Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America

“Women are beginning to recognize that what’s at stake is more than abortion, it is their personhood — their ability to be full, equal, constitutional persons in the United States of America." -Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women

“If you think The Handmaid’s Tale is fiction, the chilling new independent documentary film from Jo Ardinger and producer Rosalie Miller, about the widespread detention and criminal prosecution of pregnant women in the United States, will move you to organize for a new Mayday.” — Carrie N. Baker, Ms. Magazine 

“In addition to exposing how fetal ‘personhood’—or the anti-abortion idea of legal protection for fetuses—immediately threatens the lives and well-being of pregnant people, the documentary film covers important issues concerning what the future could hold if state and federal policy continues in this trajectory. Personhood serves as a reminder that more organizing and political activism are needed to meet the challenges ahead.”
- Elizabeth Gay, Rewire

“Although the ‘personhood’ movement has enjoyed momentum away from the spotlight for quite some time, that is coming to an end with the release of a searing and insightful new documentary from director Jo Ardinger, that exposes just how awful these fetal personhood laws actually are.”
- Asha Dahya, GirlTalkHQ
   
“One of the most important films at DOC NYC. A must see.”
- Steve Kopla, Unseen Films

Jo Ardinger is an award-winning filmmaker and the founder of Tandybrook Productions. Her feature debut, PERSONHOOD, explores the growing criminalization and policing of pregnant people in America. The film premiered at DOC NYC in 2019 and won the American Bar Association’s 2020 Silver Gavel Award for Documentary. Ardinger is a director and editor working on both documentary and narrative films. Recent editing credits include the documentary short Beyond The Visible: The Story of the Very Large Array, narrated by Jodi Foster (Media Interpretive Award, Cine Golden Eagle, Telly); the award winning dramatic short Every Beautiful Thing, starring HBO’s Lauren Weedman; and the PBS documentary, Into Deepest Space: The Birth of the ALMA Observatory. Ardinger is also an instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she teaches digital storytelling in the realm of science.