Battleground Director Cynthia Lowen On Roe V. Wade And Pro-Life Views – Exclusive Interview – The List

It could be argued that the pro-choice movement is not fully aware of the organization pro-life movement, as well as its reach when it comes to young people in particular. While your documentary will shed much needed light on the situation, why do you think the pro-choice movement isn't as clued into the demographics of the pro-life protestors?

Pro-choice audiences and I expect that the majority of audiences for this film will be pro-choice people, and we've really started to hear this already in the screenings that we've been doing people are really surprised by how little they know about the anti-abortion movement. Even for people who are very staunchly pro-choice and who consider themselves to be reasonably engaged in current events and news, a lot of people don't know about these organizations.

They don't know about the Susan B. Anthony List. They don't know about Students for Life. That same feeling was part of what compelled me to want to make this film I felt like we're seeing anti-abortion legislation passing in very sweeping ways and we're seeing the results of the power of the anti-abortion movement trickle down in various ways in state bans and other kinds of bans and legislation that were being passed prior to Roe being overturned.

There was something missing. There was something that I wasn't seeing in the equation that would help me understand why, in a country where the majority of people support abortion access, we were seeing abortion being so radically dismantled. That sense of my own not knowing who the anti-abortion movement is and how they're doing what they're doing and how they're organizing and what they believe, those were all things that compelled me as a pro-choice person to want to understand. That curiosity was behind the approach to the film.

I also was struck in making the film that Marjorie Dannenfelser has a book on her desk that is called "Know Thine Enemy: A History of the Left." It's very clear to me in making the film, and hopefully for people in watching the film, that the anti-abortion movement is certainly watching what the left is doing and what the pro-choice movement is doing and what the progressive social justice movements in the United States are doing.

You see them appropriating that language, the language of the Women's March, by calling the theme of the March for Life in 2020 "pro-life is pro woman." You see when the Black Lives Matter protests happened that Students for Life is very fast to appropriate that movement, creating all of these "Black pre-born lives matter" events across the United States.

This phenomenon is something that is attempting to mainstream the anti-abortion movement as something that is within the contemporary zeitgeist in the United States. It's also an attempt to reach people who consider themselves to be concerned about social justice, to reach young people through this appeal. By showing how much the anti-abortion movement is keeping an eye on progressive movements and using the language of the left and absorbing it and appropriating it, it's important on the flip side to shine a light on who they are and what they're doing and how they're doing it. It's something that the pro-choice movement and many people who are pro-choice aren't necessarily looking at and haven't necessarily investigated very closely.

Learn more about the documentary, "Battleground,"athttps://battlegroundfilm.org. Follow the film on Facebook at @BattlegroundTheFilm, on Twitter at @battlegrndfilm, and on Instagram at @battlegroundthefilm.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Correction:Terrisa Bukovinac's name was initially misspelled. This has been corrected.

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Battleground Director Cynthia Lowen On Roe V. Wade And Pro-Life Views - Exclusive Interview - The List