I sit through this documentary with a heavy heart, because it really makes me wanna scream while watching this.

It showcases how abortion becomes a political issue to mobilize voters' support to win an election, and how pressure groups and lobbyists utilize their influence to sway politicians to pass laws in their favor regardless of scientific facts and medical evidence. It showcases how the democratic system in the US is broken in a way, that it no longer upholds its most fundamental values of passing laws that protects individual liberties (when they pose no harm to other individuals),based on scientific research, facts and statistical evidence.

It shows how people are being emotionally mobilised by packaged ideologies and propaganda, to uphold a view that may not be entirely factually correct. To split people into a bipolar view of one-side vs the other, when there can be compromises and more detailed arguments to reach consensus. It promotes a culture that it's either us or them.

One critic for this documentary, is that it could have provided more scientific evidence and medical research regarding abortion and reproductive rights. Delve more into the social and philosophical aspects of the abortion issue.

For example, how does the right to abortion interact with the family structure, economic discrepancies, educational and job opportunities? More discussion can be made on why people want abortions, or what makes abortion an important right.

Also, there can be more discussion for what does it mean for a foetus to have a "life"? What does the three trimesters of pregnancy signifies? These questions are essential to understanding more about the debate on abortion rights.

Instead, this documentary focuses entirely on the politics of the abortion issue. Which I feel like is not enough information on the issue.

Summary

A few hours after the annulment by the US Supreme Court of the ruling Roe vs. Wade (who enshrined abortion as an individual matter and a constitutional right),with the serious consequences for reproductive rights and women's health that it will bring in several states of the Union, it is essential to watch this remarkable documentary that constitutes a true Legal, social, and political history of abortion in the United States.

The film recounts how abortion enters the political agenda and how the annulment of that ruling (and, meanwhile, the increasing obstruction of its application) is actually the culmination of a long process carried out by Republican politicians and Catholic and Episcopal groups.

Review:

This documentary of just over an hour and a half is a legal, social and political history of abortion in the US that takes as its milestone the ruling of its Supreme Court of Justice in 1973 (a curiously quite conservative and totally male Court) on the class action lawsuit "Jane Roe et. To vs. Henry Wade" (prosecutor of the case),where it is established that the practice of abortion is enshrined as a private matter of women and a constitutional right and that the States cannot approve any legislation against it during the first trimester of pregnancy, they can introduce some regulations for the second and only for the third trimester they should regulate it only in cases to take care of the life and health of the woman.

The Roe Case is a gripping documentary, dating back to the 1960s, when therapeutic abortion was allowed (and not always),but women were subjected to humiliating male committees that had to approve them. Since 1 in 4 women interrupted their pregnancy and many of them illegally and with risk to their health. Illegal abortions yielded chilling figures of complications and deaths that the film details.

Throughout the film they are interviewed, among others, a gynecologist who practices abortions, lawyers and legislators who had a prominent role in defending the right to practice it (such as Kathryn Colbert) and lobbyists of the self-styled "pro-life" group, such as the chilling Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, Tony Perkins and Phyllis Schlafy. Within the first group, one of the interviewees is a Protestant minister who tells us about the surprising role of the Protestant churches, their ministers and chaplains in planned parenthood during the 60s and 70s.

There are multiple variables and actors presented in the archive material of this remarkable documentary by Rick Stern and Annie Sundberg. It analyzes how the objective of limiting and finally prohibiting abortion was fundamentally based on reducing the scope of the Roe ruling, hindering its application in several States through various regulations on planned parenthood clinics and the introduction of new legal figures that the film details. And the attempts to annul it by modifying the composition of the Supreme Court. In addition, other rulings that the Court issued over time are analyzed.

The record of how the role of the Republican Party and the position on abortion of some of its prominent figures changed over time is interesting. The opposition to abortion in principle was not a "political" issue, and was not part of the platform, the agenda and the electoral campaigns of that party (and of parties in general) and began being led by the Catholic Church. But from its alliance with the electorate and the Episcopal churches (evangelists) and other conservative groups, the campaign against legal abortion became central in the Republican electoral platform and in the state policies of its governors. The archive images of several of them (some very recent) show the variety of policies that hinder legal abortion applied by those governors. All this originated and originates displacement of patients from the republican States to the most permissive ones and of doctors towards the states where there are fewer and fewer professionals who practice abortion.

On the other hand, the "pro-life" groups besieged the clinics where abortions were performed, their professionals, and the patients, and did not hesitate to physically attack the doctors, even murdering several of them. Regarding the terminology of these groups (abortion as "murder", etc.),we can see that it is reproduced in other countries. Joyce Carol Oates's novel A Book of American Martyrs masterfully develops this theme.

Behind the Republican position, there are also economic considerations (when not),due to the fact that since abortion is a constitutional right, Family Planning should be financed by the State and the Republicans wanted to eliminate said financing. As for the Democratic Party, it was always favorable to the legal interruption of pregnancy and to support the ruling Roe vs. Wade.

The film and its ominous ending (it is from 2018) take on a sad but powerful validity from the decision of the US Supreme Court of Justice to annul the Roe vs. Wade ruling, taken on 6/24/2022, causing a cataract of laws in several states prohibiting it. This revocation clearly appears as the culmination of the process that the documentary describes so well.

To learn the real story, watch the movie, "Unplanned", based on the true story of a Clinic Director at Planned Parenthood.