Fadiman Speaks of Past
By Jenny Mertz-Shea
News Associate

Chances are, you weren't one of the couple dozen people who showed up on Monday to catch Dorothy Fadiman's documentary, When Abortion Was Illegal. Perhaps you found the prospect of learning historical trivia on abortion legislation less than enticing?

The screening turned out to be worth catching; Fadiman's short films didn't snag a 1992 Oscar nomination for nothing. Parts one and three of her documentary trilogy, along with Fadiman herself, were at Rose Hills Theatre as part of Abortion Awareness week.

The films are full of sobering abortion stories: women who survived back-alley abortions; the friends and families of those who didn't; doctors who risked arrest and harassment.

Perhaps the most interesting story of all is Fadiman's own. When she was a 22-year-old graduate student at Stanford, she unintentionally became pregnant. This was 1962, before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, and she didn't have the option of getting a safe, legal abortion. So she paid a gangster $600 to blindfold her and lead her to a motel across the state line. She received an unanaesthetized abortion, and suffered through the resulting hemorrhages, blood poisoning and a 105-degree fever. She was taken to the Stanford emergency room the next day.

"Now, this is really important," Fadiman said. "Because I was a grad student at Stanford-and this shows you how horrible it was back then-they brought in doctors from all over the country to save me." Meanwhile, she pointed out, thousands of other women were dying from the same symptoms, while the medical establishment turned a blind eye.

Like many other survivors, Fadiman kept silent about the experience until many years later. In 1989, when states were given the right to legislate abortion and a wave of anti-abortion bills were introduced, she decided to make a film about the untold stories of women like herself.

"What these films are about is what happens when abortions are not available," she explained. "You cannot stop a desperate woman from getting an abortion."

Now fifty-three years old, Fadiman is something of a character. She radiates bright-eyed zeal when she gives a talk; she's so comfortable interacting with audiences that she not only solicited responses from the Rose Hills crowd, but also exhorted event organizers to stand up and talk about their efforts. She launched into an explanation of nonprofit fundraising with the same gusto as when she waxed nostalgic about the days when LSD was used "sacredly."

Much like the filmmaker herself, Fadiman's documentaries eschew predictability. They do not offer audiences the "thank-God-those-days-are-over" carrot. In fact, part three-"The Fragile Promise of Choice"-does just the opposite. Its message is unsettling, and I left the talk much less complacent about my right to choose than I was when I walked in.

But that's Fadiman's great achievement: she leaves you shocked and galvanized rather than frustrated and despondent. And given the undeniably depressing subject matter, that's saying something.