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WHAT REMAINS OF A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE?
Followed by a discussion with Filmmaker Dawn Porter and reproductive rights activist Andrea Miller
U.S. reproductive health clinics are fighting to remain open. With the recent overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade, a lot of what this film predicted is now happening.
TRAPPED is a feature-length documentary from director Dawn Porter, whose previous work includes GIDEON’S ARMY — the Emmy and Independent Spirit Award-nominated film about public defenders in the Deep South — and GOOD TROUBLE: JOHN LEWIS.
U.S. reproductive health clinics are fighting to remain open. Since 2010, 288 TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) laws have been passed by conservative state legislatures. Unable to comply with these far-reaching and medically unnecessary measures, clinics have taken their fight to the courts. As the U.S. Supreme Court decides in 2016 whether individual states may essentially outlaw abortion (Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt), Trapped follows the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers who are on the front lines of a battle to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.
“The film’s most compelling argument emerges from interviews with women who now struggle to find abortion services, largely poor women who’ve had to travel long distances-trips they could scarcely afford-to find a clinic that was open.” – Wall Street Journal
“Porter’s film is armed with a deluge of troubling data to make her case, but it’s the personal stories she captures that make her argument all the more compelling.” – Guardian
Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. The film broadcast on HBO in July 2013 and has been used to engage local communities about indigent defense, the U.S. justice system and socioeconomic influences on crime.
Dawn’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (2014, PBS) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary film chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Dawn interviewed President Obama for the film, which aired nationally on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2015.
Dawn is a Keppler Speaker. She has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and is a returning guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show.
Prior to her work as a filmmaker, Dawn was director of standards and practices at ABC News and vice president of standard and practices at A&E Television Networks. She graduated from Swarthmore College and Georgetown Law Center and practiced law at the firm of Baker & Hostetler for five years.
