When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled two years ago that frozen embryos are legally children, many fertility clinics across the state temporarily stopped in vitro fertilization treatments. The decision prompted a debate over reproductive rights and how fertility medicine works.
It also sparked a film. Abbey Crain was a journalist covering reproductive issues and undergoing IVF treatment at the time. Her experience formed the foundation of the documentary Show Me The Line, which screens at Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival this weekend. The film follows Crain and three other women as they struggle to become parents. WBHM’s Olivia McMurrey spoke with Crain about the project.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
In the film, you say something along the lines of, at this moment, the Alabama Supreme Court has more power over my body than I do. Can you talk about that?
So I had embryos stored at my IVF clinic, and my IVF clinic, along with a few others across the state, had to put a pause to all of their procedures. And infertility and IVF is already an extremely emotional process, and everything is so hardly fought. I had gone through four different rounds to get these embryos that were mine. And hearing that our state had more say in the fate of them than I did was … I saw red. I was so angry, and so many other people across the state of Alabama were so angry.
An intention of the film seems to be to try to correct a lot of misperceptions around IVF. What are the major misperceptions that you see?
One common misperception is that you should just fertilize one egg at a time. So you retrieve one egg, you fertilize one egg, you put that embryo inside of you. But people don't realize that the first thing doctors tell you is it's a numbers game. They try to get the most eggs so they can fertilize the most because out of those amount of eggs, there's only going to be a fraction that are fertilized, and out of that, there's only going to be a fraction that survive to day five, and after that, there's only going to be another fraction that are viable to be implanted into your uterus, and then even that – that's not a guaranteed child. So that is the argument, that doctors and patients are just willy nilly creating these lives and not thinking about the consequences, while that can't be farther from the truth. Each procedure is considered, is probably prayed about, is probably cried over. I mean, each step was grueling.
At one point in the film, you go to your parents' farm because you're doing a project that involves the other women the film is following. Your dad seems genuinely curious about how and why the film is going to tie together themes of art, nature, the Catholic religion and what's happening with IVF in Alabama. How do you respond?
Covering reproductive rights in the South, I really tried to let the people I interviewed speak for themselves, and really help the audience develop empathy for these people going through impossible situations to become parents or not become parents, and that's really hard to do in anywhere. A lot of people's deeply held religious and cultural beliefs often stop the conversation before it can really evolve and go deeper, and I really wanted to get to the bottom of where these beliefs come from, and tie it back to symbols of religious Catholic artwork of specifically Mary and how she kind of evolved from other previous female deities and symbols and signs in nature and how they're all connected to our bodies. And I really just wanted to get people thinking about the origin of their beliefs and the origin of who whose humanity is considered holy.
You’re an artist yourself, and your artwork is a focus of the film. Could you tell more about that?
So I went to school for journalism, and I minored in art and took a few figure drawing classes. And during the pandemic, I became interested in the bodily form as art and how it can change the way you view yourself and how you revere yourself. So I began painting primarily women in Alabama's nude portraits, and the whole process was healing in both directions.
And I wanted to do that for the women going through IVF. IVF is so hard on your body, mentally, physically. It's a struggle to be told that your body can't do what it's supposedly supposed to do, and women specifically in the South come with all this baggage on how they should look and what is considered beautiful.
Can you tell more about the event at your parents' farm and how the artwork was displayed there?
I was really inspired by church youth group trips and the kind of emotional expansiveness that often happens at these retreats. And I kind of wanted to recreate that because there are parts of my own faith journey that I wanted to hold on to – the community aspects, the looking for something bigger than yourself – and I wanted to bring that to these women.
I made these paintings that are larger than life, with earth tones using dark blues, dark greens and kind of deep reds. I was very much inspired by the Alabama red dirt, the fresh water, our creeks and our lakes – they've been so restorative in my own journey of healing, going through infertility. And I presented these women as kind of elements of the earth, goddesses in their own right, with these goddess-like poses. And I really wanted to have the audience revere these people as autonomous, holy beings, when that's taken away from them going through infertility, but it's also taken away from them through our laws.
A woman named Emily says in the film that IVF medicalizes the body, and the film shows that happening to her. Why was it important to show that?
I'll start by saying this film is the most intimate, up-close depiction of infertility care I have ever seen. Right now is a very important time to have representation of these incredibly difficult, nuanced decisions, because quite frankly, we shouldn't have to show those things. These women's pain should not have to be on display for others to empathize or others to trust her judgment, but I feel like that was necessary in the political climate that we're in.
So the film sort of raised this question of whether the movement that led to the Alabama Supreme Court decision was intentionally going after IVF, or if it was an unintended consequence. What are your thoughts on that?
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, there was already talk about IVF, birth control, contraception, Plan B all being at risk, and everyone kind of rolled their eyes. That's not actually going to happen. And then Alabama does – we were the first to test it in terms of IVF. I don't know if that specific instance was an intentional act to restrict IVF. But what I do know is that groups like the Federalist Society, that we depict meeting in the documentary, have a close ear of many state houses and national politics, and what we're learning is that just this summer, the Texas GOP stated that they want to ban IVF. And in a national grant approved by President Trump, they considered embryos created through IVF children. So this aspect of fetal personhood is very intentional. I know this for certain: There is no way to not let fetal personhood laws affect IVF unless there are blanket laws protecting them.
The film makes that statement at the end, and I'm just wondering what would that look like in Alabama?
It's not over. There was essentially a legislative Band-Aid that allowed clinics to feel like they could open. It was basically the state saying they're not trying to go after IVF clinics specifically, but that's not legally protective. There is nothing in the way from this happening again in Alabama or other states.
Because of our state constitutional amendment that we voted on in 2018 or 2019, declaring that we believe that life begins at conception – it's in our constitution. We need another amendment to the amendment to the constitution.
I think it was the point in the film where that Band-Aid was put on the Supreme Court decision, or it was expected that it would be, that you say the damage is done to me. This experience is always going to be with me. Can you talk about how it's still with you?
It just felt like my experience, my pain, my hurt was completely invalidated, and that rage has fueled so much good and artistic creative power. It's fueled the creation of this documentary that I am so proud of. But it can also be debilitating to hold that anger, and I've had to learn to know when I can put it down and feel other things. I will say, spoiler alert: I have a little girl now. And my experience becoming a mother to her has definitely superseded that anger most days. But I just feel like it'll never go away – that immediate feeling, learning that my healthcare plans had changed from an Instagram post, a news alert, and that's really what spurred this.
Show Me the Line screens Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Lyric Theater, with an encore showing Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
