Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa

A film by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie

US | 2019 | 13 minutes | Color | DVD | English | Order No. W201256 |

At the Philadelphia abortion helpline, counselors field nonstop calls from women and teens who are seeking to end a pregnancy but can’t afford to, illustrating how economic stigma and cruel laws determine who has access to abortion in America.

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SYNOPSIS

ABORTION HELPLINE, THIS IS LISA, shortlisted for Oscars 2021 for Best Documentary Short Subject and winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Shorts at AFI Docs 2020, is a powerful short documentary that exposes how economic stigma and cruel legislation determines who in America has access to abortion.

At a women’s health fund in Philadelphia, phone counselors—all called Lisa to protect their anonymity—arrive each morning to the nonstop ring of calls from people who are seeking to end a pregnancy and can’t afford to. In 1976, only three years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, the Hyde Amendment was enacted with the explicit intention of denying poor individuals—those receiving Medicaid—access to abortion. By giving voice to those affected by discriminatory policies, the film exposes how legislation like the Hyde Amendment ties access to abortion to economic status and denies reproductive justice.

As we head into election season, ABORTION HELPLINE, THIS IS LISA is an essential tool for helping Americans understand the brutal legacy of the Hyde Amendment and why its repeal has become a litmus test for progressive politicians.

PRESS

"Fascinating"

The Moveable Fest

"Powerful. Each "Lisa" has to fight to keep from offering more than they can while trying to give each woman who calls in a small sense of hope."

Hyperallergic

"This powerful film shows the brutality of the Hyde Amendment. Through brief glimpses into the experiences of those directly impacted by the Hyde Amendment, this film reveals, in no uncertain terms, that those who purport to care about 'life' do not care about people's lives at all."

Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law UC Berkeley School of Law

“This short film is incredibly powerful. In twelve remarkable minutes, it manages to convey all the viewer needs to know about the cruel situation in states in which Medicaid does not pay for abortions: the desperation of those women calling an abortion fund; the compassion— and inadequate resources—of those who try valiantly to help them; the self righteousness and callousness of so-called “prolife” politicians from the infamous Henry Hyde down to the present: and the main message - American society does not suffiently care about poor women or the children they already have."

Carole Joffe co-author, Obstacle Course: The everyday struggle to get an abortion in America

"...moving, totally authentic. It skillfully weaves together the stories of the callers, the reactions of the hot line workers, and the policy context. Bravo!"

Marlene Fried Faculty director of Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program and Professor of Philosophy, Hampshire College

"....Spotlights both the threats to reproductive rights and the price of economic injustice."

Steve Pond The Wrap

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

93rd Oscars Shortlist, Documentary Short Subject
Grand Jury Award, AFI Docs
Best Short Nominee, IDA Documentary Awards
Best Short Documentary Shortlist, Cinema Eye
Best Short Shortlist, DOC NYC
Honorable Mention, Florida Film Festival
Gratitude Award & Best Made in PA Documentary Short, Centre Film Festival
Impact Video Finalist, Social Impact Media Awards

Sundance Film Festival
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Full Frame Doc Film Festival
Philadelphia Film and Video Festival
Athena Film Festival
ACT Human Rights Film Festival
Boston International Film Festival
The Women’s Film Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Barbara Attie

The EMMY® nominated filmmakers Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater have collaborated on award-winning documentaries for national and international broadcast, as well as wide-spread educational and advocacy use, since 1990. Attie and Goldwater’s work has been recognized with a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Leeway Transformation Award, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Media. Their previous documentaries on reproductive rights include Rosita (HBO Latin America, 2006) the story of a 9-year-old Nicaraguan girl whose rape and pregnancy resulted in a political and religious uproar that resonated across Latin America; Legal But Out of Reach (2000), about women whose personal struggles lead them to choose abortion, only to find that the lack of public funding made that choice inaccessible; and Motherless: A Legacy of Loss from Illegal Abortion (1992) about children orphaned when their mothers died after back-alley abortions before Roe. v. Wade. Additional independent documentaries produced and directed by Attie and Goldwater for national public television broadcast are the following: BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez (2015), a biography of the renowned African American poet and activist; Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter (2009), an ITVS co-production also supported by Sundance, about a Malian woman seeking asylum in the US to protect her daughter from female genital cutting; Maggie Growls (2003, ITVS co-production) a whimsical biography of Gray Panther founder Maggie Kuhn; and Landowska: Uncommon Visionary (1997), a biography of the celebrated harpsichordist Wanda Landowska.

Barbara Attie received an M.F.A. from Temple University, where she was named to the School of Communications and Theater Hall of Fame. Her documentary about teenage girls who joined the resistance movement during the Holocaust, Daring to Resist (with Martha Lubell), was broadcast nationally on PBS and named “one of the 10 best documentaries of 2000” by The Boston Globe. Attie is former board chair of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and served on the Board of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Janet Goldwater

The EMMY® nominated filmmakers Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater have collaborated on award-winning documentaries for national and international broadcast, as well as wide-spread educational and advocacy use, since 1990. Attie and Goldwater’s work has been recognized with a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Leeway Transformation Award, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Media. Their previous documentaries on reproductive rights include Rosita (HBO Latin America, 2006) the story of a 9-year-old Nicaraguan girl whose rape and pregnancy resulted in a political and religious uproar that resonated across Latin America; Legal But Out of Reach (2000), about women whose personal struggles lead them to choose abortion, only to find that the lack of public funding made that choice inaccessible; and Motherless: A Legacy of Loss from Illegal Abortion (1992) about children orphaned when their mothers died after back-alley abortions before Roe. v. Wade. Additional independent documentaries produced and directed by Attie and Goldwater for national public television broadcast are the following: BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez (2015), a biography of the renowned African American poet and activist; Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter (2009), an ITVS co-production also supported by Sundance, about a Malian woman seeking asylum in the US to protect her daughter from female genital cutting; Maggie Growls (2003, ITVS co-production) a whimsical biography of Gray Panther founder Maggie Kuhn; and Landowska: Uncommon Visionary (1997), a biography of the celebrated harpsichordist Wanda Landowska.

Janet Goldwater earned an M.F.A. from Boston University. She has taught at Sweet Briar College, Rowan University, Temple University and the Art Institute of Boston. Goldwater served on the boards of the Women’s Medical Fund, the Philadelphia chapter of the ACLU-PA, and NARAL-PA. She is currently a patient escort at the Philadelphia Women’s Center and a founding member of the Philadelphia Support Network (for abortion clinics). (06/20)

Mike Attie

Mike Attie is a Philadelphia-based filmmaker and educator. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of the Arts and director of the film major program. Mike was a 2014 Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellow and was named one of The Independent’s “10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2014.” His feature documentary, In Country, was supported by the Sundance Documentary Film Program, IFP and the Points North Institute, and has received extensive press including a NYTimes Op-Doc and articles in Salon and The Atlantic. His 2019 short, Moment to Moment premiered at Full Frame and won jury awards at IFFBoston and the San Francisco DocFest. Mike holds an M.F.A. in documentary film from Stanford University. He was a cameraperson on Attie & Goldwater’s previous documentary BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez. (06/20)

Subject Areas

Activism Human Rights Law Public Health Racism Reproductive Rights Young Women

Mrs. Goundo's Daughter

Mrs. Goundo is fighting to remain in the United States. But it’s not just because of the ethnic conflict and drought that has plagued her native Mali. Threatened with deportation, her two-year-old daughter could be forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), like 85 percent of women and girls in Mali. Using rarely cited grounds for political asylum, Goundo must convince an immigration judge that her daughter is in danger. Sensitive and moving, this important film reveals how women are profoundly affected by the legal struggles surrounding immigration. As issues of asylum, international law and human rights collide with FGM and its devastating health consequences, filmmakers Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater travel between an FGM ceremony in a Malian village, where dozens of girls are involved, to the West African expatriate community of Philadelphia, where Mrs. Goundo challenges beliefs and battles the American legal system for her child’s future.

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Maggie Growls

MAGGIE GROWLS is a portrait of the amazing, canny, lusty, charming and unstoppable Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995), who founded the Gray Panthers (the nation’s leading progressive senior advocacy organization) in 1970 after being forced to retire from a job she loved at the age of 65. Her outrage and determination fueled a political chain reaction that forever changed the lives of older Americans, repealing mandatory retirement laws and proving that “old” is not a dirty word. Out of what Ralph Nader called “the most significant retirement in modern American history,” Maggie created one of the most potent social movements of the century – one that was committed to justice, peace and fairness to all, regardless of age. Her defiant “panther growl” and dramatic slogan “Do something outrageous every day” launched nothing less than a contemporary cultural revolution, both in terms of redefining the meaning of age and through her insistence on “young and old together.” "Maggie Growls" looks at the forces that shaped the movement as well as its leader, using Maggie’s life as a lens through which to examine the intertwined issues of social reform and aging in America. This inspiring documentary is an important addition to courses in American Studies, History, Women’s Studies, Gerontology and Sociology. This film is a presentation of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

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America's War on Abortion

In this BAFTA award-winning film, two-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker Deeyah Khan examines the erosion of reproductive rights in the United States, foregrounding the stories of those often forgotten in this ‘war’ who nonetheless find themselves on its frontline: impoverished women and women of color.

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Belly of the Beast

Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, this Emmy-winning documentary exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

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Abortion and Women's Rights 1970

The first film ever made about the struggle for abortion rights in the U.S., originally released in 1970, this powerful archival piece documents women’s voices from a pre-Roe v. Wade era.

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Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust

Why would a young person choose resistance rather than submission during Hitler's reign of terror while her world was collapsing around her? In this gripping documentary, three Jewish women answer this question by recalling their lives as teenagers in occupied Holland, Hungary and Poland, when they refused to remain passive as the Nazis rounded up local Jewish populations. Defying her family's wishes, each girl found an unexpected way of fighting back -- Barbara Rodbell, as a ballet dancer shuttling Jews to safe houses and distributing resistance newspapers; Faye Schulman, as a photographer and partisan waging guerrilla war against the Germans; and Shulamit Lack, as a leader in an underground Zionist group smuggling Jews across the border. Enriched by home movies, archival footage, and previously unpublished photographs, the women's varied and vibrant stories provide a unique look at Jewish resistance to Nazism, a subject all too often consigned to history's footnotes.

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Jane: An Abortion Service

This fascinating political look at a little-known chapter in women's history tells the story of "Jane", the Chicago-based women's health group who performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training.

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Fly So Far

A grave warning of how far state control of women’s bodies can go, FLY SO FAR follows Teodora Vásquez, who was sentenced to thirty years in a Salvadorean prison after she suffered a stillbirth.

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62 Days

62 DAYS is an urgent examination of a growing trend of laws that seek to control a pregnant woman's body.

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I Had an Abortion

Underneath the din of politicians posturing about "life" and "choice" and beyond the shouted slogans about murder and rights, there are real stories of real women who have had abortions. Each year in the US, 1.3 million abortions occur, but the topic is still so stigmatized it’s never discussed in polite company. Powerful, poignant, and fiercely honest, I HAD AN ABORTION tackles this taboo, featuring 10 women – including famed feminist Gloria Steinem – who candidly describe experiences spanning seven decades, from the years before Roe v. Wade to the present day. Filmmakers Jennifer Baumgardner (author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future) and Gillian Aldrich insightfully document how changing societal pressures have affected women’s choices and experiences. Cutting across age, race, class and religion, the film unfolds personal narratives with intimate interviews, archival footage, family photos and home movies. Arranged chronologically, the stories begin with Florence Rice, now 86, telling without regret about her abortion in the 1930s. Other women speaking out include Marion Banzhaf, who, inspired by both the Miss America protests and the Stonewall rebellion, fundraised on her campus to pay for her abortion, and Robin Ringleka-Kottke, who found herself pregnant as an 18-year-old pro-life Catholic. With heartfelt stories that are never sentimentalized, I HAD AN ABORTION personalizes what has become a vicious and abstract debate.

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Birthright: A War Story

BIRTHRIGHT: A WAR STORY examines how women are being jailed, physically violated and even put at risk of dying as a radical movement tightens its grip across America.

Read Civia Tamarkin's director's statement here.

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Middle of Everywhere

South Dakota is America’s heartland—waving cornfields, hard-working farmers, family values and a population of 750,000, the majority of whom identify as conservative and anti-abortion. Native daughter Rebecca Lee returns home in 2006 on the brink of a historic state vote: House Bill 1215 could make South Dakota the first state to outlaw most abortions since Roe vs. Wade passed almost 30 years earlier. In The Middle of Everywhere, Lee discovers the debate to be complex, with both sides claiming compassion for women and the same desire to stop the need for abortion. When 1215 fails to pass, Lee sets out to uncover what would make a self-proclaimed pro-life state vote against the very measure that would end most legal abortions. South Dakotans appear conflicted in their beliefs: passing the Pharmacist Refusal Law, allowing pharmacists and doctors the right not to dispense birth control if doing so goes against their religious views, yet voting along pro-choice lines to keep abortion safe and legal. Was the vote a simple misunderstanding of what it means to be pro-choice? Was it a deeply-held resentment against government intrusion into people’s private lives? Whatever the final reason, The Middle of Everywhere reveals that the issue goes beyond the simple choices of being for or against abortion to the much deeper question of what values we hold dear as Americans and as humans beings.

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