Movie Review: Reversing Roe

Reversing Roe *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg.

 

Outwardly, the new Netflix documentary Reversing Roe tries to play things straight – giving voices to people on both sides of the abortion debate to make their case to the audience, even if it’s not hard to see what side the filmmakers are on. Yes, they are pro-choice, but I don’t think they ever really shove that down the audience’s throats – and they certainly do give those they disagree with the time to argue their case, even as they subtly and not so subtly undermine it. Still, even if you are pro-life, there is a lot to chew on in Reversing Roe – which is a fairly straight forward documentary in many ways, which more than arguing for or against one side, wants to examine the process by which the abortion debate got to the point it is at now. As a history lesson, the film may not stir up any new facts – but it’s useful in bringing it all together.

 

Reversing Roe takes a different tactic than many other abortion documentaries have. It doesn’t go all fire and fury like Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire (2007) – one of the very best documentaries of the 21^st Century so far, nor does it zoom in on one abortion clinic like 12^th and Delaware, or go after the heart strings like After Tiller. This is not really a movie about personal stories about abortion – but rather the process by which abortion became legal in America, and how ever since that happened, pro-life forces have been trying to kill it by imposing more and more “restrictions” on abortion, all while eyeing the bigger prize – reversing Roe vs. Wade at the Supreme Court level.

 

When states first starting passing abortion laws to make it legal, it really wasn’t much of a partisan issue. Ronald Reagan, who would become a hero to the pro-life movement, signed a bill making abortion legal when he was governor of California. Later, Nelson Rockefeller, Republican governor of New York, would veto a bill that would have outlawed abortion. When Roe vs. Wade became law in 1973, it was passed by a Supreme Court packed with Nixon appointees. Abortion was legal., and other than the Catholics, no one much seemed to care. It wasn’t until the rise of the Evangelical voters in the 1980s, that the issue became such a hot topic. As Jerry Falwell and his ilk riled up their Evangelical base, they started to infiltrate the Republican party more and more – to the point where now it is impossible to be a Republican running for National office (and in many states) if you are not pro-life. Reagan became pro-life even though he was signed that previous bill, as did George H.W. Bush, who was on the record for a long time as being pro-choice. Donald Trump has undergone a similar transformation.

 

What Reversing Roe does so well is show how this has become such a powerful lobby – and how this lobby doesn’t really play fair. The heads of the various pro-life groups basically admit as much – saying they are willing to do just about anything in order to make abortion legal. There are almost no third trimester abortions for example – and then it’s almost always because of medical reasons – and yet it’s what the pro-life movement spends almost all their time talking about. Why? It’s effective – as is all those graphic pictures they use. They don’t use scientific facts, because they aren’t on their side. They hide behind phrases like “protecting women” when they pass all these laws placing restrictions on abortion clinics, even though they don’t pass the same laws for other medical procedures that are as risky or even more so. They don’t care how they win, they just care that they will.

 

Eventually, in the back third of the documentary, the filmmakers will start to really dive into the various Supreme Court challenges to Roe vs. Wade, using helpful graphics to show the shifting makeup of the Court, from all men, to just a majority of men. The film takes on added significance because we know that Brett Kavanagh is up for confirmation for the Supreme Court as the documentary debuts on Netflix – something the filmmakers didn’t know when they finished (they get very up to date though, as it does include Kennedy’s retirement).

 

As a documentary, I think Reversing Roe does a good job at telling the history of what led us here. If you are pro-life, you will likely view it through a different lens than I did – but I don’t think the film demonizes anyone. It has a viewpoint to be sure, but it sticks to the facts.