FORTUNE: New documentary ‘Zurawski v Texas’ shines a spotlight on life in post-Roe America

By Emma Hinchliffe & Nina Ajemian

In 2023, Amanda Zurawski agreed to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state of Texas. The suit was the first of its kind—the first time women in post-Roe America had been the plaintiffs in an abortion case.

The case asked Texas to clarify the medical emergency exemption in its abortion ban, which the plaintiffs said was unclear and put their lives at risk. The Texas Supreme Court declined to compel the state to do so in May of this year. But the story isn’t over—in addition to serving as the first plaintiff in the case, Zurawski also agreed to participate in a documentary. The resulting film, Zurawski v Texas, was released this year and has been playing in select theaters over the past several weeks.

The film doesn’t get into national politics, but it’s no accident it’s been screening in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday. The documentary shows the real impact of abortion bans on people’s lives, from almost dying, to losing their fertility, to their effects on its subjects’ marriages and families. “We were really thinking about telling this from a very human perspective, rather than getting caught up in the political arguments,” says filmmaker Abbie Perrault.

Zurawski’s story starts when she went into pre-term labor at 18 weeks and was denied an abortion because doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat. She developed sepsis and eventually received an abortion, but compromised her future fertility, a story she has testified about in front of Congress and shared during a speech at the Democratic National Convention. Another plaintiff featured in the film, Samantha Casiano, carried her pregnancy to term despite a fatal fetal diagnosis and then was forced to bury her child, who died four hours after birth. The film shows the aftermath of those experiences, from Zurawski’s attempts to conceive via surrogate to Casiano’s decision to pursue a tubal ligation. The documentary also follows lead attorney Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights and Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN who joined the lawsuit as a patient because of her own experience being forced to travel out of state for an abortion.

In an environment in which reporting about abortion abounds, but can sometimes struggle to break through, “we wanted to to educate audiences and take them on a journey, not just be talking heads and experts saying why abortion access is important,” says filmmaker Maisie Crow.

Zurawski hopes that viewers—and voters—will learn from her story. The film shows her family members, including her father, reckon with their own politics and beliefs about abortion, coming to the conclusion that an abortion ban that put Zurawski’s life at risk (and lost otherstheir lives) is not just. “Folks who see the film, they can see themselves in my husband, my brother, and they can see that this is not a women’s issue,” Zurawski says. “This is an issue for families. This is a human rights issue, and it affects everyone in this country.”