Resources -> Video Library

Showing a video is a great way to kick off an introductory meeting and get people interested. These are videos and other resources we can loan you -- just contact us two weeks ahead of time to reserve the video you want.

Note: Usage of the video library is restricted to MSFC student groups only.

FILM DOCUMENTARIES AND PERSONAL STORIES

Abortion: For Survival
By The Feminist Majority Foundation (VHS)

Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque
By Charles C. Stuary (DVD, 30 minutes + 30 minutes FAQ)
"Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque" provides a glimpse into a nationwide debate over what young people should be taught about sexuality. Through personal stories, community profiles, and expert interviews, the program highlights the differences between a strict abstinence-only-until-marriage approach and more comprehensive sexuality education.

The Abortion Diaries
By Penny Lane (DVD, 30 minutes)
The Abortion Diaries is a documentary featuring 12 women who speak candidly about their experiences with abortion. The women are doctors, subway workers, artists, activists, military personnel, teachers and students; they are Black, Latina, Jewish, and White; they are mothers or child-free; they range in age from 19 to 54. Their stories weave together with the filmmaker's diary entries to present a compelling, moving and at times surprisingly funny "dinner party" where the audience is invited to hear what women say behind closed doors about motherhood, medical technology, sex, spirituality, love, work, and their own bodies.

Back Alley Detroit: Abortion Before Roe V Wade
By Daniel Friedman & Sharon Grimberg (DVD, 47 minutes)
The generation that came of age since Roe v. Wade knows little of the sordid realities once faced by women seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. This historical documentary tells the story of illegal abortions as they were experienced by all kinds of women - rich and poor, white and minority, married and single. It chronicles the physicians, clergy, and women's health activists whose quiet defiance of abortion laws stands as a dramatic unwritten chapter in the history of U.S. civil disobedience. Among those who risked prosecution were the members of the Jane Collective. This clandestine group was composed of self-taught activists who safely performed over 10,000 abortions in Chicago.

Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town
By Danielle Renfrew & Beth Seltzer (VHS, 24 minutes)
The true story of a doctor who performed illegal abortions and the small town that shielded him from the law. During an era when abortion was considered so shameful that the word was rarely spoken, Dr. Spencer performed more than 40,000 safe procedures.

Democracy On A Trial:The Morgentaler Affair
By Paul Cowan (VHS, 58 minutes)
Canadian physician Dr Morgentaler's fight for legal and safe abortions since the 1970s and its serious legal consequences for him form the centre of Democracy on a Trial: The Morgentaler Affair. This compelling docudrama demonstrates the complexity of this case, which began with the demand for a Canadian abortion law and turned into an explosive civil rights case. Dr Morgentaler's commitment resulted in unique legal progress: Since 1988 Canada has been the only country in which there is no single law concerning abortion any more.

The Education of Shelby Knox
Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, 2005 (DVD)
A self-described "good Southern Baptist girl," 15-year-old Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas has pledged abstinence until marriage. But she becomes an unlikely advocate for comprehensive sex ed when she finds that Lubbock, where high schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs in the state.

The Fragile Promise of Choice: Abortion in the United States Today
By Dorothy Fadiman (VHS, 57 minutes)
This documentary traces the erosion of access to safe abortion, including a shortage of trained providers, the threat of violence, and legislative restrictions. It includes a section on Medical Students for Choice and interviews with medical students. Available with or without Spanish subtitles.

From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion
By Dorothy Fadiman (VHS, 57 minutes)
This Emmy Award winning documentary traces the national movement to decriminalize abortion. It combines rare archival footage with present-day interviews to weave together two parallel stories: the evolution of "underground" networks to help women find safe abortions outside the law and the intensive efforts of activists and legislators who broke the silence and changed the laws. Available with or without Spanish subtitles.

Generation
By the Pro-Choice Public Education Project (VHS, 30 minutes)

God, Women, and Medicine
60 Minutes broadcast (VHS)
This is a tape of the December 10, 2000 60 Minutes show on Catholic and non-Catholic hospital mergers. The segment clearly illustrates why the Catholic church's health care restrictions can be detrimental to the women's health care. The show includes an interview with Catholics for a Free Choice president Frances Kissling.

Guys From Washington
By the Pro-Choice Public Education Project (VHS, 2 minutes)
This is PEP's new, humorous commercial highlighting the consequences or lack of choice. A great meeting-opener, ice-breaker, and/or warm-up for a longer video.

Help Wanted
By Mimi Schultz with Cine Qua Non/Paradise Productions (VHS, 17 minutes)
The U.S. has too few abortion providers. Join a young activist as she cycles cross-country to meet the people who are doing something about it. This is a new video to inspire, to educate and to alert the next generation of abortion providers.

Jane: An Abortion Service
Kate Kirty and Nell Lundy, 1995 (VHS, 56 minutes)
Jane was a Chicago-based women’s health service that performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973. This film looks at the personal and political stories of this fascinating group.

The Last Abortion Clinic
PBS, 2005 (DVD, 60 minutes)
Pro-life advocates have waged a successful campaign to reduce abortions throughout the country, using state laws to regulate and limit the procedure and creating clinics offering alternatives. This incisive documentary investigates the steady decline in the number of physicians and clinics carrying out abortions and focuses on local political battles in states such as Mississippi, where only a single clinic performs the operation.

Legislating a Tragedy
Center for Reproductive Rights, 1996 (VHS, 20 minutes)
Covers the issues surrounding late abortion; made to counter the first so-called "Partial Birth Abortion" ban.

Leona's Sister Gerri
By Jane Gillooly (VHS, 57 minutes)
Gerri Santoro died in 1964 from an illegal abortion. A graphic police photo of her body circulated through the media beginning in 1973. This film reconstructs the story behind the now famous photo and is a moving portrait of Gerri Santoro's life as well as society's response to her death.

Life Matters
By Ian Boyd (VHS, 49 minutes)
In an era when women could not get legal abortions there were only a handful of courageous doctors who risked imprisonment, loss of license, and their future in order to provide safe abortions to women. The filmmaker's father, Dr. Curtis Boyd, was one such individual. A one-time Pentecostal preacher, Dr. Boyd was influenced by the social changes of the Sixties. As a small town physician he performed thousands of abortions to desperate women.

Limits on Choice
PBS, 2005 (VHS or DVD)
A segment from the PBS program “To the Contrary” on the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi.

Living Forward, Looking Back
The Cinema Guild (VHS, 30 minutes)
This powerful documentary interweaves the stories of six women who were profoundly affected by the choices available to them prior to the legalization of abortion. This film also features an Ob/Gyn giving a medical perspective, both pre- and post- Roe v. Wade.

Liz Karlin, MD
By the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (VHS)

March for Women’s Lives, Parts 1 and 2
C-SPAN (VHS, 3 hours 19 minutes)

Motherhood by Choice, Not Chance
By Dorothy Fadiman (DVD, 27 minutes)
A new 27 minute documentary, MOTHERHOOD by CHOICE, NOT CHANCE, brings alive the history of the struggle for women's reproductive rights in the United States and the chilling facts about the current threat to those rights. Intimate interviews reveal the passion of people who moved abortion from the danger of the back alleys to a safe, legal choice. The film weaves together the most engaging moments of the OSCAR-nominated, EMMY-winning films in the trilogy FROM the BACK ALLEYS to the SUPREME COURT & BEYOND.

Motherless: Orphaned by Illegal Abortion
By Attie Goldwater Productions (VHS, 30 minutes)
A documentary about women who died due to complications from abortion (before it was legal) and the children who were left to mourn them.

OB/GYN: The Doctors of Womens' Health
Council on Resident Education, 2001 (VHS, 26 minutes)

On Hostile Ground
Short version, By Indirect Productions and Aubin Pictures (VHS, 23 minutes)
This documentary portrays the abortion-rights struggle through the personal stories of providers. They reveal how their professional choice has impacted their personal lives, and they express their personal, spiritual and political motivations in subtle terms.

"Right to Life" episode of Chicago Hope
(VHS, 46 minutes)
A primary care physician gets attacked by anti-choice groups for performing a late-term abortion.

Roe v. Wade at Twenty-Five
By the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (VHS, 60 minutes)
In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy hosted a panel of distinguished experts to discuss the status of a woman's right to choose a quarter of a century later. Featuring Anna Quindlen, Janet Benshoof, and Dr. Helen Rodrigues-Trias.

Sacred Choices and Abortion: 10 New Things to Think About
(DVD or VHS, 57 minutes)
This 57-minute documentary based on Dr. Daniel Maguire's book Sacred Choices and reframes the debate over reproductive rights in our highly religious culture. Scholars from major faith traditions--Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--as well as women and girls whose lives have been forever changed by abortion are featured in 10 insightful segments.

Safe Abortion Care: An Imperative for Health Care Workers
Ipas, 2002 (VHS, 18 minutes)
Makes a compelling case for empowering, training and supporting midlevel providers- including nurses midwives, physician assistants and others- to deliver critically needed abortion care as a component of comprehensive reproductive health care.

Speak EC: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Emergency Contraception
By the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (VHS, 11 minutes)
Includes compelling interviews with women who have taken Emergency Contraception and enlightening information on how some pharmacies elect not to distribute EC.

Speak Out: I Had an Abortion
By Gillian Aldrich and Jennifer Baumgardner (DVD, 55 minutes)
1.3 million women get abortions each year in the U.S. alone. For most it is a secret. The debate itself is loud and paralyzing while the voices of the women who get abortions are submerged. "Speak Out: I Had an Abortion," directed by Gillian Aldrich and co-produced by Aldrich and Jennifer Baumgardner, documents the stories of 11 women ranging in age from 21 to 85. The film cuts across race, religion, region, class, sexuality, and politics--demonstrating that abortion affects all women.

Stand Up, Speak Out!
By MergerWatch and Maverick Media (VHS)
The remarkable story of how the people of New York's Mid-Hudson Valley defeated a proposed religious hospital merger and saved their reproductive health services.

Voices of Choice
By Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (DVD or VHS, 25 minutes)
This video and discussion guide tell the story of illegal and legal abortion provision from the brave men and women who provided these essential health services prior to 1973. The video documents the horror of illegal abortion through the eyes of physicians and provides a way for coming generations to understand the social and historical ramifications of a time when health care providers worked to save women who suffered needlessly.

We Can Do It Better: Inside an Independent Abortion Clinic
By Mindy Sobota & Luke Walden (VHS, 33 minutes)
This video documents the inspiring example of Four Women, Inc., an independent abortion and gynecology clinic in a small, post-industrial Massachusetts town. "We Can Do It Better" presents a rare and intimate look at the daily work of providing excellent abortion care. From the initial phone call to the procedure itself, we see firsthand the caring and dedication of the dynamic founders, physicians and medical students whose lives have been altered by their involvement with the clinic. Four Women serves as a model not only for future abortion providers, but also for anyone committed to improving American health care. Supporting materials on CD-ROM also available.

When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories
By Dorothy Fadiman (VHS, 28 minutes)
This Academy Award nominated documentary includes compelling first-person accounts that illuminate the era of back-alley abortion, revealing the physical, legal, and emotional dimensions of abortion when it was a crime in the United States. Women who risked their lives, doctors who risked losing their licenses, and others who tried to help women find safe abortions speak frankly about their experiences, some for the first time. A discussion guide in booklet form to accompany this film is available. Available with or without Spanish subtitles.

You're What?!
By the Reproductive Rights Network (VHS, 28 minutes)
This is a docudrama which follows a teenager as she struggles to decide whether to continue an unintended pregnancy, and the impact of parental consent laws. This video is made by and intended for high school-age teens.

TRAINING VIDEOS

Counseling for Medical Abortion
Planned Parenthood of New York City, 1996 (VHS, 20 minutes)
Reviews professional counseling with a woman who is deciding whether to undergo a medical abortion.

Early Options Medical Education Video Series
By National Abortion Federation (VHS)
This is a series of six videos created by NAF to educate providers about the safe and effective administration of medical abortion. Borrow them from MSFC individually or in sets of three.

• The Pharmacological Approach to Early Abortion (23 minutes): Experts and practitioners discuss the important safety andefficacy data for the FDA-approved regimen for medical abortion, as well as evidence-based alternative regimens.
• Expected Side Effects and Management of Complications in Medical Abortion (27 minutes): Experts discuss the incidence and management of side effects and possible complications of medical abortion through a series of case studies.
• Beyond Drug Therapy: Practical Issues in Medical Abortion (19 minutes): This program reviews administrative and regulatory issues related to the provision of medical abortion. Topics covered include staffing, patient flow, and quality assurance.
• Counseling the Medical Abortion Patient: This video identifies important points for discussing differences between medical and surgical abortion, reviews general goals and techniques of abortion counseling, and discusses essential components of counseling throughout the medical abortion process.
• Clinical Diagnosis of Pregnancy and Use of Ultrasound in Medical Abortion: This video discusses the clinical, sonographic, and laboratory methods to diagnose and date a pregnancy, describes basic ultrasound techniques and the sonographic signs of early pregnancy, discusses methods for assessing medical abortion outcomes, and discusses the use of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of abnormalities during early pregnancy.
• A Woman's Guide to Medical Abortion: This video helps women choose whether to have a medical abortion by providing valuable, accurate information about the differences between medical and surgical abortion, as well as what to expect during a medical abortion. Available in English and Spanish.

Fetal Indication Termination of Pregnancy Program
Women’s Health, 1996 (VHS)
Filmed in Wichita, Kansas. A video aimed at educating women and families about options in cases of severe fetal abnormality.

Making Your Choice: A Providers Guide to Medical Abortion
Concentric Media, 1997 (VHS)

Manual Vacuum Aspiration Training Kit
By IPAS (VHS)

Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA):
A First Line Option for Uterine Aspiration
By the MVA Education Partnership (VHS)
The video is part of the MVA Education Partnership, a project led by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals to develop a curriculum that will expand the use of MVA among primary health care providers.

Medical Abortion Counseling Session
By the Department of Family Medicine, University of Rochester, NY (VHS, 15 minutes)
Features Eric Schaff, MD and Steven Eisinger, MD.

Natural-Safe-Simple: Philosophies And Techniques Of Late Term Abortion Services At Women’s Health Care Services
George Tiller (VHS)
Philosophies and techniques of later-term abortion services at Women’s Health Care Services. This presentation is a distillation of 25 years of experience in late induction of termination of pregnancy.

No Single Answer: Effective Pregnancy Options Counseling
By Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (VHS, 30 minutes)
This video demonstrates effective and caring options counseling, focusing on feelings, decision making and resolution. The companion discussion guide contains exercises for further development of skills.

Surgical Abortion Before Six Weeks Gestation
By the CAPS Project and Planned Parenthood of Houston & Southeast Texas, Inc. (VHS, 22 minutes)
This clinician training video demonstrates how to perform a surgical abortion using a manual vacuum syringe.

TELEVISION AND OTHER VIDEOS

Garson Romalis Stabbing
Television Footage, 2001 (VHS)

MSFC Canada
(VHS)
A compilation of various Canadian materials: CBC piece on doctor harassment; Dr. Weibe and RU486; Dr. Romalis shooting; 5th Estate segment (1994); Morgentaler 10th anniversary special (1998, includes a piece on MSFC at UBC).

MSFC on Fox
(VHS)
Various segments aired on Fox News about MSFC.

NAF 25th Anniversary
National Abortion Federation (VHS, 11 minutes)

MULTIMEDIA RESOURCES

Abortion and Reproductive Rights
J. Douglas Butler
A comprehensive guide to medicine, ethics, and the law on CD-ROM.

Caring for the Woman with an Unintended Pregnancy
By the Abortion Access Project
A CD that includes Power Point slide presentations on the basics of unintended pregnancy, emergency contraception, options counseling and abortion. It also includes references, value clarification exercises, case studies and additional resources. This learning tool was developed to meet the needs of nursing and advanced practice clinical students.

Emergency Contraception Training Tool Box
By Kaiser Permanente
Includes 2 VHS videos, a slide set, and a stack of flyers and pamphlets you can photocopy and distribute.

The Issue of Abortion in America
By the Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics at Carnegie Mellon (CD-ROM)

Medical Abortion Presentation Pack
By Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health
Includes a PowerPoint slide presentation on disk, a Grand Rounds lecture on medical abortion, and various PRCH brochures.