Citizen Ruth(1996)

Short pooper:
Ruth (Laura Dern) ends up losing the baby but still agrees to the abortion. Later, she finds the $15,000 dollars hidden behind the clinic’s front desk, takes them and quietly sneaks away from the hospital and everyone’s view… with nothing else having changed!!

Longer version:
Ruth finds herself unwillingly slapped in the middle of a heated tug-of-war between two sides of the abortion debate who wish to use her as a political token to prove their own point. On one end are Norm (Kurtwood Smith) and Gail Stoney (Mary Kay Place), Evangelical anti-abortionists who bail Ruth out of jail and take her in, trying to use their religious beliefs to convince her to have the baby and one more chance to be a good, responsible mother -to no avail, since Ruth quickly finds herself huffing toxic fumes and smoking pot with the couple’s daughter, Cheryl (Alicia Witt)-. On the other are Diane Siegler (Swoosie Kurtz) and her partner Rachel (Kelly Preston), a pro-choice lesbian couple who participate in anti-abortion protests as spies to extricate vulnerable women the Stoneys try to coerce out of having abortions. Diane gets a hold of Ruth after Norm and Gail kick Ruth out of their house upon seeing her doing drugs in the middle of one of those rallies. Also working with Diane and Rachel is ex-Military Harlan (M.C. Gainey), who acts as an insider for them.

When the Stoneys figure out Diane’s ruse, they send a contingent of anti-abortionists to her farmhouse, to engage in constant praying and religious chanting, and openly offer $15,000 dollars to Ruth in exchange to bring her pregnancy to a healthy, safe term. In turn, Harlan offers an additional $15,000 if she does go ahead with an abortion. The situation escalates to a chaotic, mediatic circus with both sides of the abortion debate rabidly charging against the other. Suddenly, to further complicate matters, a famous televangelist known as Blaine Gibbons (Burt Reynolds), appears at the scene and offers Ruth another $15,000 to cancel the abortion she has been convinced by Diane and her team to carry on with.

Amidst all this, Ruth, undeterred in her irresponsible ways, finds alcohol in the house and gets heavily drunk with it. When Diane discovers it, she just berates her for it and tells her “all she needs is to sleep it off until they go to the clinic”. It is here Ruth realizes that all Diane and the Stoneys care about is to further their own respective agendas, by any means necessary, no matter how or what the consequences are. Eventually, when she is to be taken to the clinic to undergo the abortion procedure, she discovers she has suffered a miscarriage, but, despondent over everyone’s blatant hypocrisy, keeps it a secret.

Ruth, Diane and Rachel are helicopter-flown to the clinic, to escape the frenzy on the ground, with the help of pro-choice activist Jessica Weiss (Tippi Hedren). Upon arrival, she goes to the front desk and, as offered by Harlan, finds the $15,000 dollars hidden underneath it in a backpack. She grabs it, quietly exits through a back window and sneaks away in the middle of the crowd, while a pandemonium of both pro and anti-abortion picketters ensues in front of the facility, nobody having even noticed her passing by. As the film ends, we do not get to find out her actual fate and things remain just as they were before.