In the 1950 London of "Vera Drake," the black market can supply almost anything: nylons, tea, sweets, sugar ... abortion.

		'Vera Drake' Rating: R for depiction of strong thematic material. Starring: Imelda Staunton. Director: Mike Leigh

When a girl finds herself in trouble, she contacts the dispassionate Lily, who then passes along the name and address to her childhood friend, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton). She works as a cleaning lady for a number of wealthy families, lives with her mechanic husband, Stan (Phil Davis), a World War II veteran, and their two adult children.

Their son, Sid (Daniel Mays), is a gregarious tailor going to night school, and the painfully shy Ethel (Alex Kelly) tests and packs light bulbs for a living. They share a tiny tenement flat, but it's clean, they get along and seem genuinely content.

Vera is the good Samaritan of the neighborhood, checking on her ailing mother, stopping to fix a cup of tea for a neighbor in a wheelchair, and inviting a lonely bachelor over for home cooking at teatime. She has the keys to friends' flats so she can let herself in, dispense cheer and assistance and be on her way. Everyone agrees Vera has a heart of gold.

It turns out Vera also knows how to perform illegal abortions using a makeshift medical kit. We watch her arrive at a poor or working-class woman's apartment and start the procedure that will result in the pregnancy ending a day or two later. You'll be "right as rain," she tells them before leaving.

Vera's clandestine operations are contrasted with what happens to a society woman who is raped and finds herself pregnant. She has access to a discreet world unreachable or unaffordable to the women in Vera's universe.

Just as all seems right in the world for Vera and Stan, and they seem to tempt fate by agreeing how lucky they are, the police come calling.

Mike Leigh, who dedicates the movie to his parents (a doctor and a midwife), absolutely stacks the deck in Vera's favor. One of the poor women she visits has seven children and suggests an eighth would kill her. Most of the women seem to live alone, in small dark apartments where hope seems in short supply.

Vera is unfailingly polite, even under duress, and when asked about abortion she says, "That's not what I do, dear. They need help." A member of her own family is scandalized and disgusted by the thought, insisting, "It's wrong; it's little babies. You ain't got no right."

Leigh, whose credits include "Life Is Sweet," "Naked," "Secrets & Lies" and "All or Nothing," is famous for developing his scripts with his actors and for getting under the skin of his working-class characters. Here, neighbors reminisce about losing mates in World War II and the toll of the London Blitz, and the underground economy is very much a fact of post-war life.

"Vera Drake" suggests that women will find ways -- no matter the law -- to end unwanted pregnancies, and that it will be the poor ones who pay the price. (Abortion would become legal in England in 1967.) The movie draws lines between the classes and shows one couple -- Stan's younger brother and his acquisitive wife -- trying to rise above their station.

People who believe abortion is wrong might not be able to watch "Vera Drake" without discomfort or anger, but the movie is compelling, uncompromising in its ending and provides a platform for a remarkable turn by Staunton. Vera is transformed from a chipper, energetic woman who sings as she readies the tea to someone who can barely speak, whose eyes are dazed or filled with pain and who seems to age 20 years in 125 minutes.

Staunton, an honored veteran of the British stage, played the nurse in "Shakespeare in Love," Mrs. Micawber in television's "David Copperfield," and spoke for one of the hens in "Chicken Run." She deserves the Oscar buzz (she won best actress at the Venice Film Festival), but she is also surrounded by an excellent supporting cast, who transport us to a world where the line between do-gooder and criminal is not as clear as you might think. Or like.