Writer-director Nick Loeb has released the official trailer of his new film Roe v. Wade, which will be available for public viewing, both digitally and on demand, beginning April 2.
Loeb and Cathy Allyn wrote, produced, and directed the film that provides an in-depth recounting of the background events and issues that led up to the controversial 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationally. Loeb himself also starred in the film as abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the co-founder of NARAL, who ultimately became a pro-life activist.
After working to keep his production under wraps for two years to ward off sabotage by a media that has often served as an ally of the abortion industry, Loeb premiered his movie in February during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
While at CPAC, the producer explained to Breitbart News entertainment editor Jerome Hudson in an interview that his movie offers an “inside view” of the landmark case and the key people involved in it.
Oscar-winner Jon Voight stars as Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger, and Robert Davi portrays Justice William J. Brennan in the film.
“I think it’s really interesting for the general public to get an inside view of how the justices made their decisions and how they argued and how they debated — especially when picking Supreme Court justices has become so visceral in the last several decades,” Loeb said.
Like his character in the movie, Loeb, 45, experienced a personal conversion and is now pro-life, though he grew up in a liberal environment where he was taught “when a woman gets pregnant it’s just a clump of cells, and there’s no real baby there.”
“I didn’t really know. And so I was pro-choice,” he said.
“But I was involved in abortions myself in my 20s and it really had haunted me and throughout my life,” he added. “I went through a conversion in my 30s and became pro-life.”
The actor said playing Nathanson “was really a reflection of my life.”
“I wasn’t an abortionist and I’m not a doctor,” he explained. “But I went through a very similar journey that Bernard had.”
Watch below:
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in 2018, Loeb discussed his lawsuit against his former fiancée, actress Sofia Vergara, for full and sole custody of their frozen embryos developed during in vitro fertilization (IVF). The case was the first to bring awareness to the rights of embryos, but Loeb’s efforts in the courts to bring those lives to full term have been unsuccessful.
Loeb shed some light on one of the movie’s main characters, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. In the film Jefferson is played by actress Stacey Dash.
“What I find interesting is that most black historical figures that have broken milestones have been revered and famous in history,” he told Breitbart News’ Hudson. “But no one’s ever heard of Dr. Mildred Jefferson. Why? Because she was pro-life. Her whole mission was to make abortion illegal because she felt it was going to destroy the black population in America.”
“The black vote has been disenfranchised in this country by abortion,” Loeb asserted.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Loeb was asked if the movie specifically reflects the pro-life position. He replied:
It’s crazy you ask that. I think it’s up to your perspective, right? What we tried to do is really just lay out the facts of how Roe v. Wade came to be and how it was decided. People can take one view or another. I’ve had a lot of people who think it’s in the middle. We tell it from the pro-choice perspective because the story is told through the eyes of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who was the biggest abortionist of all time. He did more than 70,000 abortions. Why some folks may think it’s a conservative film or why it aligns with those views is because the protagonist actually converts. He starts off pro-choice and becomes pro-life through his journey. It’s a true story.
Loeb explained the film highlights how Nathanson attempted to help the pro-abortion cause through deception of the numbers of illegal abortions.
“He made up statistics that they would then leak to the media to help change public perception,” he said. “That was a big part of getting Roe passed and pushing the abortion movement forward. That doesn’t reflect great on the pro-choicers.”
But, Loeb added, the film “also shows how dumb the pro-lifers were.”
“The pro-lifers never took a lot of this seriously with the whole legal aspect of the case,” he explained. “What I tried to do in the movie as a director is really showcase both sides. There’s such a big ensemble cast so, at least, there’s a character that resembles everybody’s point of view.”
Asked by the Reporter what he hopes people will take away from his movie, Loeb responded:
I really want people to understand, whether they’re pro-choice or pro-life, that when a woman gets pregnant, there’s a baby there. It’s not a clump of cells or a gob of goo. There’s a real living being that has a heartbeat in the first couple of weeks that you can hear. People should understand that so they don’t take abortion so lightly. Our culture has come so far that a lot of people utilize it as birth control. There are even actresses in Hollywood who wear it as a badge of honor. Whether you believe in abortion or not, I don’t think anybody should think of it as a badge of honor or as birth control. It is the ending of the life of a human being, no matter at what stage.
“I really want people to stop and think before they make decisions, whether it’s the decision to have sex without birth control or to understand the consequences,” he said. “Knowledge is power, right? When we have the knowledge, we can make better, more informed decisions in our lives.”
Roe v. Wade will debut on demand April 2 on iTunes, Amazon, and other platforms. Special and virtual screenings for church groups and other organizations are also available.