No One Asked You

Comedian, disruptor-extraordinaire Lizz Winstead (co-creator The Daily Show) and her team Abortion Access Front crisscross the U.S. to support abortion clinic staff and bust stigma. Pop culture icons and next-gen comics fuel this six-year road film activating small-town folks to rebuild vandalized clinics, exposing wrongdoer politicians, domestic terrorists, and media neglect as the race to the bottom ensues. A bold call to action reminds us that when the patriarchy burns down, joy will prevail.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I saw this coming; the sea of misogyny that permeates our culture and conspires to take away healthcare and bodily autonomy from women. With the election of Donald Trump, I was devastated. Once the dust settled, I asked myself: What can I do? Among many issues, I was deeply concerned about what a Trump presidency would mean for reproductive rights, which have been chiseled away since 1973. It was clear, things were about to get much worse.

I had been following Lizz Winstead's work for years. Her groundbreaking political satire work as The Daily Show co-creator was unparalleled. After much success, Lizz gave up her dream job for true calling to fight for abortion rights. Lizz was the one with the megaphone and the new lens exposing the mounting hypocrisy. I met Lizz at Netroots Nation in 2012 on her book tour for Lizz Free or Die. Soon after, she founded Lady Parts Justice (now named the more gender inclusive Abortion Access Front) her audacious group of repro rights activists who use humor to battle misogyny and fight for repro rights.

When I saw Lizz on MSNBC on this particular day in late 2016, I realized: this was my story, my way of fighting back to defend repro rights through the lens of what Abortion Access Front were doing to help defend clinics and the people who work there to provide healthcare for women, often risking their own lives. This has been an invigorating film for me as an artist, a story that needed to be told about an issue that has been politicized beyond measure. One that I needed to make and so fortunate to be armed with the layered storytelling of political satire, multiple formats and mediums to help move a very complacent pro-choice population.

Like Lizz, I had an abortion as a teenager, and if I had not, I most likely would have lost my life at the hands of a violently abusive boyfriend. Both of us gave ourselves a chance at becoming who we are today with that decision just seven years after Roe v. Wade was passed. I had no idea what new ‘privilege’ I was given to save my own life at the time. Even as a lost 17 year old, I never regretted my decision. I am so thankful I was able to make that choice.

Decades before, my great-grandmother was less fortunate, when she perished from complications from a self induced abortion. The only breadwinner in her family, she simply could not afford another child, and instead left the three she already had, motherless. Her legacy and sacrifice guides me every day.

Why does our society shame and stigmatize abortion, when we live in a country that vastly supports it?

Although we knew this day would come, no one knew exactly how it would materialize and that the fall of Roe and Casey, would leave country full of progressives surprised that their constitutional rights would be stripped away. Our film looks at the underpinnings of how we got here, not just a divided country, but due in large part to the news media’s underreporting and neglect of women’s health and abortion access for decades.

Through Lizz, we capture the story that so many Americans thought was impossible with all of the comedy and outrage that it deserves. The timing for No One Asked You is clearly now.