[Director Phyllis Nagy told Jezebel it was important for her to
“normalize this very common healthcare procedure, which it’s never
treated as in movies.”]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

ELIZABETH BANKS’ NEW FILM ‘CALL JANE’ WILL BE SCREENED AT
ABORTION CLINICS ACROSS THE U.S.  
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Lorena O'Neil
October 28, 2022
Jezebel
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_ Director Phyllis Nagy told Jezebel it was important for her to
“normalize this very common healthcare procedure, which it’s never
treated as in movies.” _

, Photo: Getty (Getty Images)

 

Elizabeth Banks’ new film, _Call Jane_, tells the story of a
conservative suburban mom in 1968 who seeks an illegal abortion with
the help of Chicago’s Jane Collective and becomes an integral part
of the covert abortion care network herself. You can see the movie,
which premiered Friday, in theaters–or in independent abortion
clinics and Planned Parenthood health centers around the country,
which will be screening it and even using it as a fundraiser to help
with relocation fees.

“We see all that you do, and we are in this fight with you,”
Sigourney Weaver, who stars in the film, says in a special welcome
message that she and Banks filmed for abortion care workers and
volunteers.

Watching _Call Jane_, I imagined existing in a world in which the
ending—where everyone celebrates the passing of _Roe v.
Wade_—felt hopeful. Instead, I watched the activists burn their
index cards detailing the lives of pregnant women desperately seeking
help, because suddenly everyone could get an abortion, and I tried not
to weep. It felt like watching people on the Titanic dancing and
partying, and having the movie end just before they see the iceberg.

“The ending has always made me want to go off and go under the
covers,” director Phyllis Nagy tells Jezebel. She’s referring to
when Weaver and Elizabeth Banks’ characters whisper about all of the
other inequities they could take down next, because nothing could be
harder than legalizing abortion. “But the burning of the cards takes
on this other significance now, which is that, yeah, we are going up
in flames,” she said. “You better be ready, and it’s happening.
The brutality of _Dobbs_ [makes] it even more shocking.”

The film has multiple scenes that parallel what is happening in the
world now: It reckons with white feminism, the painful process of
deciding who gets abortion funds, and even 11-year-old pregnant girls
and people with cancer who need abortions so that they can access
chemotherapy. What really separates it from the rest, though, is how
it portrays abortion in groundbreaking ways when compared to other
Hollywood movies. Steph Herold, who tracks depictions of abortions on
television and film as a researcher at Advancing New Standards in
Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), says _Call Jane_ is different because
“it shows many different abortions, when usually we have one or two,
at most.” Nagy’s film even shows how people can be supported after
their abortions: The Janes take the patient to a house to rest and
offer them spaghetti post-procedure.

Films and TV rarely show women as abortion providers at all, but we
see Banks’ character, Joy, transition from someone who doesn’t
support abortions to a patient, to an abortion doula, to a provider.
(Herold added that she did find it a little frustrating that it was
yet another movie about the heroic journey of a conservative, white,
suburban mom, but she appreciated that it still called out white
feminism.)

Joy’s abortion was shown on screen from start to finish. Nagy said
it was important to her to “normalize this very common healthcare
procedure, which it’s never treated as in movies.”

“I was just adamant that we had to show the entire procedure from
beginning to end,” said Nagy. “The only thing we’re missing is
that we don’t give enough time for other drugs to kick in.”

“We could have made a movie about root canals,” Nagy continued,
“because it’s a procedure that people are afraid of. Not only are
people afraid of it, it’s just fraught with all of that bad
symbolism that is really made by the patriarchy.” She said she
wanted every one of her abortion scenes to demystify the procedure.

Nagy closed the set for all of the abortion scenes. Beyond the actors
involved, “it was just me and the [cinematographer], and not even
the first [assistant director] was there,” said Nagy. “It created
this sense of quiet and this sense of, _we are actually in a place
where quiet is demanded_, as it would have been.”

She had the women undergoing the abortions on set early and had them
wait, to mimic how they would have waited before their procedures.
“I didn’t ask them to put their hospital gowns on, but they
did,” said Nagy. “By the time we got to the shot they were ready
for whatever.” Banks’ abortion scene took almost the full day to
film.

Herold said she appreciated how Nagy portrayed the abortion experience
as getting better and better for the patients as the film went on.
Joy’s procedure was with a matter-of-fact male provider, and the
room was very sterile, cold, drab with blank walls. But when Joy
performs her first abortion, we see her in a purple room with pillows
and other women there to support the patient. Joy walks the patients
through what she’s going to be doing and empathizes with them,
admitting that she was scared for her own abortion and telling one
girl who said she wants to be a mother one day that she will be when
she’s ready. “I would want that abortion on the bed, I would not
want that abortion in this rickety scary room with this jerk,” said
Herold.

Nagy said she wanted the film to show “the journey from what it was
back in the day to what it could be.” She wanted to add touches of
warmth to the procedure. “We still don’t do that well, but I think
the women of the Janes did that very well.”

Banks said in the message to those watching at abortion clinics,
“Enjoy the film, vote, and from the bottom of our hearts, thank
you.”

* call jane
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* abortion
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* Reproductive rights
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* Jane Collective
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* Roe v. Wade
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