Reversing Roe

Netflix original, Reversing Roe, is a powerful documentary about the ongoing political issue that is abortion. This has sparked a lot of disagreement between the two sides of the issue.

According to Human Defensive Initiative (HDI), the Netflix original Reversing Roe is a pro-life biased documentary on the subject of abortion. HDI mentions that through the duration of the documentary there are three pro-life males featured, but only one pro-life woman. It is only positive that men speak out about abortion. However, when the imbalance is so apparent it seems as though the filmmakers want to carry through the stereotype that the pro-choice movement is mainly female and that the pro-life movement is a bunch of old white men (Haack, 2018).

A review from The New York Times states that while there is no doubt the documentary was made from a pro-choice perspective, it gives the pro-life perspective a chance to speak out about their opinions. It also states that the documentary is not particularly interested in reviewing the moral aspects of abortion, instead, it wants to discuss the political side of the issue (Keningsberg, 2018).

I stand by the first review in the terms that the documentary is pro-life biased, I believe that the documentary portrayed the pro-life movement in much greater detail than what they did the pro-choice movement. However, I do agree with the second review and that the documentary faces abortion as much more of a political issue than a medical one. The two reviews give quite a different opinion about the movie, nevertheless, they are both relevant and worth a read.

Sources:

Andrew Haack. (2018). Netflix Documentary ‘Reversing Roe’ Excludes Pro-Life Women. Human Defensive Initiative. https://humandefense.com/reversing-roe-excludes-pro-life-women/

Ben Keningsberg. (2018). Review: ‘Reversing Roe’ Shows How Abortion Became Political. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/movies/reversing-roe-review-abortion.html?ref=oembed