Zurawski V Texas Places Women’s Healthcare with Courts

Never in my wildest dreams did I think Margaret Atwood’s imagination spelled out in “The Handmaids Tale” would become a grim realty for millions of young girls and women in America when Roe v Wade was overturned.  I remember sobbing and collapsing into my mother’s arms burdened with the fear this was only the beginning of erasing healthcare options for women and that somehow we are taking history backwards instead of forward. Yet, the clock began ticking backward even further with Amanda Zurawski.

Executive produced by former First Lady Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea Clinton and Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence, Zurawski V Texas reveals the dire impact of losing access to women’s healthcare and the extraordinary efforts of the both genders fighting on the frontline in order to regain those rights.

Texas had instituted the most ambiguous and unforgiving abortion bans resulting in women leaving the state for fear of themselves or their children dying in the process of childbirth complications.

Zurawski and other women with similar circumstances band together with a fearless attorney (Molly Duane) to sue the long horn state the extent of their traumatic experiences is revealed as they wrestle to regain their reproductive futures and set a precedent for millions of other women and families.

Witnessing setback after setback with the Texas courts is heartbreaking with a total of 22 women listed in the lawsuit (one of which is an Austin doctor who was pregnant during filming). Brought to audiences by co-directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, the imagery in the documentary will take your breath away.  A simple shoe box sized casket carrying a child to the burial ground speaks volumes.  A young son innocently asking his Mom why she decided to share her story after watching her go through such agonizing pain. Watching that same mother questioned by a judgemental priest absolutely turned my stomach like it was her fault her baby died and not in the hands of the law that required her to carry a dead fetus to term.

Duane’s fight for her clients mirrored her own ideology in taking on a case “I do not fear the storm – I am the storm.”

As women move into a new chapter of women’s reproductive healthcare, this film couldn’t have come at a better time.  If for nothing else to dispel the myths and untruths floating around about why these state by state rulings are a horrible idea for many women.  Some who have planned to start their families with the ones they love and others who are simply children being robbed of a different type of existence not predicated on becoming pregnant due to no fault of their own.

This doc also sheds light on the fact that very few women (if any) will ever again have any autonomy and will continue to have men in extreme power make decisions about their bodies ultimately shaping their future.  Pro life or not, I think we can all ultimately agree upon that.