Motherhood By Choice

Before the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade guaranteed the legal right to abortion, thousands of women died or were hospitalized each year after undergoing unsafe back alley or self-induced abortions.  Now, more than thirty years after Roe, anti-choice conservatives have succeeded in limiting access to abortion and other reproductive health services with policies such as bans on Medicaid funding and laws requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions.  Facing these restrictions, many women, particularly those who are young and/or poor, again turn to dangerous methods of ending unwanted pregnancies. Dorothy Fadiman’s documentary “Motherhood by Choice, not by Chance,” screened at the Thomas Merton Center on September 13, focused on the connections between restrictions on access to safe, legal abortion, and these deadly consequences.

Fadiman, who spoke before the film was shown, said she intended not to make an argument about whether abortion itself is right or wrong, but to show the consequences restrictions on access to safe, legal abortion can have for women. She began making films dealing with abortion and abortion rights in the early 1990s.  As a college student in 1961, she had nearly died after undergoing an illegal, unanaesthetized abortion.  She made her film “When Abortion Was Illegal” in order to tell the stories of other women like her who had abortions during this period. Her two later films dealt with the fight to legalize abortion and the conservative fight to restrict access to abortion after Roe.  “Motherhood by Choice, not by Chance” uses some material from each of these three films.  She made it, said Fadiman, to reach people who might be “on the fence” about abortion rights, perhaps hesitant to be active in the pro-choice movement because of their personal moral or religious objections to abortion.

Most of the film uses interviews to tell the story of the criminalization of abortion in the late nineteenth century, the era of illegal abortion in the first part of the twentieth century, the fight to legalize abortion in the 1960s and 70s, and the attack on abortion rights in the 1980s and 90s.  Women talk about their experiences with illegal abortions both before and after legal abortion was available.  There are also interviews with healthcare workers, clergy members and others who became involved in the movement to legalize abortion.  Abortion providers and other workers at clinics that provide abortions talk about their experience with threats, harassment, and violence from anti-choice protestors.

The screening was part of a tour by the Power of Choice Project, a group that has worked with local activists around the country to organize screenings and broadcasts on community television stations.  Activists from the Pittsburgh chapter of Planned Parenthood helped to organize the local screening.  The Power of Choice Project is selling DVDs of “Motherhood by Choice, Not by Chance” for $5.00 each, with discounts for bulk orders, and encourages people to show it at house parties, distribute it to family and friends, and arrange to have it broadcast on local cable channels.  More information is available at their website, www.thepowerofchoice.net, or from The Power of Choice, Box 1297, Menlo Park, CA 94026, 650-568-9018, Melissa@thepowerofchoice.net.

- Patricia Lietz