, apart from late term abortions, which are discouraged and rarely practiced, neurology confirmed that at early development stages the nervous system doesn't operate the way we expect, and may not even experience pain yet). So probably not worth mentioning, but this was the only aspect that I could relate to "safety to the fetus" vs "to the woman" (a point that SunCrow appeared concerned about). —PaleoNeonate – 09:51, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate, good luck persuading some of the people active here that the fetus does not feel pain - or that the unjustly convicted black man does. Guy (help!) 15:04, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Guy, I have placed a strikethrough over the portion of your comment that strongly implied that "some of the people active here" are racists who couldn't care less about black men that are unjustly convicted of crimes. It's completely unacceptable for you to say something like that, and it's kind of sad that nobody else called you on it. You're not going to be able to help build a neutral and fair encyclopedia if you have nothing but contempt and disrespect for anyone that has a different perspective than you do. SunCrow (talk) 21:13, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh yes, thanks for reminding me that I may be wasting my time. It was in relation to the article, but I could indeed also be naive, I was raised in a radical conservative microsociety from which I very gradually had the opportunity to escape. Education and science were keys; I understand from experience that all was "good faith", yet there are ways to test tenets against reality (in the above case, neurology matters). Since the sentence in question now seems settled (it attributes the review to the author but not the fact about safety per WP:YESPOV), this will be my last comment on it per WP:NOTFORUM... —PaleoNeonate – 16:59, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Sun Crow you are being disruptive. In the U.S. it is a medical fact that abortion is many times less dangerous than childbirth. See our abortion article please and quit asking that editors report misinformation in this article. Gandydancer (talk) 04:55, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Gandydancer: (a) no, I am not; (b) no, it is not; and (c) no, I have not asked anyone to report misinformation. Nice try. SunCrow (talk) 05:39, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@SunCrow: By continuing to try to push your OPINION into this article, you are being disruptive. Note that in all of the Wikipedia articles covering Abortion, the "safety of the fetus" is not mentioned. Wikipedia policy says that we follow what Reliable Sources say. ---Avatar317^(talk) 03:00, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Avatar317: (a) no, I am not trying to push my OPINION into this article; (b) no, I am not being disruptive--I am attempting to solve a legitimate problem that you do not want to acknowledge; (c) so what; and (d) I have not attempted to mention the safety of the fetus in this article, and the edit history bears that out. SunCrow (talk) 05:39, 10 March 2020 (UTC)