Abortion: Stories from North and South
1984 · 54m · Canada
Directed by Gail Singer
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Abortion policy across Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada is traced through church, state, and medical control. Access to safe procedures remains uneven globally.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A structural anomaly masquerading as documentary—Singer's decision to splice six nations into a single inquiry does the opposite of what consensus expects, making abortion policy look like a problem of *architecture* rather than morality, which is more heretical than any polemic.
Gail Singer's 1984 assemblage sits squarely in the feminist documentary tradition while refusing its rhetorical comfort; the comparative method—tracking how institutions (church, state, clinic) literally *shape* access across geographies—amounts to formal argument about power itself.
The film's quiet kill is its refusal of voice-over authority; by letting institutional structures and medical settings speak through framing and sound design alone, Singer trusts the viewer to map the logic, turning a 54-minute essay into something that feels discovered rather than explained.