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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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Lynchburg Story: Eugenic Sterilization in America (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary tells the story of what happened at The Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded in Virginia. There, between 1927 and 1972, over eight thousand children and young teenagers were forcibly sterilized. The state claimed they had hereditary defects that would be passed on to their potential offspring - in fact, most were simply poor, ill-educated and considered financial burdens on the state.
- Walk in Our Shoes (streaming, Academic Video Online) Does a woman with the mental age of a two-year-old have the right to bear a child? Or should she be stopped - for her own protection and that of the potential child? Four Corners explores the fraught issue of whether, and in what circumstances, disabled women (and men) should be sterilised.
- 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.
- Project X - the castration experiment (streaming, Academic Video Online) Since 1996, six American states have voted in legislation to castrate sex offenders, either physically or chemically. Is it treatment, or punishment? Or is it both? Castration has been tried many times in Europe and the United States over the past century. In the present experiment, states are trying to save money. To reduce prison bills, castrated rapists and pedophiles are being released back into the community. Will the public be safe? Many doctors, rape survivors and prosecutors think not. If rapists are motivated more by power than sex, then castration may lead them to commit even more violent sexual assaults, including mutilation and murder.
- Perfecting Baby: Controlling DNA (streaming, Academic Video Online) Though advancements in genetics (and gene therapy) have enabled doctors to prevent numerous diseases and genetic disorders, these practices have raised numerous ethical issues, including genetic discrimination and violation of privacy. The subject of human cloning has also become of interest within the last several decades.
- The Eugenics Crusade (streaming, Academic Video Online) The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of campaign to breed a “better” American race, tracing the rise of the movement that turned the fledgling science of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control.
- ‘Handmaids’ Protest Nationwide (streaming, Academic Video Online) Drawing on imagery from Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the Handmaid Coalition organized demonstrations across the country to call attention to female reproductive rights.
- The Surrogate Scam (streaming, Academic Video Online) Childless couples make up a lucrative and sometimes illegal market. Surrogacy is banned in most European countries. Even so, a growing number of childless couples cross boarders and pay women from Third World countries to carry and deliver a child.
- Google Baby (streaming, Academic Video Online) Google Baby is a journey across three continents telling the story of the up and coming baby production industry in the age of globalization. Doron, an Israeli entrepreneur with a high tech background proposes a new service - Pregnancy producing.
- 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. FUTURE BABY presents us with a visually stunning snapshot of a future which has already arrived, a snapshot that is as disturbing as it is informative.
- 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.
- 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'.
- 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
- The Third Sex (dvd) This program examines intersexuality through four case studies: ambiguous genitalia deriving from a missing sex chromosone, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, 5-Alpha-Reductase Deficiency in an insular Caribbean community, and hermaphroditism in South Africa. The issue of social acceptance is addressed as well, along with the vital importance of emotional support and counseling.
