Hoping to "become the editorial page of the studio", and to "provoke a middle-class sense of responsibility for those less fortunate than themselves, and to stimulate moral reforms", Weber specialized in making films that stressed both high quality and moral rectitude, including films of the "burning social and moral issues of the day", among them such controversial themes as abortion, eugenics, and birth control in "Where Are My Children?" (1916), influenced by the trial of Charles Stielow, an innocent man who was almost executed, opposition to capital punishment based on circumstantial evidence in " The People vs. John Doe"; and alcoholism and opium addiction in "Hop, the Devil's Brew", which were all successful at the box office, but, while embraced by reformers in the film industry, "drew the ire of the conservatives". Despite the predominance of strong women in her films, in 1916 Weber disassociated herself from the women's suffrage movement.