Writer-director Wendy Eley Jackson’s short documentary The Other Roe premiered this month at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, turning its attention to a largely overlooked legal milestone.
While Roe vs Wade has become synonymous with abortion rights in the United States, the film argues that its companion case, Doe vs Bolton, deserves equal scrutiny.
Jackson structures the film around civil rights attorney Margie Pitts Hames (1933–1994), whose work was instrumental in challenging restrictive abortion laws in Georgia.
Drawing on archival footage and interviews, the documentary presents Hames as a formidable advocate: articulate, strategic, and unapologetically committed to reproductive autonomy.
The clips assembled here capture both her rhetorical skill and her clarity of purpose at a time of intense national division.
Where Roe vs Wade provided a sweeping constitutional framework, Doe vs Bolton addressed the specific case of “Mary Doe,” a woman denied a termination under Georgia law.
As the film outlines, the case was in some respects broader and more technically complex, interrogating hospital committee approval processes and the medical criteria required for legal abortion.
Jackson is particularly attentive to Hames’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, emphasising her argument that constitutional protections apply to those “born and naturalized,” not pre-birth – a distinction central to the Court’s reasoning.
At just short-film length, The Other Roe inevitably simplifies a dense and multifaceted legal battle. Viewers seeking a detailed constitutional analysis may find the treatment somewhat compressed.
Nevertheless, the film succeeds in restoring Hames to the narrative and in clarifying how Doe vs Bolton, alongside Roe vs Wade, helped establish abortion as a constitutional right in 1973.
The documentary also gestures toward the present, drawing subtle parallels between past and current anxieties surrounding reproductive freedom in the United States.
The Other Roe positions Hames as both a product of her era and a figure of renewed relevance: a reminder that landmark decisions often result from determined individuals working beyond the spotlight.
The Other Roe was screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. I reviewed the online screener provided.