Plan C
Directed by Tracy Droz Tragos
Running time 99 min.

by Daniel Pecoraro, Staff Writer

Plan C is a palpably tense film. So much so that I was worried an anti-abortionist was going to shoot up the screening room, and I split before the credits finished rolling. (Probably an irrational thought, but I’m an irrational thinker.) Everything in the Tracy Droz Tragos directed documentary presents a risk — from Francine Coeytaux (public health expert, abortion rights activist, and founder of the titular Plan C organization) getting anonymous providers of misoprostol and mifepristone to deliver medication to individuals in the mail, to the providers themselves, to the doctors and midwives supporting self-managed abortion, to just about anyone willing to be on camera. (Much of the identifying information of the film’s interviewees are obscured, from names, to faces, to voices.) That they do what they do while knowing the risks — which increase as the film goes on, spanning from 2018 (following the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court), through the pandemic, and into the post-Dobbs era — is inspiring and has certainly given me a desire to do more in the fight to preserve access to abortion (beyond donating to abortion funds and providers).

Plan C is an excellent informative tool for its subjects. It makes clear that the regulation of medication for abortion is borne not out of safety (with one line noting “mifepristone is safer than Tylenol”), but control. And it does so with skill, making the stakes for the documentary’s subjects clear from the beginning. The tension ratchets up as the film continues over its hour and forty minutes, showing the urgency and importance of the subjects’ actions, and the divide between playing it safer and keeping from legal exposure (especially after Texas’s abortion bounty law went into effect) and those looking to push the boundaries.

The film makes the choice to give minimal amount of time platforming the opposition in order to set the scene and the tension. There are a few anti-aborition rallies, more often seen than heard, and a stock talking point from a student heard but off-camera. Donald Trump appears once, in silent footage of the first presidential debate in 2020, and heard in audio footage from the Amy Coney Barrett swearing-in/Covid superspreader. The January 6 insurrection is seen in footage more to set the next scene in time.

Otherwise, this is a film about the principal characters supporting medical abortions, a primarily white group (which is noted in the film, in contrast to the history of Black women at the forefront of reproductive justice movement, and how Plan C was at times seen as white saviors) and largely femme-presenting. There are only three men present in the film — Coeytaux’s husband, an anonymous provider’s partner, and the spouse of someone who couldn’t get her tubes tied even after having two kids and sought a medical abortion early during the pandemic — who are mainly shown as caretakers as their partners get the work of the movement done. I appreciated how they were mentioned and depicted, but kept on the periphery as it does not take away from the story. The story should really be about those at the forefront, while recognizing that they have a support system behind them.

My main hope for a film like this is that it gets seen not only in relatively safe places for its message, but for those who may not be aware about the safety of medical abortion and the tenuousness of its legality (such that any day now a federal court opinion could rescind the 23-year-old approval of mifepristone), without white-knighting their way into communities. (I’m not advocating for dropping a bunch of USB screeners into Florida or anything.) Following a Sundance premiere and this screening at Athena, I really believe it will get into people’s hands, with the same care brought to the film’s production and direction.

Plan C premiered at Sundance 2023 and recently screened at the 2023 Athena Film Festival, it will hopefully be released soon.