Sundance 2022 – The films are reminding us about what it was like back when women didn’t have the freedom to choose
“Call Jane”Elizabeth Banks stars alongside Sigourney Waver. The story follows Joy (a suburban woman) who sets out in 1968 to get an abortion in Chicago, when the practice was still illegal. Joy meets Weaver, a network of women who perform surreptitious abortions on women. This underground network was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973.
This feature is deeply rooted in history. It captures the second-class status women experienced, even during a civil rights revolution. Joy does not tell Chris Messina (her husband) that she had an abort (because her pregnancy threatened to end her life), nor that she signed up for this group. Joy finally leaves her passive existence as a mother and housewife by learning to perform abortions herself. “Jane” – while teaching others how to follow suit.
Coincidentally “The Janes,”A documentary competition directed by Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin, which deals with the same subject. It is a wonderful companion piece to the feature movie. “The Janes”This feature features interviews with Jane Collective members. One of them notes that they went undiscovered for so long because the male-dominated police couldn’t imagine women organizing themselves. “This was a case of men underestimating women’s abilities – it worked very well for us,”She spoke.
You can take a moment to consider this: In the 1960s, activists women learned how to perform abortions. This group performed approximately 11,000 until it was disbanded.
Diane Stevens, Judith Arcana, and Diane Stevens were members of the collective. They performed abortions and were eventually arrested by the police after receiving a tip from a family member of a woman who was opposed to her plan to terminate a pregnancy.
In an interview this weekend at studio, Arcana and Stevens said that they didn’t think much about the illegality at the time, or that they risked life imprisonment if they were caught.
“I almost never thought about the risk,”Arcana: “That sounds simple-minded, but it isn’t that … That just wasn’t what was important.”
Stevens shared a similar view: “I knew I was doing something illegal all along, and I knew there was possibility of going to jail. I felt so strongly it was what I had to do.”Those beliefs came with a price. “When we were actually arrested, I was in much better position than other women in that I didn’t have children, I didn’t have a family that would be affected,” Stevens said. “I was willing to face it.”
Sigourney Weaver, in a separate interview at ’s Sundance studio, remembered the impact of the Roe v. Wade decision on women at the time.
“It was earth-shattering,”She spoke. “It was like: I can breathe now… Suddenly we were visible. We were able to make decisions about our own bodies. The last thing I ever thought is that we would go backwards to those very sad, desperate days when women had to self-induce.”
It’s a good reminder of how life was before women had full control over their bodies. One of many things that I discovered while watching the films was that oral contraception, once it was invented, was only legal for married women. This is a brain-twister for the modern mind. The Mafia was also used by women to obtain illegal abortions. This added a sinister element to the otherwise eerie back-alley nature.
Another film that is incredibly moving. “Happening,”The festival’s Spotlight section tells the story about a French university student who becomes pregnant and seeks an abortion. The film, written and directed by Audrey Diwan (based on a book), is strikingly similar in theme to “Call Jane,”Anamaria Vartolomei portrays Anne, a literature student who insists she has an abortion. She searches every avenue to find a solution.
The film is very tightly shot, mainly in close-up on Anne’s face, insisting on presenting this story through the eyes of a determined young woman who will not have her life derailed. “The loneliness of the character moved me,” Diwan told me in an interview at ’s Sundance studio, as she spoke remotely from Paris. “And I decided I wouldn’t make the piece on legal abortion, but more about this character — the way she wants to be free, the way she wants to have sexual pleasure, and do her studies.”
“It nourished in me a certain anger,” Vartolomei said. “Everything went from that anger. I put myself in the place of this young lady…. I couldn’t imagine that there is still a world where a girl has to choose between her life, her career. I just wanted to bring out the determination in my character and give her justice.”
In Europe abortion, is not under immediate legal threat as it is in the U.S. — but it is under pressure. A year ago, Poland enacted a nearly total ban on abortion. The current head of European Union is Polish.
“Aftershock” is another film in the festival related to women’s rights and maternity. In this case, it’s not abortion under scrutiny but the substandard care provided to women of color during their pregnancies, leading to sky-high rates of Caesarean section births and infant mortality, compared to white women. While this film is not about the right to choose, it is most certainly about the rights of women – especially women of color – being subordinated to other priorities when it comes to health.
For so many of the women I interviewed in the first days of the festival, the topic of women’s health care access is animating their lives as they are watching the slow-moving end to Roe with dread.
It includes me. These films prompted me to start imagining a Roe-free future. I discovered that it is something of an out-of-body feeling — being in a country where the government is prepared to take away a right you have had for 50 years. It is where the government has the power to tell you when and how to have your child.
“I felt like this was very recent history,”Banks said that she was involved in “Call Jane.” “I was born in 1974. … Choice is something that I feel is elusive in this moment in time. One of the reasons I wanted to get involved is the women in this story – everything they cared about mattered. We need to tell more of those.”
These films are a reminder of the past and what our future looks like as women. A time when mostly men made the rules, when women’s sex lives were something to be controlled and when having sex was something that apparently needed to be punished.
It also reminds us about an important truth: Women will continue to need abortions and seek them out, regardless of what the Supreme Court decides. “You don’t have to imagine what it was like,” “Jane” director Pildes said. “This is what it was like. The fear. The isolation. You can see it on the screen.”
