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From "London Free Press, April 19, 1999
by Bob Thomas
When Andy Garcia read the script for Swing Vote, in which he plays a Supreme Court justice considering the abortion issue, it prompted him to take on his first major role in a television movie.
The time is early in the next century. The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving it to individual states to make their own laws about abortion.
A woman in Alabama has been convicted of murder for having an abortion and she appeals to the Supreme Court.
This is the premise of Swing Vote, an impressively cast movie on ABC tonight. Andy Garcia, in his first TV movie, portrays the newest, youngest member of the court, who appears to have the deciding vote in the Alabama case.
Seasoned veterans play his fellow jurists: Robert Prosky (chief justice), Harry Belafonte, Ray Walston, James Whitmore, Milo O'Shea, Kate Nelligan and Bob Balaban.
Swing Vote takes place in a period of national turmoil as the anti-abortion and pro-choice forces demonstrate noisily, attempting to sway the judges' minds. There is much give and take inside the high court's chambers and the scripted decision is not likely to please either side of this fiery issue.
Ron Bass, whose credits include My Best Friend's Wedding and Waiting to Exhale, wrote the teleplay.
Garcia, who hasn't done TV since his years as a bit player in series such as Hill Street Blues, said he was sent the script for Swing Vote and was determined to do it.
"I read it and thought, 'How can you not want to be involved in a piece like this?'" he said. "Even simply on an action level, the character has a great arc; he has an enormous burden on his shoulders."
Garcia, who also served as co-executive producer, describes himself as "a lifer" in the abortion debate. But he adds, "I also believe that you can't impose your own beliefs on other people; that's not the way our constitution reads. In protecting the rights of one side, you deprive the rights of the other."
The decision the movie's Supreme Court reaches, he said, "is not that far away from what our current laws are."
Garcia, 43 and father of three daughters, said his feelings on the issue have crystallized since he became a father. Those beliefs are strictly personal, he insisted. "I don't have any political feelings. To me that's all a political game......In these days, our political process is not something we can be very proud of."
Garcia was born in Havana and his family was exiled to Miami when he was five. While attending Florida International University in Miami, he began acting in regional theater. Moving to Los Angeles in 1978, he waited on tables and hauled furniture between acting jobs.
He hit the big time in his sixth movie, playing sidekick to mob-busters Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables. Francis Ford Coppola chose him to join the Corleone family business in The Godfather, Part III.
What does Garcia hope will come from Swing Vote? "I hope it breeds compassion for the other side's opinion–and fairness," he replied. "And I hope it sheds some light on the conviction of my character at the end, when he has an impassioned speech about the unwanted children and sways the last two justices to his side.......
"That's what I aspired to: that the film would provoke some thought in the aspect of the forgotten children, It's very sad that kids grow up in institutional care and have no family."
"A lot of who we are as men or women has to do with the example that our families set for us as we are growing up. If you grow up without that example, the odds are against you.