'The Last Clinic' Highlights Evaporating Abortion Rights in the US Atavist
go to original February 11, 2013

The Last Clinic is an illuminating and moving portrait of the humanity behind an incendiary issue. (The Atavist)

Maisie Crow, an award-winning filmmaker and member of the Razon Collective, is a master of pulling that rabbit out of the hat. Her latest film, The Last Clinic, cuts to the heart of the political movement to eradicate abortion access state by state in the U.S.

In Mississippi, a new law threatens to shut down the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion provider in the state. Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Maisie Crow and writer Alissa Quart provide an intimate portrait of the lives at the center of this political maelstrom.

From one of the clinic’s doctors, who feels duty-bound to travel there each week from out of state; to a leading protester, a doctor who once performed abortions herself; to the young women wrestling with a decision that will change the course of their lives, this unique multimedia story takes you beyond the slogans. The Last Clinic captures the humanity behind an incendiary issue.

“I’ve been involved with the movement for women’s reproductive rights for over 40 years, both as an activist and a writer, and this is by far the best reporting I have ever seen on the subject. Alissa Quart and Maisie Crow offer a view from the frontlines of the abortion conflict that is both intimate and bracingly challenging.”

—Barbara Ehrenreich, founding editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, and other books.

About Maisie Crow and Alissa Quart

Maisie Crow is a photographer and multimedia producer based in Brooklyn. She has done work for The Boston Globe, Bread for the World, MediaStorm, The New York Times, the Robin Hood Foundation, Save the Children, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Maisie has taught as an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and as a multimedia instructor at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Alissa Quart is the author of three nonfiction books, Branded and Hothouse Kids, and the forthcoming Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire and many other publications, and contributes regularly to New York magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, and The New York Times Sunday Review. An adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she was a 2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She commissioned Atavist 21, The Last Clinic, and reported and wrote the text accompanying Maisie Crow’s documentary film.

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