Everyone Wants to Use Her
My pick for this round was Citizen Ruth, because the abortion debate that dominated America in the nineties has only grown more serious in my own country. Since 2020, Poland has lived under a near-total ban; several women have died in cases campaigners link directly to it, and the latest attempt to ease the law is waiting on a likely presidential veto. Three decades on, it's still the same argument, wearing different clothes.
Ruth (Laura Dern) is a woman from the margins. Her addiction to sniffing glue and inhaling whatever else is available, combined with a long chain of very poor choices, delivers a view of life I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. She survives by balancing on the edge of every soft heart around her. Her brother raises the children she is incapable of caring for, while she spends every miraculously gained penny on alcohol or solvents — anything that buys her one more brief trip into oblivion.
After one of those trips, she is arrested. Again. The officers and officials all seem quite familiar with her by now. Before she's delivered to court, Ruth is informed that she's pregnant.
Both movements are trying to manoeuvre her according to their own beliefs, and both want to use her to "send a message."
The judge, worn down by Ruth's repeat behaviour, decides on stricter measures, hoping to force her into becoming a valuable member of society. He charges her with a felony — endangering her unborn child. Then, in private, he promises he might soften the blow if Ruth agrees to have an abortion.
From there, Ruth is pulled into the national debate between the Baby-Savers and the Pro-Choice camp. Both movements try to manoeuvre her according to their own beliefs, both see a powerful symbol they can claim for their cause. Both, in their own way, want to use her to send a message.
Don't lose sight of the true north. Both sides got so deep into their own goals and their own prospects of influence that they forgot every debate should centre on the needs of the everyman — in this case, on the needs of Ruth.
Citizen Ruth doesn't take sides, and that's its strength. Payne isn't interested in who's right — only in what being right does to people. Ruth is the least respectable person in the film, and the only one nobody thinks to ask. Payne may stay neutral, but I don't: I stand firmly on the side of protecting women's lives, and their right to make their own choices.
