Roadside Attractions’ Call Jane is teaming with local and national abortion care providers on screenings of the film, as well as other supporting organizations on star-fronted PSAs, to help encourage education and awareness around abortions.
Out in theaters Friday, the Elizabeth Banks-led, ’60s-set story follows Joy, a suburban wife and mother who turns to the real-life, Chicago-based underground abortion care network The Janes, who supported access to abortion care during the women’s liberation movement and before Roe v. Wade.
The film and its partners, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America — which also served in a collaborative role on the film to ensure it reflects the realities of barriers to abortion access — and Abortion Care Network’s KeepOurClinics.org campaign, will screen the Phyllis Nagy-directed film with dozens of American clinics.
“Call Jane is a meditation on choice — personal, political, transactional and familial,” Nagy said in a statement. “I hope that our film encourages people to ask questions they’ve not asked themselves before, and in doing so, engenders empathy, which is the beginning of understanding other viewpoints.”
The screenings will serve both as an opportunity to increase awareness around direct abortion care services and serve as a thank-you to clinics’ volunteers and staff as the demand for abortion care has increased in the months following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“Now more than ever, our movement needs entertainment media and celebrities to talk about abortion and show the alarming reality for people across the country who are simply trying to seek the care they need,” Caren Spruch, the national director of arts and entertainment engagement at Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “Though set in 1968, Call Jane shows us why we must protect access to abortion. Today, in too many states, archaic and dangerous abortion bans are taking us backward and stripping people of the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies.”
After premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in January, Call Jane released in theaters four months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe ruling, which legalized abortion rights nationally. Since then, 18 states have instituted bans that eliminate access to all or some abortions.
“Call Jane shows what abortion truly is — a human right,” said Nikki Madsen, executive director of the Abortion Care Network, in a statement. “Independent clinics provide the majority of abortion care in the United States, and since the Supreme Court denied the constitutional right to abortion and overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, they are working harder, facing more challenges and in need of more resources than ever before.”
Written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, and also starring Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, Kate Mara, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards and John Magaro alongside Banks, the Call Jane team is using its release to help elevate awareness of and support for the Reproductive Freedom for All’s (RFFA) Proposal 3, a ballot initiative in Michigan that will keep the abortion rights people have had for that last 50 years.
“We’re grateful for Elizabeth and Sigourney encouraging Michiganders to vote YES on Proposal 3,” Darci McConnell, RFFA communications director, said in her own statement. “It’s been nearly five decades since women have had to fight for reproductive health care. But with a 1931 law looming that bans nearly all abortions, we’re fighting now to restore the rights in Michigan we lost when Roe was overturned.”
Additionally, Call Jane is hosting advance screenings, fundraisers, theater buy-outs and producing original content to help educate audiences and Americans about direct and show support for local and national abortion services providers. That content includes PSAs and calls to action with the film’s stars made in partnership with national and local organizations like We Testify, which is dedicated to the representation of people who have abortions.
Renee Bracey Sherman, the organization’s founder and executive director, said the film “brilliantly illustrates what accessing abortion care was like pre-Roe and the community it took then — and will take now — to be a Jane and ensure everyone has access to abortion care at any time, for any reason, anywhere in the U.S.”
The PSAs will be released with the goal of encouraging others to share their abortion stories and encourage education about direct services and abortion care among those they know. Other partner organizations working with the film include All-Options, Brigid Alliance, Chicago Women’s Health Center, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Network of Abortion Funds, Supermajority, The Center for Reproductive Rights and This Is Not Ok.
“The Call Jane team was thoughtful on their representation of abortion experiences,” Sherman said, “reminding us how common it truly is.”
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