Director Tracy Droz Tragos On Her Film 'Plan C' & Access To Abortion
Filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos. Courtesy of Plan C.
This Week Media sat down with acclaimed director Tracy Droz Tragos, known for groundbreaking documentary films, at the 2023 SXSW Film & TV Festival to talk about her most recent film, Plan C. The title draws its name from the world of reproduction and its subject: If Plan A is contraception and Plan B is the morning-after pill, then Plan C is the medication combination that can end a pregnancy in its first 10 weeks. It's also the name of the non-profit organization, self-described as "a small but mighty team of veteran public health advocates, researchers, social justice activists and digital strategists," whose mission is to increase access to medication abortion and information about it.
Tragos' timing is fortuitous. In the wake of the Supreme Court of the United States' decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark case from 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide, four lawsuits involving a Plan C medication are currently underway. One of the lawsuits was filed in November of 2022 in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, about 500 miles north of Austin, where we spoke with Tragos.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
TWM: How has the week been going? We're just kicking off the week here at South by, and your film received two standing ovations last night.
TDT: Yes! It was pretty enthusiastic, especially when I brought up the folks who are in the film, whose work is ongoing. There's just such appreciation for what they're doing and what they're actively doing right now—especially with Texas audiences. That was pretty moving.
TWM: Let's dial back and talk about how your interest in Plan C developed. How did your interest in this particular topic and then creating this film come about?
TDT: I had made a film earlier for HBO (Abortion: Stories Women Tell) where I was embedded in a clinic. And you know, I saw firsthand the hoops that people had to go through to access care, especially in a red state like Missouri, and they had to go over state lines and go into a clinic. I was aware of abortion medication, and I'd seen people being handed the pills in the clinic to go home and take them. But I also saw the trauma that people endured to pass through the gauntlet of protesters to access care and to the 72-hour waiting periods. And just getting over state lines often meant childcare, hours in the car and missed work, and all the things that we all know about.
So now, a few years later, in 2018, Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court. And I think because I had that experience of making [Abortion], I knew that the writing was on the wall, that Roe would be overturned. So what were folks doing to prepare for that? That's when I met Francine Coeytaux and was introduced to the work and mission of the Plan C organization to actually increase access to these pills.
I'd seen people getting in the clinic, but online provisioning at home, and at the time, in 2018, it was just a conversation, just research. I was like, wow, you know, that makes sense. These pills have been approved for 20 years. They're safe and effective. And people are taking them at home anyway—it was just a matter of how can we break out of this mainstream model of care. When COVID hit, telemedicine became much more widely accepted. Truly, it was a medical hazard to go to clinics and take public transportation and be in a room full of people. So online provisioning was allowed by the FDA, and that's really when the work of the organization took off.
Plan C. Courtesy of Plan C.
TWM: How did you meet Francine [Coeytaux]? Was it an easy choice for you to make her the anchor, so to speak, of the film?
TDT: I reached out to her on LinkedIn, and she responded right away. And I didn't know this, but we live 20 minutes from each other. So I met her for coffee. Meeting her, I felt then, at that moment, that this is a film that should be made. Now, did I get greenlit by somebody? Did I get funding for it? No. I had to cobble it together the way most independent filmmakers do. I felt that this was a story that I should tell.
When RBG died, and Amy Coney Barrett was appointed, and SB8 passed here in Texas, and things got more dire—the urgency and the stakes just got higher and higher and higher. And so, I couldn't put the camera down. Francine is kind of the focus of it. She was my entry point.
TWM: Francine is a kind of scaffolding for the film, but there's so much more. You're threading stories together. And I thought this was really effective: women's stories. Just hearing the voices of people who may not be able, for a number of reasons, to have their voices amplified. You're holding up a megaphone. Francine, as a tether, is incredibly effective.
TDT: Thank you for that. Francine is very, very smart and strategic and is thinking about how to increase access in all kinds of ways. So she was sort of tangentially connected to almost everyone in the film in ways that were direct and in ways that were indirect. It's really been her work for a long time, and that has allowed abortion medication to be disseminated and distributed in this way.
TWM: One aspect of the group Plan C that you highlight in the film is the way they strive to share information about medication abortion. It reminded me of one of the first principles of medical ethics—the principle of informed consent. You can't have informed consent without information. Do you have a sense after making this film how those who want to eliminate abortion, including medication abortion, reconcile restricting access to the very information about it, especially when their legal arguments for restricting abortion have focused in part on states' rights and the intent of the country's founders? There can be no question that the founders of this country wrote the First Amendment, and the First Amendment ensures access to information as a check on government power. Did you find anybody on the side of restriction to notice that irony—that they're restricting information, which steps toward fascism and not democracy—and hypocrisy?
TDT: Yes, well, I think I think hypocrisy means nothing. But [Plan C], very intentionally—unlike my previous film—was not about both sides. I came to a point where it's not really about sides. The folks that I have met in the anti-abortion world are often the people that are on the streets, actively trying to curtail other people from doing what they want to do. They are pretty extreme evangelicals. It doesn't necessarily deserve equal time. I mean, this wasn't going to be about whether science is real or if the earth is flat. Art is an evolution of things. This was going to be about this network of people who believed in access and were actually trying to make it possible.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
TWM: The tone of the film gives a feeling of the underground—like, we are behind the scenes or behind the lines, especially at the point in the film where Plan C's informational posts are being removed from social media. I thought that was so useful to show how Plan C is organized and how a small group of people can have a significant impact. It reminded me of that quote attributed to Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." Did that sentiment inform your work on the film?
TDT: I get real goosebumps whenever I hear that, but yes, certainly about their work and certainly in amplifying their work. I wanted to do as much as I could without harming their work. So sometimes, folks had to be anonymous or concealed in some way. But still, I wanted to demonstrate in the film that these were regular people, people with partners who cared about them and dogs that they had to feed and cookies in the oven. That they have children, disabled children, and little children. So, yes, it was important to include that in the film.
I think, also, folks in the audience could feel empowered about what's possible. My concern in getting this film out there is that we haven't hit rock bottom. There was a question in the audience yesterday from someone who said, "Are you worried in bringing this film specifically to Texas that you're gonna get in trouble or that you are somehow going to get"—I don't even know if he said arrested, but. And I said, "I hope not. I'm premiering a film at a film festival. That still has to be okay in this country."
But it was interesting. Someone at Planned Parenthood who was in the audience said they are not allowed, when folks come to clinics out here in Texas, to say anything about any kind of option around accessing abortion. They're told they can't say anything. And one of my collaborators on the film asked her, "But could you tell them to go see a film?" And this person said, "Yes, I think I could. I think I could say, oh, yes, there's a film that you should go see. You might find it informative."
TWM: That's really fantastic for the film. And that was something that came up for me when I was thinking about the audience for the film. Where do you hope that it disseminates? Medical schools? Residencies? The law community? Universities? Where are you hoping that it percolates out to, and what's next for the film in terms of film festivals?
TDT: We've got more festivals coming up. We're taking it to Cleveland and Milwaukee, and Colorado. I get excited about bringing it to red states for exactly the reasons we're talking about. Someone was in the audience yesterday, who programs for the Nashville Film Festival, and she said, "We need this in Tennessee." So, yes, more festivals. But my hope, ultimately, is that this can be seen by as many people who want to see it as possible. And there are physicians who are reaching out who want to show it in their communities. There are definitely college communities that have reached out, and that feels very, very important. But I also feel like, if it can be shared in a private way, person to person, I think there's power there as well because some folks may not feel safe. For example, in Texas, going to a movie theater to see this movie might not make someone feel safe, but they might feel safe doing it in private, you know, seeing this film in the privacy of their home.
TWM: I really hope that it doesn't come down in this country to a surveillance state, like Orwell's 1984. We have the First Amendment, and we have the Fourth Amendment about unreasonable searches. If we have those rights in danger, this whole American experiment is going to fail. But the idea that your film could be a direct service is a really incredible idea.
TDT: Yes, it's incredible. It's also terrifying. I hope that those against information will course correct because the majority of people in this country do believe in not only free speech but also, frankly, access to abortion care. We're sort of hostage to a minority that is in power right now. International audiences—we closed the Athena Film Festival in New York right before coming to SXSW, and there was a contingent of people from Iceland there. Talking to them, they said, "So the majority of people are against abortion?" And the answer is no. The majority of people in the United States are actually for abortion choice—for people being able to do what they want to do. There was a kind of disconnect in their eyes about, "Well, then—why, how, can it be that these laws are being passed against the will of the people? How does that make sense?" And the sort of answer to that is, yeah, this is broken.
TWM: One of the other voices in your film who is, to me, quite a standout, almost in the sense of a cameo—that you walk away from the film saying, "Wow. That was impactful."—was Professor Loretta Ross.
TDT: Yeah, she's—wow. MacArthur Genius.
TWM: Her ability to crystallize and connect and see historical parallels was amazing. She says that a person can't fight for their human rights if they don't know that they have them.
TDT: Right.
TWM: So that gets us back to the importance of information. Professor Ross talks about standing up to bullies. There was a lawsuit recently filed here in Texas—a man suing three people for a million dollars under the bounty hunting law because they were involved with an abortion. Did you have a sense of how palpable that fear was to people, that they would be arrested for aiding and abetting abortion if they give information about or actually access to the medication Plan C? I wonder if Professor Ross would say, "Well, you've got to take on the bullies."
TDT: Yes, yes, I think she would say that, certainly. Francine would say that men and a lot of the folks in the film have come around to the idea that these laws are intended to have a chilling effect, an environment where people self-censor. And so, at the same time, I think the threat assessment, when it comes to criminalization, has to be taken by everybody individually. People need to know they have rights, and people need to know that they have options, but it's going to be very different depending on who you are and where you live—like whether you're a Black and brown person living in Arkansas or a blond-haired, blue-eyed person in New York. Different threat assessments. Different risk calculations. That also was part of the message of the film. That it's going to take people making their own calculations. If you can do more, do more. Massachusetts is the only state right now that has shield laws for providers. It's the only state that, if you are providing over state lines, will not support extradition and subpoena. New York still doesn't have a shield law. So a lot of the doctors that I know who are doing this work are working very actively to try to get shield laws passed in New York, trying to get shield laws passed in California. But right now, it's only in Massachusetts. So that's the only place where you can be and really be protected.
Plan C. Courtesy of Plan C.
TWM: Your film ends on such a hopeful note, such an empowering note, with women around a table. It reminded me of The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago at the Brooklyn Museum with amazing women gathering around a table. Was that intentional? Were you thinking of a women's table at that point?
TDT: I love, love, love that you say that. And I love that. We knew Roe had fallen, and we knew that this gathering was going to happen outside of the United States. And, yes, the coming together, this celebration of being together, and the work that these folks around the table allowed to happen. I mean, also the reality that, as Francine said, it's a shitshow right now. So it was just a fine line between celebrating their work, honoring what they're able to do, and being hopeful. But also, these are dark times. So there's still that.
TWM: What's next for you?
TDT: Oh, I don't know. The independent documentary world is—you cobble it together, to be honest. I have different projects that I've been working on. A follow-up to Rich Hill. But it takes a lot of effort to get the grants and raise the money.
TWM: Well, I hope that Plan C gets in front of the philanthropy group so they can support your work. Tracy, congratulations on this incredible film and your body of work. It's really extraordinary. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
TDT: Thank you for your thoughtful, thoughtful questions and all that you saw in the film.
