{"id":5825,"date":"2015-01-30T05:51:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T10:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2015-01-30T11:50:05","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T16:50:05","slug":"why-filmmakerhuman-rights-advocate-jason-scott-jones-takes-abortion-and-other-life-issues-personally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2015\/01\/why-filmmakerhuman-rights-advocate-jason-scott-jones-takes-abortion-and-other-life-issues-personally.html","title":{"rendered":"Why filmmaker\/human rights advocate Jason Scott Jones takes abortion and other life issues personally"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b>Life matters.<\/strong> Jason Scott Jones <\/span>was the emcee of a Students for Live of America event in association with<\/span> the recent March for Life in Washington D.C.* Though the event was largely ignored by the mainstream media, it reportedly drew about 200,000 in support of protecting the rights of the unborn<\/a>. The filmmaker\/human rights activist is the founder of Movie to Movement<\/a>, an organization dedicated to producing and promoting movies that promote a respect for life in all its stages, and is co-author (with John Zmirak<\/a>) of The Race to Save Our Century Five Core Principles to Promote Peace, Freedom and a Culture of Life<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span>He has helped to raise more than $6 million for women-in-crisis pregnancies through a short film he helped produce called Crescendo<\/em><\/a> and was also co-executive producer of the hit pro-life drama Bella<\/i><\/a>. In a newly-published article for National Review Online<\/a>, he talks about how a painful personal experience led him to dedicate his life to fighting abortion and other threats to the dignity of human beings in America and around the world.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

* An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that Jones was the Master of Ceremonies at the March for Life. I apologize for the error.<\/p>\n

JWK: You were at the March for Life in DC last week. Thousands turned out — yet we heard hardly anything about it in the media, even on Fox News. What are your thoughts on the media’s relative lack of interest in the issue?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0JASON SCOTT JONES:<\/strong> The mainstream media are dying, precisely because they squirm away from massive stories like this. The pro-life movement is the largest social phenomenon among millennials and other young people. I\u2019d rather be trending on Facebook and Twitter than be on the front page of the NY Times<\/em>. Images from the March and pro-life statements from young people were flooding social media for days. That\u2019s thousands of energetic young activists, documenting an event that shaped their lives. I would prefer to be present in venues like The Blaze, Breitbart.com, Worldnetdaily, talk radio, and social media.<\/p>\n

You know what the TV networks and remaining newspapers are? They\u2019re Bobby Vinton records\u2014which outsold Bob Dylan and the Beatles in the 1960s, because middle-aged people still bought most of the music. But which one shaped the future, changed the culture? It wasn\u2019t Beer Barrel Polka<\/em>, but Let It Be<\/em> and The Times They are a Changin\u2019<\/em>. The pro-life movement now is where the Beatles were in 1965\u2014on an unstoppable upswing.<\/p>\n

One of the funniest things I\u2019ve seen in my entire life happened at Walk for Life in San Francisco: A bunch of out-of-shape, middle-aged men in pro-choice t-shirts trying to stop hundreds of college-age women from walking on a public street with pro-life signs. The men were shoving the students, yelling, \u201cWe will smash your patriarchy!\u201d Do I expect the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> to cover that? The reporter\u2019s head would explode.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> Your pro-life film Crescendo<\/em> has been utilized to help has been utilized to raise over $6 million dollars for women in crisis pregnancy situations. You also were one of the producers of the successful pro-life film Bella<\/em>. Why does the issue touch you so deeply?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>I told this story recently in National Review<\/em><\/a>: \u201cMy unborn daughter was aborted without my knowledge or consent. (Or her mother\u2019s consent \u2014 my teenage girlfriend\u2019s father dragged her to the clinic.)\u2026.This person, who had been carelessly, recklessly murdered, had all the same dignity, grandeur, and significance that I had seen only in myself. Her death opened up for me a whole new moral world, one where every human being shone with radiance. And demanded protection. So I dived into human-rights work. I would avenge her death by promoting life \u2014 in every form.\u201d<\/p>\n

JWK: You’re the founder of Movie to Movement, an organization which seeks to promote life-affirming storytelling. What current and upcoming films is the group supporting and how important is the art of storytelling — as opposed to political argument — in swaying hearts and minds on an issue like abortion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>Beethoven said that \u201cwhat comes from the heart goes to the heart.\u201d He was profoundly right: Syllogisms don\u2019t change culture, stories do. With that in mind, we\u2019re really excited about Sing a Little Louder<\/em><\/a>, a short film about a real incident in the Holocaust, which will premiere on Youtube in March or April.<\/p>\n

Another powerful project is Where Hope Grows<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> a beautiful new movie that celebrates the life of a young man with Down Syndrome\u2014and questions the murderous myth of \u201cquality of life,\u201d which is used to justify aborting up to 90 percent of children diagnosed with this condition.<\/p>\n

Our new documentary 40<\/em><\/a> reveals the effects of abortion on America in the 40 years since Roe v. Wade. <\/em>It lets post-abortive women tell their stories, and shows you how the destruction of unborn life is breaking America\u2019s heart. 40<\/em> is now available on DVD. See it, and show it to your pro-choice friends.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> I think entertainment creates our language. Which bring me to the word “abortion.” It sounds so sterile and impersonal. You abort a rocket launch. What do you think of replacing it with the term “fetus-cide” which would, at least, get across the agreed-upon idea that something — or someone — is being killed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>Did you know that as late as 1960, the word \u201cabortion\u201d was almost an obscenity? If you said it out loud at a cocktail party, people would back away from you. It was like the \u201cn-word\u201d (rightly) is today. People used to understand what a sick, appalling thing abortion is. So rather than change the word, we want to give it back its power. Even today, when a reviewer wants to say that a movie is worthless, disgusting, and never should have been made, he might call it an \u201cabortion.\u201d People know. That\u2019s why our culture has built an elaborate mechanism of denial, which centers on the myth of \u201cchoice,\u201d instead of the facts, which are flesh and blood.<\/p>\n

JWK<\/strong>: You were also involved with the making of the film The Stoning of Soraya M. <\/em>which took on another issue that the media seems to prefer to avoid — that being the brutal treatment of women in countries where extreme interpretations of Islam are enforced.\u00a0 Why do you think the same media voices that have no problem portraying abortion opponents as anti-woman will at the same time label those who call attention to these situations with epithets like “racist” and “Islamophobic.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>My work with that project was ancillary\u2014I was just an associate producer, but it\u2019s a privilege to be associated with it. There\u2019s something very beautiful in our culture, which is a fear of painting innocent people with a broad brush, and a desire not to offend someone else\u2019s religion or culture\u2014especially if they are seen as weak. But that impulse can be exploited to cover up real abuses, to enable corrupt institutions and evil people, even terrorists. In the case of honor killing, people are ignoring the systematic persecution of women, and pretending that the men who are murdering them are somehow victims of \u201cIslamophobia.\u201d It\u2019s sick, and it needs to be exposed.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> How dangerous is political correctness to free thought and the future of democracy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>Political correctness used to indicate the fear of offending someone weaker than yourself. Now it means something entirely different: The fear of speaking truth to power, the excuse you make for yourself so you don\u2019t stand up for the vulnerable or speak out against injustice. It\u2019s always easy to cut yourself slack\u2014as some actors did in the 1950s for not speaking out against segregation. (It might hurt their films\u2019 ticket sales in the South.) That\u2019s why I consider Charlton Heston a hero, for speaking out against racism long before most of his colleagues. Today, Patricia Heaton and Eduardo Ver\u00e1stegui are heroes for bucking the industry and being honest about abortion.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> In <\/strong>The Race to Save Our Century<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the book you wrote with John Zmirak, you talk about the “Five Core Principles to Promote Peace, Freedom and the Culture of Life.” Briefly, what are they — and how well are we as a society doing in upholding them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JSJ: <\/strong>We drew those principles from looking at the cruelties, abuses, and genocides of the 20th<\/sup> century\u2014and asking, \u201cWhat could have stopped them?\u201d Our study of history suggested these:<\/p>\n