'Call Jane' Director on Film's Abortion Scene: 'Normalize the Conversation'

Phyllis Nagy hopes to "normalize the conversation" around abortion with Call Jane, her new film which features a realistic scene of the medical procedure, the director told Newsweek.

The film examines the work of the Jane Collective and how they helped women have safe abortions in the 1960s and 70s prior to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling that made a woman's right to an abortion constitutional. This ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 this year.

In Call Jane, Elizabeth Banks' Joy is refused an abortion despite the fact that going through with the pregnancy will likely lead to her death due to a medical condition.

She comes across the Jane Collective, led by Virginia (Sigourney Weaver) when trying to find a solution, and the film shows her having the procedure done.

'Call Jane' Director on Film's Abortion Scene: 'Normalize the Conversation'

In the scene, Banks' Joy is taken by one of the Janes, Gwen (Wunmi Mosaku), to meet with a doctor (Cory Michael Smith), and after examining her he explains step-by-step what he is going to do.

As he completes the procedure, he continues to explain the process, and it is not shown as being an overly painful or traumatic experience. After her abortion, Joy joins the Janes and helps support other women during their abortions, and then later learns how to do the procedure herself just as the Jane Collective did in real life.

The Jane Collective performed more than 11,000 abortions and they didn't lose one woman during the process.

Speaking to Newsweek at the BFI London Film Festival, Nagy said she wanted to approach the scene as realistically as possible without overdramatizing it: "What I really focused on was making sure that, medically, everything about the procedure was correct."

The director added that she wanted to show "that this is a normal medical procedure," adding: "Most of the abortion films, well that I've seen anyway, in which the procedure is shown, the procedure isn't shown really. What you see is some illegal substance being squeezed mostly, if it's a period film, into a woman's vagina. Then you see a terrible aftermath, the procedure goes wrong, or the fetus just falling out, things like that.

"But, what you don't normally see is what the vast majority of women go through, which is a fine, safe, non-complicated procedure," Nagy said.

"We tend to focus on the exceptions, the extremes, the exceptions rather than the rule. So it was important, I think, for all of us to normalize the conversation around what this was, what this procedure was, and who could perform it."

Reflecting on how the Jane Collective helped give abortions without losing any women in the process, Nagy added: "No, they didn't [lose any patients]. You could say that was lucky but there were more than 11,000 of them, so I don't know that the odds of them just being lucky [is possible], no, no."

Abortion has been depicted differently from how it is shown in Call Jane in the past. The recent Netflix film Blonde, for example, has been criticized for the way in which it approached a fictionalized abortion in Marilyn Monroe's life.

The scene in Blonde features a CGI talking fetus that looks like a fully formed baby that talks to Monroe and asks: "You won't hurt me this time, will you?"

Reflecting on this and other abortion scenes, Nagy said that she didn't want Call Jane to do anything similar: "It's not just about suffering, or a woman agonizing over a decision like this.

"Yes, it's very personal, sometimes I'm sure it is agonizing. But, again, for the vast majority of women, this is something they need and the reason they need it is none of anyone's business really."

On the Factual and Fictional Elements of the Film

The Jane Collective was a group comprised of Chicago activists, and the clandestine network was first started by Heather Booth to make an underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions.

Call Jane was co-written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, and they wrote the script after learning of the Janes' work through Judith Arcana, a friend of Schore's mother who was an original member of the group. Schore met with Arcana on multiple occasions to discuss what the Janes did, and wrote 28 drafts alongside Sethi before making the final version.

Prior to directing Call Jane, Nagy said she was not familiar with the Jane Collective, and neither were the cast, she added, but she soon realized how important it was to bring their story to light.

"It was like we don't know about our own history of heroism, we're not taught these things and I think that's true, it's fair to say, of most underrepresented or minority communities, the ruling class or whoever is running the show gets to dictate the history," the director said.

"So that was interesting to me that this was actually happening at all. It seems like that couldn't be the case and yet it was, and so making a film that honors that spirit of what they did seemed very important."

The characters that feature in the film are fictional, but Nagy explained that they were representative of various parts of the whole group.

"The script was the script and there wasn't a hierarchy in the group," she said. "I mean in the movie you need a leader, which is where the Sigourney Weaver character comes in, but the actual Janes were quite a bit younger than her, so the rest of the group is representative, I guess, of who they were right down to a single non-white person.

"And the Elizabeth Banks character is a representation of what their clientele would have been early on in the process, before they started doing their own procedures," Nagy said.

"Once they started doing that, they could do pay as you go or what you can, and then their clientele opened up a bit to other women who couldn't afford the outrageous prices. I mean $600 in 1968 would have been quite a lot of money for anyone, but let alone how could a poor woman afford that? They can't. So those things are real."

The film ends after the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling comes into effect, and Nagy reflected upon the scene in which the Jane Collective burn the cards that have the names of all the women they helped, while also discussing the next issues they want to tackle, like a lack of equal pay.

"The actual Jane Collective did get rid of those cards where they kept the names and details of people on them," Nagy said. "But actually it's us, it's the whole world that's burning up now because of the rise of, let's say, fascism —there's no other way to really say that— and a sort of increasing polarisation where people are at each other's throats, that the end of the movie feels quite like a sleight of hand.

"Yes, it's hopeful, they did what they wanted to do, but it's not because we don't have any of these rights anymore, and we never did have some of them, what they're talking about.

"There's no equal pay, there's no pay parity, there's no ERA, there's nothing, and so we think are we just really standing in place? Are we moving backwards?"

Hoping to Inspire Activism like the Jane Collective

The work of the Jane Collective showed how important it is for political activism to continue, Nagy said, especially in light of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

Discussing how relevant the film feels now with the recent Supreme Court ruling, Nagy said: "I hope that one of the things that happens now, and our film is part of the conversation, is that people begin to understand that the discussion has been relevant for the last 50 years.

"Ever since Roe was enacted as a rather shaky law of the land people have been attempting to get rid of it. Women's autonomy over their own bodies has always been an issue in the United States, probably everywhere else too.

"But, I hope what begins to happen is that people understand you can't just compartmentalize things anymore politically, that activism requires a real constant engagement with the real situations at hand, like reproductive rights, or voting rights for God's sake in the United States, and probably elsewhere. These are real problems that require constant vigilance.

"So, hopefully, this will become part of a conversation that won't end. That's about the best you can hope for."

Of how she hoped viewers would react to the film, Nagy added: "I hope that on the one hand, it will maybe shift a couple of perspectives, people who would not otherwise because the film doesn't judge anyone's personal choice. Just [making them think], 'oh I hadn't thought about that in this way.' That's one kind of small victory.

"And on the other hand, I hope it inspires younger people to to consider the power of collectivism in this way, not in a performative way.

"Like, you don't have to go out on the streets if you don't want to, you can affect change in different ways, and working together is better than working on your own to affect that change.

"I think we've lost that, certainly in the States, the idea of that collective spirit, and maybe it will inspire a couple of people to get involved."

Call Jane is out in theaters nationwide now, and the film will be released in the U.K. on Friday, November 4.

Update 10/28/22, 12:23 p.m. ET: This article was updated to include the U.K. release date for Call Jane.

Update 10/31/22 12:35 p.m. ET: This article was updated to include information about Call Jane's co-writers Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi.