Reel World: Seeking Justice
Step into the courtroom with three dynamic women fighting for justice for their clients. The cases are controversial, but these lawyers are ready for a fight.
It’s hard to believe that eugenics with its stench of Nazism, classism and racism was alive and well in California just a few years ago. Yet between 1997 and 2013 doctors associated with the California Department of Corrections sterilized more than 1,000 incarcerated women. Many of these women felt forced or manipulated into receiving tubal ligation and did not give or were unable to give appropriate consent.
Erika Cohn’s award-winning documentary Belly of the Beast chronicles two of the women instrumental in banning the practice of sterilizing incarcerated women for birth control purposes in California. Incarcerated for killing her abusive husband, Kelli Dillon was sterilized at 24 after having cysts removed on her ovaries. It was up to Cynthia Chandler, an activist attorney with Justice Now, to inform Kelli she had been sterilized without her consent.
Chandler fights hard to stop this practice of coercive sterilization so no other incarcerated women will be robbed of their right to be mothers.
She’s tiny. She’s blue-haired. She believes in books more than in jail. Meet Heather Shaner a Washington D.C. public defender who represented more than 40 January 6th defendants.
Creating justice isn’t easy, but for 45 years Shaner has done just that for her clients. The January 6th defendants are no different. The real culprits, Shaner believes, are those in power who spread election misinformation not those who were duped.
Shaner takes time to understand her defendants’ stories and their motivations. Jack “Liberty Dragon” Griffith wanted more social media followers. Anne Howell feared her young son’s future was at stake if Joe Biden was elected. Heather listens closely, delivers sharp defenses and even sharper reading recommendations.
Public Defender offers an interesting portrait of a real dynamo along with a unique perspective on the January 6th Capitol rioters.
Attorney Molly Duane needed to become the storm. Passionate yet pragmatic, Duane knows changing hearts and minds about abortion will be a challenge, but it’s a worthy fight if clarifying the law will reduce the harm done to women. Women like Amanda, Samantha and Austin who desperately wanted their babies, but were denied life-saving abortion care because they lived in Texas.
In the documentary Zurawski v Texas the filmmakers chronicle the suit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights asking Texas to clarify the scope of their medical emergency exception to the state’s strict abortion bans. Part of this compelling documentary is the suspense of the court case, the surprising wins and devastating losses, and the impact of the case on Duane and her team. At the heart of the story are the powerful, deeply personal accounts from Amanda, Samantha and Austin. They describe how the abortion ban has taken a toll on their physical and mental health.
