Reproductive Justice : Video

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. Faced with increased costs of compliance and the alarming fear of violence from protestors, the stakes for the women and men on the frontlines couldn't be any higher. As the battle heads to the U.S. Supreme Court, TRAPPED follows the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers fighting to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade protected a woman’s right to choose, abortion remains one of the most divisive issues in America today. In the last several years, many states have imposed restrictions on access to abortion, including Missouri, where only one abortion clinic remains open in the entire state, and where patients and their doctors must navigate a 72-hour waiting period. In Abortion: Stories Women Tell, awarding-winning director (and Missouri native) Tracy Droz Tragos sheds new light on this contentious issue, focusing not on the debate, but rather on women themselves. Centering on the Hope Clinic for Women (just across the Missouri state line in Granite City, Illinois), the film profiles women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, providers who show up at the clinic to give medical care, and activists hoping to sway decisions and lives, offering an intimate window into the lives of women involved in the abortion issue, whose experiences are by turns heartbreaking and tender or bleak and frightening. On whichever side of the issue they fall, choices are made based on individual circumstances and beliefs, and the film underscores the strength and capacity of women to overcome and persevere through complicated and unexpected circumstances.

Playfully updating the 1950's school documentary, this award-winning film offers up political and social satire regarding the current state of reproductive rights in a fast-paced sweet to swallow spoonful. Found-footage, animation and original images are interwoven into a collage containing the fictional stories of a conservative politician, a young couple, and a fundamentalist activist along with the decline in amphibian populations and the insidious creeping erosion of reproductive rights in the United States. All linked together through a Chinese dry cleaner.