A new Netflix documentary, Reversing Roe, claims to provide an "illuminating look" at the state of abortion and women’s rights but features pro-choice women 13 times as often as it features pro-life women.
Reversing Roe "continued the age-old stereotype of showing the pro-life movement as white men," said Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who founded the pro-life organization And Then There Were None.
One pro-life woman is interviewed in the documentary while audiences will hear from 13 pro-choice women.
A press release issued by Netflix says that the film "offers candid and riveting interviews with key figures from both sides of the divide."
According to a New York Times review of the film, "there’s no doubt that the film has been made from a pro-abortion-rights perspective."
Advocates on both side of the divide were interviewed for the film, but they didn't make the cut for the 99-minute documentary now streaming on Netflix.
The Media Research Center has confirmed with at least five pro-life women that they were interviewed for the documentary but not featured.
Some of these women, which include leaders of national pro-life groups such as the March for Life, were interviewed for days for the documentary and not even mentioned in the final product.
Instead, the filmmakers chose to highlight pro-life men even as the major pro-life organizations in the country, including And Then There Were None, the March for Life, and the Susan B Anthony List, are led by women.
Reversing Roe, according to Netflix "charts the period leading up to the Roe decision—and documents the opposition that has followed ever since. "
Individuals interviewed by the documentary's creators were originally told that the film would be released in October 2017, when the film was actually released on Sept. 13, 2018.
"They were hanging onto it until they could make the more impact on the SCOTUS nomination," said New Wave Feminists leader Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa to Media Research Center. Herndon-De La Rosa's organization also posted on Facebook about being interviewed for hours and then cut from the final product.
"We didn't fit their narrative this time around" she said.
https://www.facebook.com/NewWaveFeminists/posts/2030891310266313
And Then There Were None founder Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who became pro-life, told Media Research Center that the documentary filmmakers filmed for at least two hours at the 2017 March for Life.
"For her and the other filmmakers to not include a single clip of what she saw with us makes this film a complete propaganda piece," Johnson said.
"They abysmally failed to show the diversity of the pro-life movement while at the same time celebrating that very notion in the pro-choice movement," she said, referencing their reliance on male pro-life testimonies.