PERSONHOOD tells a different reproductive rights story - one that ripples far beyond the right to choose and into the lives of every pregnant person in America. Like a moment from the chilling "Handmaid's Tale," Tammy Loertscher's fetus was given an attorney, while the courts denied Tammy her constitutional rights. In this timely documentary, we see her sent to jail, and then forced to challenge a Wisconsin law that eroded her privacy, her right to due process, and her body sovereignty. Through her story, PERSONHOOD reframes the abortion debate to encompass the growing system of laws that criminalize and police pregnant women. At the intersection of the erosion of women's rights, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration, Tammy's experience reveals the dangerous consequences of these little-known laws for American women and families.

Personhood examined a covert set of laws and policies that were originally intended to overturn Roe v. Wade, but ended up having repercussions for women like the film’s subject Tammy who never intended to end their pregnancies. Sourcing archival for this project was a challenge in that we were weaving together seemingly disparate cases from across the country to show alarming patterns of criminalization of pregnancy.

Role: Archival Researcher