To Fed-Up Texans, Pro-Choice Doc Vessel Was the Best of SXSW
A must read! I'm only sorry I could post but a few excerpts here.
LA Weekly
http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/03/18/to-fed-up-texans-pro-choice-doc-vessel-was-the-best-of-sxsw
To Fed-Up Texans, Pro-Choice Doc Vessel Was the Best of SXSW
By Amy Nicholson
Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:41 PM
The Texas State Capitol is just three blocks north of the State Theater. If you stretch your legs between movies during SXSW, you could squint up the appropriately named Congress Street and see the small, green park that climbs to the Capitol's dome. And at the world premiere of Diana Whitten's Vessel, a rousing pro-choice doc about a Dutch activist who sails to countries that have outlawed abortions and gives women medical care in international waters, the audience made sure the legislators next door could hear their standing ovation.
Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the star of Vessel, founded Women on Waves in 1999. Now 47, she's still girlishly spry and as stubborn as a battle-tested general - which, in a way, she is. When she attempted to dock in Portugal, the government sent two battleships to block her entrance. When she landed in Valencia, Spain, ragtag pro-life pirates leapt onboard, tied her ship to theirs, and tried to drag her out to sea. Gomperts grabbed a knife, cut their rope, and skipped around the deck waving at her supporters. By the second time we see Moroccan men scream in her face, we've stopped being scared for her: Gomperts is brave and ready to brawl...
...To a woman living in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest regions in the state, these hurdles can seem insurmountable. By September when the last of the HB2 laws takes effect, she'll have to drive five hours to the nearest clinic in San Antonio, find a hotel for at least one night, more likely two, and then 14 days later, make the ten-hour roundtrip again. Legislators have learned that if they attack abortion as a civil rights issue, they'll lose. But if they attack the mother - especially poor, paycheck-to-paycheck mothers - they can trample over the rights of women who don't have the resources to fight back...
... What's even scarier is what happens to women in places where abortion is criminalized. Every year, over 21 million women living in restrictive countries are forced to receive illegal and unsafe abortions, and of them, 47,000 die. If these Texas politicians really wanted to protect mothers, they wouldn't corner them into making a potentially deadly decision. But that's exactly what they're doing... MORE
