NO REST FOR THE WEEKEND: ZURAWSKI V. TEXAS at Mill Valley Film Festival 2024
By William J. Hammon
I try not to let my personal politics enter the equation when reviewing a film, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Zurawski v. Texas is one such example. Quite possibly the most important documentary this year, directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perault dare the audience — and the nation writ large in a crucial election year — to do something that many in power refuse to do, and that’s to look suffering women in the eye and tell them that their pain doesn’t matter.
The crux of the film is the titular lawsuit filed by Amanda Zurawski against her home state after its intolerably cruel ban on abortion nearly cost her her life. Joined by several other women, including an OBGYN — all of whom wanted to carry their pregnancies to term — the suit concerns the intentional vagueness of Texas law, enacted immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The state has a six-week ban in place, with exceptions for the life of the mother. However, since there’s no definition of a life-threatening emergency in the law, doctors are left in legal limbo as to what they can and can’t do, and Texas’ aggressively anti-choice Attorney General Ken Paxton is chomping at the bit to revoke medical licenses, fine doctors and women, and even imprison them for having the procedure done.
In Zurawski’s case, she miscarried in her second trimester, but since she couldn’t get care, she had to wait until she was in septic shock and on the brink of death before she could be seen. That delay could have killed her, and it likely prevents her from ever having children, which is again, something she really wanted. Others suffered ectopic pregnancies, others were forced to give birth to terminally underdeveloped babies that were guaranteed to die within hours. It’s horrific.
But again, it’s necessary to confront the reality of the issue. So many proponents of these bans like to use straw-man generalizations about those who seek this type of healthcare, and it’s infuriating to see elected officials employ those very dehumanizing tactics, including rolling their eyes and disingenuously asking the women why they didn’t sue their doctors for malpractice. This film forces the viewer to actually listen to what these women are really going through, making it so you can’t turn away. Because honestly, regardless of your individual feelings on the issue of abortion, if you can sit through this and come out thinking that justice was served, that these women somehow deserve this, then the problem is with you, not the women.