TEXAS MONTHLY: The Texas Filmmakers Who Documented the Trauma of the State’s Abortion Ban

By Sasha von Oldershausen

In the chaotic months following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of its Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision, state legislatures across the country passed tight restrictions on abortion, and Texas filmmakers Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault understood that they needed to document what was happening in their home state.

Their film Zurawski v Texas, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August and will be available to stream for free this weekend, offers an intimate look at the lives of several Texas women who banded together to sue the Lone Star State, and at the attorney who represented them. Denied access to abortion care when their complicated pregnancies posed dire threats to their health, the plaintiffs asked the state to clarify what constitutes a “medical emergency” exception under Texas’s strict abortion ban. As things stood, doctors were withholding vital care for fear of legal repercussions. Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the case, developed sepsis and nearly died after being denied an abortion following a premature rupture of membranes. Now she’s not sure she’ll be able to carry a child again. In May 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, whose members are all Republicans and whose decisions are final, ruled in the state’s favor.

Texas Monthly sat down with Crow and Perrault to discuss the challenges of documenting an issue that is evolving in real time and what they hope their film’s impact will be ahead of a pivotal election.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Texas Monthly: When Roe was overturned, many who’d worked in women’s reproductive health understood there had been forces paving the way for that decision for a long time. Given Maisie’s prior films Jackson and The Last Clinic, both of which were about the battle over reproductive health care in Mississippi, did you anticipate the outcome of the Dobbs decision?

Maisie Crow: When Trump was elected in 2016, I knew that it was a very likely possibility. And then as the Supreme Court was remade, it became clear that this would happen. I think what solidified my knowledge that Roe would be overturned was when [the Supreme Court] chose to engage with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Abbie and I began talking about it at that point.

TM: Did you have an idea of the story you wanted to tell and what it would look like?

MC: As two Texans, it very quickly clicked that we wanted to make a film following this lawsuit. It was the first of its kind. We felt like it was going to become pretty historic. We felt that there was a lot of power in the voices of the women who were taking the stand to tell their stories. And we felt like this was the right framing for a post-Roe film.

Abbie Perrault: We knew we wanted to track the beats of this case as they took it through the courts. And then once we met the women, we had a conversation with Amanda [Zurawski] about how, while it was traumatic to go through what she went through, there has been so much more ensuing difficulty, and how long of a tail that trauma has. And so we were very interested in exploring that.

TM: The filming took place as these things were happening—the lawsuit, the Texas Supreme Court decision. What is it like to document a story that’s happening in real time? What were some of the challenges?

AP: They’re the sort of challenges that are inherent to vérité documentary, which is that you have no idea what’s coming next. Sometimes you’ll wrap a shoot and then something will start happening.

MC: The true beauty of this film for me is that this was really a collaboration between the film team and the participants in the film. We were working together in lockstep. The minute that decision came down, they were recording their responses in real time to send to us. We all had a shared goal of making sure that these stories got out and got out as quickly as they could.

TM: One of the moments in the film that really stuck with me was when Amanda Zurawski is with her parents, and her dad says something about how he can’t help but feel that the baby suffered as a result of her medical ordeal, her lack of access to care. Amanda becomes emotional and has to excuse herself. In private, she allows herself to break down. But the thing that really got me was how concerned she is that she made her dad feel bad. I’m curious about your inclusion of that detail.

MC: That moment in particular really struck us because of the original conversation we had had with Amanda about the long-term trauma of being denied care and how it lives with you. When we left that night, we talked about, like, “Wow, this is how the trauma plays out. You’re living with this every day.”

AP: I think it’s so clear that her parents are supportive and love her and want to be there for her at that moment. But it becomes really clear, even so, that no one can know the contours of your personal trauma. Each of these women is carrying something that only they know.

TM: You offer such intimate portrayals of the women. We meet Samantha Casiano at her daughter’s funeral—she had been forced to have a baby diagnosed with a fatal condition, and the baby died hours after birth. We see her describing the way she had to witness her dying baby, Halo, gasping for breath. How did you gain such close access?

MC: We met Samantha the night before Halo’s funeral. We had asked multiple times, “Are you sure you’re comfortable with us going to your daughter’s funeral? Are you sure you’re comfortable with us filming this?”And that’s when Samantha said, “Texas wanted her here. So, Texas needs to see what this means for me and my family. They need to understand the pain that she suffered and the pain that we’re suffering because of the laws, so that no other family, no other mother, and no other child will ever have to go through that.”

Filming Halo’s funeral was gut-wrenching. And I think the day we filmed that funeral was the day it became very clear that we have such a responsibility to make sure that people see what’s happening.

TM: Obviously, abortion has been a hot topic this presidential election, but looking closer to home, what’s at stake in this election for Texas women?

MC: Texas doesn’t have a ballot initiative. So abortion’s not directly on the ballot. But three of the Texas Supreme Court justices are on the ballot.

AP: There are people up and down the ballot this year in Texas and across the country who will be making decisions on reproductive health-care access in the very near future. And so our hope is that people make informed decisions about voting and understanding how the people that represent them have the power to impact their access to basic health care.

We made this film so that people in Texas and people across the country would understand what these laws mean in practice and how they actually impact not only women, but their partners, their parents, their children, their families, their communities.