Someone You Know

This is a topic that relatively few people have thought about in depth. If it hasn’t affected you or someone you know, you probably don’t want to think about it. If you see an article, you turn the page, because you don’t want to think about it.

Asha Dahya understands your reluctance to let your mind go to the place where you, or someone you know, would seek abortion care in advanced stages of pregnancy. That’s why she’s making a short film called “Someone You Know,” so you’ll know someone who had to make excruciating medical decisions about this sensitive subject. Three brave women have agreed to share their complex, frustrating, and heartbreaking stories of seeking the medical care they needed and the obstacles they faced in getting it. You’ll meet them by their real names, you’ll see their undisguised faces, you’ll hear their true stories. Some aspects of their experiences can’t be recaptured on camera, so the filmmaker is using animated sequences for those parts of the story for which no documentary photography is possible. Our Awesome Without Borders grant will help pay for editing software for the animation. Asha shot this sort film entirely on an iPhone during COVID, so augmenting this principal photography with animation will round out her first solo indie film. “I’m very passionate about the subject of reproductive justice because of the increasing number of attacks on bodily autonomy of women across America,” she says.

Learn more (and maybe contribute) here.

We tend to make snap judgments that are not necessarily informed by facts. Asha – and we – hope you’ll take a moment to consider the non-theoretical, flesh-and-blood people who suffer when that happens.