Documentary shows evolution of important Texas lawsuit

Zurawski v. Texas was directed by award-winning filmmakers Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault.

A new film shows the complexity of abortion care in Texas by following three plaintiffs and their lawyer in a landmark lawsuit that attempted to clarify laws regarding exceptions.

Zurawski v. Texas, directed by Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, depicts three defiant women who enlist the help of the Center for Reproductive Rights to fight the battle in the case the film is titled after.

Twenty women had filed a complaint in the judicial system earlier this year. The case, known as Zurawski v. Texas, reached the highest court in Texas. Activists and lawyers in the state had sought to get clarification for doctors so that they could figure out safely and with impunity when they could perform abortions under the life-saving exception written into the law that forbids abortion. Two doctors had joined on as plaintiffs.

Perrault is a documentary filmmaker and journalist based in Chicago, Illinois. She produced At The Ready, which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and streams on MAX. She has associate-produced the documentary shorts An Abortion in Mississippi and Reproductive Rights Road Trip for The Intercept. She was the impact producer on the Emmy-award-winning documentary Jackson, which premiered on Showtime in 2016.

Crow is a documentary filmmaker and photojournalist based in Texas. Her films have aired on HBO and Showtime. She is a director and producer of Zurawski v Texas. In 2022, she was part of This American Life’s reporting team on the Peabody-winning episode The Pink House at the Center of the World. Her short films The Last Clinic and A Life Alone were nominated for News and Documentary Emmy awards. The Overseas Press Club, American Society of Magazine Editors, Pictures of the Year International, and World Press Photo have also recognized her work.

The plaintiffs agreed to allow the filmmaker to draw attention to the issues affecting women in the state. I sought to arrange an interview with Crow, but it fell through.

There are several powerful moments throughout the documentary, including each plaintiff's testimony in court when the hearing was held before a lower court judge. Another emotion-evoking part was when one of the plaintiffs had a funeral for a newborn baby she knew was going to die before she was to give birth. Despite that situation, she couldn’t get an abortion in Texas due to the fear with which doctors operated.

The eventual ruling that the Texas Supreme Court gave didn’t clarify what situations abortion would be permitted in, which meant that doctors still operated out of fear. Consequently, they hoped that the Texas Medical Board would give guidance, which resulted in the same result.

I interviewed one of the plaintiffs in the case, Lauren Miller, for my book and a previous newsletter. Her story was moving and saddening as she had to go to another state to get the abortion she needed in a pregnancy that had a fatal anomaly.

This is a good chronicle of a critical case. One of the challenges we all have as historians and documentarians is creating films, books, and journalism that explain the current situation. The problem is that the ground is rapidly changing with each moment. Still, this movie will inform future scholarship and discussions about how abortion politics and law have evolved since the fall of Roe.

It appears the filmmakers are still looking for a distributor.