(Los Angeles) While the battle is raging in the United States around the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, directors and actresses have stepped up to the plate at the Sundance festival to warn of the serious dangers that clandestine abortions pose to women and to society.
Posted at 11:54 a.m.
The feature film Call Jane and the documentary The Janes are both devoted to the collective created in the 1960s in Chicago to help women find doctors who perform abortions, which were severely punished at the time.
The French movie The event, by Audrey Diwan, which follows the obstacle course of a young woman wishing to put an end to her unwanted pregnancy in France in 1963, was also presented at the prestigious independent film festival before its release in the United States.
“I lived through those times and, believe me, we don’t want to go back,” said Sigourney Weaver, star of Call Jane, last Friday during the presentation of the film.
“I hope we will mobilize the younger generation who have always had this possibility” to have an abortion and “may have taken it for granted. We must put the emphasis back on the women themselves, ”insisted the actress.
The Sundance festival coincides this year with the 49and anniversary of the “Roe v. Wade”, which founded the right to abortion in the United States and whose future is now suspended by a decision of the Supreme Court.
This right is regularly called into question by local laws adopted in certain Republican American states which restrict access to abortion.
Defenders of women’s rights fear that the Supreme Court, dominated by conservative judges, three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, will soon reconsider this legal framework.
For Phyllis Nagy, the director of Call Jane, it was “urgent” to “tell a story about women who allow other women to emancipate themselves, with humor and a touch of lightness”.
“It’s an important subject. […] These things are extremely essential so that our right to choose does not disappear completely, ”she believes.
“We thought we had won”
PHOTO FILIPPO MONTEFORTE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
The director of The event, Audrey Diwan, when she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last September.
The “Jane” collective appeared in the United States at the end of the 1960s, in the wake of the movement for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He remained active until the legalization of abortion in 1973.
Its volunteers, mostly women, organized hotlines, made their apartments available for operations and used the family car to transport pregnant women to the place of abortion.
Some of these “Janes” even ended up learning how to perform an abortion themselves.
“These are women without whom I would never have had the freedoms that I have enjoyed all my life,” said actress Elizabeth Banks, one of the many stars of Call Jane.
A dozen of these activists are interviewed in the HBO documentary The Janes, presented Monday at Sundance.
Among them is Heather Booth, who launched the collective after having to find a doctor in a hurry to help the sister of a friend who was victim of suicidal impulses after becoming pregnant.
“Just talking about abortion was considered an attempted crime,” she recalls.
When the “Roe v. Wade” was adopted, several Janes activists had been arrested and charged.
“We thought it was over […] We thought we had won, ”says another activist, identified only as “Jeanne”.
Based on the autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, The event was celebrated last year at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion.
The film depicts not only the dangers, legal and medical, of clandestine abortions, but also the rejection, loneliness and sometimes the shame of the women who have had to go through this ordeal.
“What I’m looking forward to is not just showing the film to people who agree with me, but to people who don’t and asking ‘how do you react? “, explains Sunday to AFP Audrey Diwan.
“It’s one thing to say ‘I’m against abortion’, but do you accept that a human being has to go through such a journey? “.
In the France of the 1960s, “if you helped someone to have an abortion, you could end up in prison”, recalls the director. “I emphasize this because I know that unfortunately this is still the case today in other countries”.