No Choice Movie Ending Explained And Full Story: Did Amy Get An Abortion?

I recently heard someone say, “Imagine how much abuse a mammal must endure to no longer want to reproduce.” A big chunk of young people in today’s world seem to fall into that category, and it’s hardly surprising. I’ve been called out for choosing to be childfree, as people without children are often told they don’t understand what it means to have one. Well, in my defense, I’d rather see people adopt the millions of children around the world who aren’t cared for and who don’t even have the bare minimum of basic needs. I’m not even the right person to be talking about this, as it’s the women who have to bear a child for nine months and go through the enduring process of labor. One might try to ask, how many of these women who are birthing kids get a comfortable bed, proper medical care, and a partner who is willing to do their part to raise the newborns? Imagine how terrifying it gets for a teenager who accidentally gets pregnant and has no money or support from her family. Nale Hilgartner’s “No Choice” is based on this exact premise, and you have no choice but to appreciate the man for writing and directing a film that overperforms in pretty much every aspect. Most filmmakers choose not to upset a large section of the audience when it comes to talking about reproductive rights, but Hilgartner not only shows how difficult it is for women to make the right decision but also the shortcomings of the United States as a nation. Be it abortion being illegal in certain states or the fact that one needs over 500 dollars to get a minor finger cut treated at a clinic. I also absolutely have to mention the surrealistic dream sequences, where the protagonist finds herself petrified even thinking about the idea of abortion. 

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the film?

Amy is a teenager whose life is so awful that I can safely bet that none of us would want to be in her shoes. She has a mother who’s addicted to pills, so Amy has to pay for both the house and her mother’s cigarettes and pills. She has a scholarship to get into a college, but the money situation is so bad that she can’t even think of going to college, knowing that her mother won’t be able to sustain herself. Amy does two jobs to stay afloat: as a cleaner in a rich lady’s house and as a departmental store attendant, where we see her only friend, Lucas. The store owner, Randy, gives her a hard time for good reasons, but she still manages to keep the job because Randy has some sort of a history with her mother. Anyway, when a charming masculine man, Seth, starts to frequently visit the store, Amy finds herself drawn to him. Seth doesn’t waste much time and asks Amy out. Although the date goes bland, they still end up sleeping together, and the protection doesn’t hold up. Seth tells Amy that it happens all the time, and it shouldn’t be a problem. But it does turn out to be a big problem. While Amy knows that she has to take the morning-after pill, thanks to her terrible life and luck, she doesn’t have enough money to buy it. And Lucas doesn’t help her out either. By the time she manages to buy the pill, it’s well after 72 hours, and now it’s a race against time for her to figure out if she’s pregnant or not. 

Why does Amy’s mother want her to keep the baby?

Amy’s mother, Debra, gets her pills from a pharmacist named Jenny Pike, who is clearly selling the drug illegally from a decade-old prescription. To make things worse, Amy makes up a story about Debra being sick to Randy for being late. Even though Randy shows concern for Debra and asks Amy to not worry about her being late, he fires Lucas for lying to him. Lucas was only covering for Amy, and you can imagine how he must feel in this situation. Amy feels like crap, but she literally can’t lose any of her jobs, and to think that Debra scolds her for not giving her cash to buy pills immediately after this fiasco. She still tries to be tough, attend classes, get textbooks using vouchers, and freak out about missing her periods. Amy scrolls through abortion reels where people are spreading misinformation and malice like crazy. Someone is saying that nobody should talk about the cost of abortion pills, which “kills” unborn babies, while another woman suggests a native plant that can be used to make a tea that triggers a miscarriage. But Amy knows that she should probably go visit a doctor. To do so, she cuts her own finger, and since she doesn’t have insurance, she pretty much has to pay all her salary to fix the little wound. Amy tries to tell Dr. McAnnis that she isn’t in the clinic to just get her wound treated, and McAnnis realizes that she’s pregnant. Dr. McAnnis is not necessarily an extremist when it comes to abortion, but she does remind Amy that it’s illegal to abort a child in the state they live in, and if she still wants to do so, there are people who take care of that procedure,  which costs around a thousand dollars, a lot of money for someone like Amy to save in such a short period of time. Amy also has a couple of horrific dreams. In the first dream, she’s carrying a basket of eggs, and she drops them, which leads to horrible consequences. In the second one, we see her acting like a cooking channel host, where she tries to gut a chicken and we see ambulance and police sirens surrounding her from all sides. So when Amy finally gets into a fight with Debra about her addiction and her dealer Jenny Pike gets indicted for a felony, she can’t hold it in anymore, and she breaks the news of pregnancy to her. Debra immediately changes her tone and tries to be there for her, but she actually feels that her daughter should definitely birth a child. She tries to convince Amy that it’s going to work out just fine as soon as she sees her baby’s face, completely disregarding the fact that it’s Amy who runs the house, and Amy also points it out. You can’t possibly be serious thinking about bringing a child into a house where the grandmother will be out of her wits, high on pills most of the time, right? Despite Debra’s pipe dream and fake promises, Amy knows that her words mean nothing, and this house is the last place a child should be in. 

Why can’t Amy get a timely abortion? 

Seeing no other option to get the abortion, Amy finally musters some courage to reach out to Seth for help. She asks him to drive her out of the state to get the abortion, and he is more than okay with the idea. Amy needs leave for a couple of days, but Randy insists that she can’t just take leave like that with his store running short on staff. She has no choice but to quit the job, and off she goes to Seth’s. Upon reaching his house, Amy finds Seth helping out a friend with his car problems, which takes much longer than you’d think. She sits there waiting, freaking out, her anxiety through the roof, before they finally hit the road. Seth books a motel for the night, as they’re well short of the distance they were supposed to travel today. He also tells Amy that he’s sorry for how things went down and he wishes it went down differently. But in her sleep, Amy gets a nightmare where Seth is trying to choke her to death, so she wakes up and grabs a knife, what else do you expect from a person who’s crippled by such horrendous dreams. But Seth freaks out when he opens his eyes, and he leaves her alone in the motel as he drives off. Amy realizes that she’s made a terrible mistake, and as she wanders around the woods of an unknown town in the middle of nowhere, she understands that nobody’s got her back but herself. 

How does Amy trigger a miscarriage?

Even though Dr. McAnnis cautioned Amy about the grave dangers of trying any herbal remedy to cause a miscarriage, the poor girl has no choice but to brew tea from the poisonous plant. So bearing in mind she risks getting liver failure, heart issues, internal bleeding, or death, in the worst-case scenario. She gulps it down and starts to have a doomsday-like nightmare where she gets up from a patch of mud, fully covered in it. Amy approaches Dr. McAnnis in a red room with a knife, but she takes it away. The next moment, she finds her mother dying from an OD again, and then there are a few snippets of her losing the unborn child. When she wakes up to reality, she’s actually in a hospital bed, as Seth called 911 just after he left her in the motel. Amy finds herself surrounded by Debra, Lucas, Seth, and McAnnis, who finally gives her the good news that she’s had a miscarriage and she’s no longer pregnant anymore. But the problem isn’t over, as two cops walk in to arrest her, as the abortion is illegal. The film ends with Amy tearing up as cops put the cuffs on her, and it really makes you think, Did she have any choice in all this time? Sure, some of you might feel like commenting on “Ooh, why did she have to sleep with anyone?” But that’s not really the point here, is it? Any normal teenager who’s going through the hormonal and mental transition is bound to feel like having sex, and I seriously pity those who shame people for wanting to have sex. The bare minimum privilege any woman should have is access to birth control; that’s about it. If you’ve ever been with any woman, you’d know that even birth control pills or the morning-after pills have terrible side effects on their bodies. To not even have the option, while society screams in their ears that they shouldn’t “kill a baby,” which isn’t even born, by the way, is the height of hypocrisy. And sadly for Amy, she really did get the worst circumstances possible.

...