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Featured Films
- Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America (streaming, Kanopy) Personhood tells a different reproductive rights story - one that ripples far beyond the right to choose and into the lives of every pregnant person in America. Like a moment from the chilling "Handmaid's Tale," Tammy Loertscher's fetus was given an attorney, while the courts denied Tammy her constitutional rights. In this timely documentary, we see her sent to jail, and then forced to challenge a Wisconsin law that eroded her privacy, her right to due process, and her body sovereignty. Through her story, PERSONHOOD reframes the abortion debate to encompass the growing system of laws that criminalize and police pregnant women. At the intersection of the erosion of women's rights, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration, Tammy's experience reveals the dangerous consequences of these little-known laws for American women and families.
- NOVA. Fighting for Fertility (streaming, Academic Video Online) In the United States, some 10% of people who wish to have children struggle with infertility. NOVA explores barriers to fertility, from the social to the biological, and the state of assisted reproductive technologies. Follow the journeys of people navigating challenges from structural inequalities and racism to falling sperm counts, egg freezing, and IVF.
- Bei Bei (streaming, Kanopy) Abandoned by the father of her unborn child and suffering from severe perinatal depression, Bei Bei Shuai attempts suicide while eight months pregnant. She survives the attempt, but her baby, delivered by emergency c-section, dies in her arms three days later. Following devastating personal tragedy, Bei Bei finds herself transformed from a grief stricken mother into a criminal, charged with murder and attempted feticide. Bei Bei is moved to the Marion County Jail where she remains for a year and a half, until her lawyer Linda Pence is able to secure her release on bail. As Bei Bei and Ms. Pence take on the Indiana state justice system, her case begins to gain national attention. Their fight raises important questions about personhood laws, fetal rights, immigrant rights, and the criminalization of the mentally ill.
- Trapped (Streaming, Academic Video Online) U.S. abortion clinics are fighting to survive. Since 2010, hundreds of laws regulating abortion clinics have been passed by conservative state legislatures, particularly in the south. These restrictions, known as TRAP laws (or Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) are spreading across America
- Belly of the Beast (streaming, Alexander Street Press) When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California's women's prisons, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes -- from inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations -- primarily targeting women of color. This shocking legal drama captured over 7-years features extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, demanding attention to a shameful and ongoing legacy of eugenics and reproductive injustice in the United States.
- Future Baby (streaming, Academic Video Online) This investigation takes us around the world to examine human reproduction from a variety of different perspectives, from patients and researchers, to egg donors and surrogate mothers, to laboratories and clinics. The hopes and wishes of future parents mesh with research on how to optimize the human genome in the face of an ever accelerating rate of progress.
- After Tiller: Investigating Third-trimester Abortions (streaming, Academic Video Online) In this Emmy Award-winning documentary, AFTER TILLER intimately explores the highly controversial subject of third-trimester abortions in the wake of the 2009 assassination of practitioner Dr. George Tiller. The procedure is now performed by only four doctors in the United States, all former colleagues of Dr. Tiller, who risk their lives every day in the name of their unwavering commitment toward their patients.
- The Lynchburg Story: Eugenic Sterilization in America (streaming, Academic Video Online) n the early years of this century, authorities were obsessed with a belief that the "racial stock" of the country was in decline. By the 1930s, over half the states had enacted eugenic sterilization laws, giving states the right to forcibly sterilize citizens they deemed "unfit" to reproduce. This haunting film tells the story of what happened at The Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded in Virginia.
- Beyond the Politics of Life and Choice: A New Conversation About Abortion (streaming, Academic Video Online) Probably no issue in contemporary America is more divisive and emotionally charged than the debate over abortion rights.
- Voices of Choice (streaming, Academic Video Online) A 25-minute film created by Physicians for Reproductive Health in 2003, Voices of Choice documents the experiences of physicians involved in abortion care and reform prior to the landmark Supreme Court Roe decision in 1973.
- An Abortion Industry (streaming, Academic Video Online) Rumours of so-called abortion tourism in Europe have existed for years. The makers of this documentary have gone undercover and using a hidden camera, reveal how a great number of women from all over Europe pay thousands of euros to have illegal abortions every day. Abortions performed up until the 32nd week of pregnancy - only weeks before a normal birth. We
- Life Matters: The Story of an Illegal Abortionist (streaming, Academic Video Online) In an era when women could not get legal abortions there were only a handful of courageous doctors who risked imprisonment, loss of license, and their future in order to provide safe abortions to women. The filmmaker's father, Dr. Curtis Boyd, was one such individual.
- Racial Hygiene (streaming, Academic Video Online) Everyone knows that eugenics was one of the ideological pillars of Nazism. What is less well known is that the practice began in the United States at the start of the 20th century. Before being employed by the Nazis in what remains the most deadly program of 'racial purification', eugenics was a very popular concept among scientists in the United States and Europe. The science of 'good birth', which aims to create the perfect human being, sets out to achieve this by preventing reproduction of those perceived as weak, sick, disabled, or otherwise 'degenerate'.
- We Can Do It Better: Inside an Independent Abortion Clinic (streaming, Academic Video Online) This video documents the inspiring example of Four Women, Inc., an independent abortion and gynecology clinic in a small, post-industrial Massachusetts town. Four Women was founded in 1998 by four women who had previously worked as nurse practitioners, counselors and administrators in a large abortion clinic in Rhode Island.
- The Abortion Hotline (streaming, Academic Video Online) In Chile, where abortion remains illegal and punishable by imprisonment, we follow a group of young activists who put their lives at risk to run an underground abortion hotline.
- The Ethics of Abortion: When Does Life Begin? (streaming, Academic Video Online) This film begins with the storm created by leading case of Roe vs Wade and then provides students with an unbiased analysis of the ethical issues underlying demands for the criminalisation and the legalisation of abortion.
- Roe at risk : fighting for reproductive justice (streaming, Alliance for Justice) Actress and activist Amy Brenneman, star of Judging Amy and Private Practice, narrates the film, which describes the full scope of attacks on women’s constitutional rights nationwide, while telling the story through the prism of women’s day-to-day struggles in Mississippi and Texas. These two states faced the dramatic and wrenching consequences of radical anti-abortion legislation. But they’re also places where women and their allies fought back, standing up strongly for their constitutional right to reproductive freedom and justice.
DVDs
- Frontline: The Last Abortion Clinic (dvd) This FRONTLINE documentary investigates the steady decline in the number of physicians and clinics performing abortions in America, and focuses on local political battles in state, like Mississippi, where only a single clinic performs the controversial procedure.
- Vera Drake (dvd) Imelda Staunton plays Vera Drake, a devoted wife and mother in 1950s England. Unbeknownst to her family, Vera secretly helps women terminate unwanted pregnancies. When she is arrested, her entire world unravels. Written and directed by Mike Leigh
- 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days (dvd) Award-winning film set in Romania before the fall of Communism that follows two college roommates during a tense 24-hour period spent finalizing plans for a black market abortion. Stars Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasilu. Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu. Bonus features: making of documentary; interview with writer/director Cristian Mungiu; interview with cinematographer Oleg Mutu.
- Lake of Fire (dvd) Filmmaker Tony Kaye worked on this documentary for the past fifteen years and presents this graphic work on the subject of abortion. Shot in black and white, the film focuses on a subject where there can be no absolutes, no 'right' or 'wrong'. He gives equal time to both sides, covering arguments from either extreme of the spectrum, as well as those at the center, who acknowledge that, in the end, everyone is 'right' - or 'wrong'.
Podcasts
- What Would It Mean to Codify Roe v. Wade? (Question of the Week, Boston University) Linda McClain, a BU School of Law professor of law and the Robert Kent Professor of Law, discusses what it would mean to codify Roe v. Wade, after Texas enacted one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. McClain also talks about previous attempts to codify Roe v. Wade, the Women’s Health Protection Act, and the future of abortion access in this country.
- Abortion: Whose Choice? (Now & Then) On this episode of Now & Then, “Abortion: Whose Choice?” Heather and Joanne discuss Texas’ Senate Bill 8, one of several controversial new “heartbeat” laws that limit access to abortion. They also talk about the history of abortion from the colonial period to the present: the surprising availability of abortion until the mid-19th century, the physician-led campaign to ban abortion, and the GOP’s decision in the early 1970s to embrace the
- The Lie That Binds series (NARAL) From NARAL Pro-Choice America: The Lie that Binds, a 6-part podcast series that unpacks the terrifying rise of the anti-choice movement from its surprising roots in school segregation to the election of President Donald Trump.
- G: Unfit (RadioLab) When a law student named Mark Bold came across a Supreme Court decision from the 1920s that allowed for the forced sterilization of people deemed “unfit,” he was shocked to discover that it had never been overturned. His law professors told him the case, Buck v Bell, was nothing to worry about, that the ruling was in a kind of legal limbo and could never be used against people. But he didn’t buy it.
- FB 106: An ‘Uncommonly Silly’ Law: How One Man’s Crusade Against Obscenity Resulted in Abortion Rights (FlashBack) The backlash to a 19th century chastity law ended up sparking a far more controversial new freedom for women.
- Study Examines The Lasting Effects Of Having — Or Being Denied — An Abortion (Fresh Air) In The Turnaway Study, Diana Greene Foster shares research conducted over 10 years with about 1,000 women who had or were denied abortions, tracking impacts on mental, physical and economic health.
