Before the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to get safe and legal abortions from licensed doctors, women all over the country and world were struggling to get the care they needed. Now, almost 43 years after the fact, it seems as though we have barely progressed.
Up until last week when the Supreme Court struck down two key provisions of a Texas law restricting abortions, there hasn’t been a win for abortion supporters in over 16 years. The last time was in 2000 when a 5-4 ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart “struck down a Nebraska law banning a specific procedure abortion opponents called ‘partial birth abortion,’” according to NPR.
Now, in 2016—the age of feminism and equality—still over half of the states in the USA have increased restrictions on abortions, making it almost impossible for women to have the procedure in a safe way. This begs the question: what are we going to do about this?
Well, award-winning director Tracy Droz Tragos is ready to take action. In a new HBO documentary film Abortion: Stories Women Tell, Tragos focuses less on the debate about abortion and more on the women themselves, because their voices should be the most important ones. The documentary’s website writes that the documentary will follow “those struggling with unplanned pregnancies, and the providers who show up at clinics to give medical care, as well as the activists on both sides of the issue, hoping to sway decisions and lives.”
This is an issue that needs to be discussed and through this film, we can do just that. Abortion: Stories Women Tell will open in select theaters on August 12 and will be coming soon to HBO. Watch the trailer below!