Hillary Clinton Produces Post-Roe Documentary

One year after the Supreme Court overturned the ruling Roe vs. WadeA legion of state legislators across America has moved quickly to restrict abortion access. Some have targeted medication abortions and mandated counseling for those seeking the procedure. Others have proposed outright bans and implemented “bounty hunter” laws, which have expanded the scope of the implication from patient and provider to anyone who helps facilitate abortion access. According to a report by the Center for American Progress, 50 of the 563 anti-abortion bills introduced in 2023 were signed into law that year. The reversal of the landmark 1973 case not only eliminated protections, but also set the stage for this sad state of affairs.

Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault's lucid documentary Zurawski vs. Texas again the horrific accounts of this post-Roe landscape to the experiences of real people. The film, which premiered in Telluride, follows Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, as she counsels a group of plaintiffs who have sued the Texas government over its restrictive anti-abortion laws. They want Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office to define the scope of their ban and acknowledge how its narrowness poses significant dangers to pregnant women.

Executive Producers: Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence, Zurawski vs. Texas joins a group of documentaries examining the state of abortion rights to sound the alarm. The most recent in this crowded field includes Sabrine Keane and Kate Dumke Preconception, which debuted at SXSW earlier this year and examines the dangers of anti-abortion legislation through fearless investigations into deceptive pregnancy crisis centers. A few years ago, in 2018, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg debuted Roe Reversal in Telluride. Their film took a more analytical approach to the conversation, mapping its historical precariousness.

Zurawski vs. Texas carves out a distinctive territory by observing the cruel theater of the American courtroom. Crow (also the cinematographer) and Perrault present the stories of four women involved in the case, starting with Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff. She was unable to obtain an abortion for her non-viable pregnancy because of Texas law, and it was only after she went into septic shock, on the brink of death, that doctors were able to intervene to save her life. The experience scarred Zurawski, and she suffered permanent damage to her uterus.

Zurawski vs. Texas opens with galvanizing footage of Zurawski telling parts of her story to an audience of bored-looking representatives of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the Texas abortion pill ruling. She is calm, but her words drip with defiance as she reminds lawmakers of their promise to serve and protect those who elected them. Crow and Perrault quickly cut from this footage to scenes establishing how Zurawski and Duane met and decided to work together.

After Zurawski agrees to be the lead plaintiff in the case, Duane rallies the others. Zurawski vs. Texas is as much about the process of building a case of this magnitude and impact as it is about the personal testimonies. The fact that the face of this case is a young, upper-middle-class white woman from a generational Republican family likely broadens its appeal to the state. It also courts an audience that might think the issue of abortion access has nothing to do with them.

In early scenes, Duane spends much of his days answering phones and video calls with others who are pressured to share their experiences with restrictive abortion laws. One particularly harrowing account involves Samantha Casiano, a young Texan who was forced to carry her nonviable pregnancy to term and start a GoFundMe to pay for her stillborn baby’s funeral. Scenes of Casiano burying her baby one day and negotiating the cost of a headstone the next underscore the growing emotional and financial burdens placed on people living in anti-abortion states.

Her story also speaks to the layers of class and race in debates over reproductive rights. Casiano and her partner Luis couldn’t afford to travel to another state for an abortion: Not only would they have to pay for flights and hospital visits, but the trip would require taking time off work and finding suitable child care options.

Dr. Austin Dennard, the fourth plaintiff and co-plaintiff in the Zurawski case, was able to get the abortion she needed in another state. But as an obstetrician-gynecologist in Texas, she grapples with the type of care she can provide for her patients. Conversations with her offer a doctor’s sober perspective along with a patient’s more emotional one. With the state’s opaque and severely punitive laws, Dennard could lose his license and face 99 years in prison if he performs an abortion that violates the law.

Notice the vagueness of that language: an abortion that violates the law. What is the law, and how should the average person interpret it? These are the questions Duane and his plaintiffs try to get Paxton's office to answer. The process is often arduous and humiliating. Some of the most moving scenes in Zurawski vs. Texas They take place in the silent, hallowed corridors of courtrooms, where we see these women negotiate their right to health care (and in many cases, life) in front of legislators and judges.

These moments reveal, once again, the harsh reality that lurks in American life. While a handful of judges, notably all women, identify with the plaintiffs and ultimately rule in their favor, lawmakers, often men, seem to be bothered by their narratives. The language that state officials use in response to Casiano's physical illness during his time on the stand, or to Zurawski on the verge of tears as he processes the irrevocable change in his life, is striking in its passivity and distance.

Crow and Perrault let their subjects' stories speak for themselves. Their film, in its direct visual style, functions as a plea to the subset of Americans who disown abortion. It's a tool for people like Zurawski's parents, lifelong Republicans who, until their daughter nearly died, probably considered themselves anti-abortion. For those who aren't convinced, the information Zurawski vs. Texas reconsiders abortion as, first and foremost, a right to life-saving health care.