SANCTITY is work of a speculative fiction that seeks to provoke conversations about civil liberties, the value and dignity of human lives, and our ability to control our own bodies. While the work explores morality, devotion, and memory, the dominant theme is the struggle for freedom—of mind and body—in a world of tyranny.
Though the film is set in a probable future, it is inspired by a past reality. The film owes a huge debt to Dorothy Fadiman’s 1992 documentary When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories. Fadiman’s interviews rendered the terror of the back alleys and botched procedures in sharp relief, and left me wondering: how could anybody want to return to that world? Do those who were alive during that time—including our Supreme Court Justices and many members of Congress—have such short memories? Or are they simply responding to a political reality that favors passion over reason?
Perhaps it is simply our nation’s destiny to repeat our history so that every generation may, firsthand, struggle with the blessings and pitfalls of liberty.
As we have been here before, there was little guesswork needed to understand how a world without Roe v. Wade would work. Women, couples, daughters and fathers, sons and girlfriends, will still seek abortions. Pills will be sold underground like heroin, inescapably tied to violence and contamination. Those seeking abortions will be injured, assaulted, raped and exploited with no legal recourse or protection. More secrets will kept between loved ones, more lies will be told. A security apparatus that has become increasingly militarized in recent years will expand surveillance and dream up more reasons to interfere in our private lives.
Those with the money and power and connections to obtain a safe abortion will do so. The poor, the disenfranchised, and the young will, as is so often the case, bear the burden of our myopia.
It is my hope that SANCTITY illuminates the human cost of one path we could follow. But it is not the right path, and it is not the only path. We still have a choice.
Eric Adrian Marshall, Writer/Director