No Choice: Personal Abortion Stories

This award winning film shares frank personal stories of abortion. Marge Piercy, who became a renowned writer, could not afford an abortion when she needed one. Obstetrician Waldo Fielding treated women at Harlem Hospital for life-threatening complications from illegal abortions. Law student Danielle Lang was using contraception but it failed. Gaylon Alcaraz became pregnant at 17 in Texas. Their examples show how important abortion access is. Abortion is healthcare, and it is vital to break the stigma around it.

Originally created before Roe v Wade was overturned, the film asked us to think about what it would mean to lose the legal right to abortion -- "if there were NO CHOICE."

25 minutes.

A number of my friends had gotten pregnant in high school and I saw what happened to their lives. Often the man would leave and you'd be there with a baby and you had no education and then the jobs open to you were minimal. At that time, if you were affluent, you flew to Puerto Rico or Mexico or your gynecologist might do it.But I was a poor kid from a working-class neighborhood and I didn't know any abortionists.- Marge Piercy

SOURCE: PBS • AUTHOR: Pamela Mason Wagner (director) and Public Square Media •