Pro-life movie ‘Voiceless’ holds world premiere — but where it debuts is the big story

The producers of a movie opening in theaters nationwide next weekend didn’t hold a red carpet premiere in New York or Los Angeles to celebrate the release of their film. Instead, they chose the sidewalk outside the Supreme Court.

“Voiceless,” a pro-life film opening Oct. 7, held its premiere Sunday evening outside the nation’s highest court, where abortion was legalized nationwide in 1973. Organizers said that the film's premiere marks the first time the court has allowed a movie to be shown on the sidewalk in front of the building.

The film focuses on Jesse Dean, a recently discharged soldier who accepts a position as an outreach minister at a Philadelphia church. He later discovers that an abortion clinic has opened right across the street. Dean struggles to extend his outreach ministry to the women entering the clinic and encounters pushback from his community, his church and even his wife.

Jason Jones, co-executive producer of "Voiceless," told TheBlaze in an interview that the film’s aim is “to tell the truth about the human person.”

Image source: YouTube

“We’ve been demoralized lately with the latest Supreme Court ruling,” Jones said, citing the court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt earlier this year, which struck down a Texas law requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility.

Jones likened showing the film outside the court to “art versus the law,” and he “couldn’t think of a better place” for its premiere.

“Everyone deserves full legal protection from violence, especially the most vulnerable members of the human family, and the most vulnerable member is the child in the womb,” Jones said.

Jones called it one of the “most moving experiences” of his life to show the film at the Supreme Court instead of a red carpet premiere. He said that he became involved with the pro-life movement after he lost a daughter to abortion in 1989, and ever since he has considered the Supreme Court the site of her death.

“How beautiful that we can show our film that wants to be a voice for the voiceless on these very steps,” he said.

Jones expressed optimism that the film will be successful in theaters even though “we’re fighting for shelf space.”

“There are only so many screens in America, and we’re fighting with big, giant movie companies,” Jones said. “And they are big, lumbering giants and we’re little David trying to get our screens.”

Jones credited the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of Washington, D.C.’s Church on the Hill with coming up with the idea to show the film outside the Court.

Mahoney told TheBlaze in an interview that “it’s as if this film is a voice for those who don’t have a voice.”

Mahoney, who said he has protested abortion hundreds of times outside the high court for more than 30 years, called the sidewalk outside the Supreme Court a place where free speech should be embraced. He added that the court denied his request to show the film three times before it was finally approved, and only after he sought the aid of Catherine Glenn Foster, the president of Sound Legal Group.

Mahoney said that the court required them to use a smaller screen than they wanted and barred them from using chairs.

“We just thought it was absolutely critical to come to the court,” he said, adding, “We wanted to make history here.”

Stuart Migdon, the executive producer of Voiceless, told TheBlaze in an interview that the purpose of the film is to engage the church on the issue of abortion.

“This is a movie written for the church, to the church, to motivate the church,” Migdon said, citing a recent study that many post-abortive women self-identify as Christian.

Migdon said that many Christians and spiritual leaders are afraid to address the issue out of fear that they’ll offend women in their pews who have had abortions and drive them away from church.

“They’re afraid to offend people, so instead of tackling it in a way that wouldn’t offend, they avoid,” Migdon said.

Prior to the film's showing on Sunday, Mahoney and Jones welcomed those in attendance to its "world premiere."

The film opens in theaters nationwide on Friday. Watch the trailer below:

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