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Will Mike Leigh's new film change anyone's mind about the rights and wrongs of abortion? The director hopes that Vera Drake, about a Fifties backstreet abortionist, will spark debate. We sent four Evening Standard columnists and a midwife to see if this Oscar frontrunner changed their views
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YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN
On the night I went to see Vera Drake [played by Imelda Staunton],
the audience was speechless after it ended. We left our seats, headed
for long queues in the ladies, and into the cold night.
Something very deep had been shaken up in us all, the women in
particular, I felt, by Mike Leigh's honest, hard, yet compassionate
film of Britain at the beginning of the Fifties when society was
restarting after the ravages of war and want.
For ordinary people, life was obviously hard materially, and also
because of the strict values bequeathed by the Victorians.
After years of ...
