We could all use some distraction right now. If you like your movies on the thinky side, we’ve got some good suggestions. Why not Netflix + learn about sexual and reproductive rights?
Here are some recent movies we’ve had our eyes on:
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
A delicate, painful, and realistic portrayal of two teenage cousins, Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and Skylar (Talia Ryder), who travel from their rural Pennsylvania town to New York City where Autumn can get an abortion without parental consent. Never Rarely Sometimes Always competed at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival for the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize and won a Special Jury Award for Neo-Realism.
AKA Roe (2020)
A controversial documentary about Norma McCorvey, the real-life Jane Roe in the landmark case Roe v. Wade. The documentary includes a series of interviews with Norma McCorvey prior to her death. McCorvey discusses how she became part of the anti-abortion movement and expresses her support for reproductive rights; she says that she was paid by anti-abortion groups to publicly come out against abortion.
Ask for Jane (2018)
Made in 2018 and created by Planned Parenthood advocates, Ask for Jane is based on the true story of the underground abortion network in Chicago between 1969 and 1973. The Jane Collective helped over 11,000 women obtain illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade was passed to allow legal abortions in the United States, and many members of the collective were arrested. Ask for Jane is the first-ever narrative feature film about the Jane Collective.
And in case you missed them:
Trapped (2016)
A documentary about U.S. reproductive health clinics fighting to remain open. Since 2010, hundreds of TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) laws have been passed by conservative state legislatures. Unable to comply with these far-reaching and medically unnecessary measures, clinics have taken their fight to the courts. Trapped follows the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers who are on the front lines of a battle to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.
Grandma (2015)
This comedy/drama confronts the real life struggle many women face when they decide to have an abortion: lack of access. Starring Lily Tomlin, the fictional movie follows a grandmother and her granddaughter as they try to raise money for the abortion. Lily Tomlin is a feminist icon, and this is one of her best roles ever.
Obvious Child (2014)
An American romantic comedy-drama written and directed by Gillian Robespierre. The story follows Donna (Jenny Slate), a stand-up comedian, who has a drunken one-night stand with a man named Max after breaking up with her boyfriend. She subsequently finds out she’s pregnant and decides to have an abortion. Robespierre hoped to remove the stigma surrounding abortion and to correct what she perceived as a misrepresentation of unplanned pregnancy in earlier films.
After Tiller (2013)
A deeply humanizing and probing portrait of the only four doctors in the United States still openly performing third-trimester abortions in the wake of the 2009 assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas — and in the face of intense protest from abortion opponents. The film is also an examination of the desperate reasons women seek late abortions. Rather than offering solutions, After Tiller presents the complexities of these women's difficult decisions and the compassion and ethical dilemmas of the doctors and staff who fear for their own lives as they treat their patients.
12th and Delaware (2010)
A documentary: One street corner in Fort Pierce, Florida, is home to both a for-profit abortion clinic and a Catholic Church-supported crisis pregnancy center whose mission is to prevent women from obtaining abortions. While the abortion clinic takes precautions against threats of violence and fends off protesters, the crisis pregnancy center actively spreads misinformation to women about the dangers of abortion.
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