As discussions concerning abortion laws continue to become a prominent topic in the U.S., Brandeis Pro-choice and Brandeis Democrats collaborated to screen “Trapped”, a documentary created by Dawn Porter that follows the challenges faced by doctors of abortion clinics. 

The film highlights the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, laws that seek to overregulate and limit abortion providers in 23 states, which ultimately restricts availability and causes closures of these clinics. 

“Trapped” follows various abortion clinic doctors stationed in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia and documents the struggle  to keep clinics open and operating, despite the states’ increasing TRAP laws. 

The film helped shed light on the issues that doctors face when operating clinics. For example, the Texas House Bill 2 laws enacted in 2013 set unnecessary provisions onto abortion clinics, including requirements that forced physicians to have active admitting privileges within at least 30 miles from a hospital, obligations for patients to make multiple trips and required ultrasound procedures.

The film showcased how these laws effectively disenfranchised women from having access to procedures, as the cost for traveling to a clinic increased and dwindled numbers in 2013.

These tyes of situations were a prime concern of Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of health care group Whole Woman’s Health, who explained that HB2 “crumbled the service infrastructure completely” by reducing the active number of clinics open in Texas from 44 to six. 

Whole Woman’s Health would eventually challenge House Bill 2 in the supreme court case, Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt in 2016, setting the landmark precedent that Texas cannot place restrictions on delivery of abortion services, as that would put an undue burden on women that seek abortion.

The documentary also discussed religious pressures on both the patients and the physicians.  

Although the clinics are often pressured by religious hecklers, some physicians such as obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Willie J. Parker in Birmingham, Alabama, are able to refine themselves within religion. 

He explained in the film that  his “commitment to his work is rooted in his early Christian and religious understandings.”

Although HB2 was overturned through the Supreme Court Case in 2016, on grounds that the bill placed a “substantial burden on a women seeking abortion,” the film insists that current anti-abortion laws remain a critical issue on women’s reproductive rights.  

Brandeis Pro-Choice President Susannah Miller ’19 opened a discussion panel after the screening, during which Dariana Resendez ’19 explained that women’s reproductive rights “ultimately should be the women’s choice because it is her body.” 

The students highlighted that many of the laws restricting women are enforced by male government officials. 

Resendez continued by saying that “denying a woman of having that choice is to deny her of her own rights and put her at risk, most often by excuses that are not scientifically validated, but socially constructed by other groups.” 

Miller highlighted that, although the film focused on abortion clinics in the South, other states are still implementing anti-abortion laws. The National Association for the Repeal of Anti Abortion Laws seeks to tackle these issues concerning women’s reproductive rights, such as access to birth control, abortion access, reproductive discrimination and paid family leave.  

Miller concluded the event by explaining that “although Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was passed, the fight for women’s rights and pro-choice is not yet over.”