I didn’t set out to make a movie about contraception. After all, in a country where sex without babies is largely considered a basic human necessity like air and water, telling a story about the disastrous consequences of rendering the conjugal act sterile doesn’t seem like a great way to attract a huge audience. However, a strange thing happened on the way to producing the next great American blockbuster: two of my daughters became teenagers.
Raising girls today is ridiculously challenging. I know that every generation thinks they have a uniquely difficult place in history, but none of my ancestors had to face the barrage of sexually explicit material that young women are bombarded with each day. From music to movies to Instagram feeds to naked pictures sent from their classmates, girls today are constantly told that they exist as sex objects for men. On top of that, the pressure on young women to “have it all” in life is stress inducing and soul crushing. It’s not surprising to me that depression rates among teenage girls have skyrocketed over the past few decades.
It’s enough to make a dad throw his hands up in despair and move his family off the grid completely. Or make a documentary about how we got into this mess. I chose the latter.
The obvious place to start looking was the sexual revolution of the Sixties. As I researched the work of Betty Friedan, Helen Gurley Brown, and Margaret Sanger, among others, the link between the ideas they promoted and the culture my daughters are facing was clear. What I didn’t realize when I started studying, though, was just how important contraception was to these developments. The birth control pill came on the market in 1960 and, as Janet Smith explains in the film, it was “The fuel that made the sexual revolution run.” We simply wouldn’t be in this mess without it.
Thankfully, God did not leave us without a witness and a way out. My research also led me to the man who predicted all this, Pope Paul VI, and his prophetic encyclical, Humanae Vitae. At that point I realized that this was a story that rivaled anything Hollywood had to offer.
I am excited to be able to share Unprotected with the world for the very first time, and thrilled that the national premiere will be at the celebration of the 50th fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae at the Ontario Convention Center July 27, 2018. How fitting is that! I hope to see you at the conference!
Don Johnson, author, speaker, radio show host, and filmmaker is the president of Don Johnson Evangelistic Ministries, a media apostolate dedicated to creatively proclaiming the Kingdom of God and training and equipping believers to share and defend the gospel. Don’s movie, Unprotected, premiered July 27, 2018 at the HV50 celebration.
View film trailer at: www.UnprotectedMovie.com