The Ruth Leitman film follows Lizz Winstead and Abortion Access Front across the country over the course of six years.
“No One Asked You” highlights the fight for abortion rights by following Lizz Winstead and her group of comedians, activists, writers and producers on their national tour — “Abortion AF: The Tour.”
The group in question was founded by Winstead in 2015 as Lady Parts Justice League, later renamed Abortion Access Front (AAF). During their national tour, the group would work with local clinics to help workers, especially the clinic escorts. The goal of the tour, and the group as a whole, is to use humor to destigmatize abortion.
The documentary’s use of humor and overall comedic timing not only achieve its goal of destigmatizing abortion, it moves the audience to put more effort into fighting for abortion rights.
Throughout the film, the audience meets various clinics across the nation — notably The Pink House Abortion Clinic in Mississippi. It served as the last clinic of its kind in the state, also becoming the center of the case that would overturn Roe v Wade. When Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, The Pink House had to close its doors due to Mississippi’s trigger laws.
AAF’s work with these abortion clinics focused on clinic escorts — the people in front of the clinics helping patients walk through the crowds of anti-abortion protestors. The escorts usually wear neon vests and sometimes carry umbrellas to help physically block out the rambunctious and religious anti-abortion crowd.
One could say that the tense moments between clinic escorts and the anti-abortion crowd in front of these clinics serve as the battle frontlines of the abortion fight. The audience becomes privy to the religious, oftentimes asinine, rhetoric spewed by the anti-abortion crowd.
Oftentimes, AAF and clinic escorts get into verbal spats with the protestors. During a particular exchange, one of the anti-abortion protestors showed one of their signs which featured a picture of “Whipped Peter” — an enslaved man whose back was severely scarred from whippings. The anti-abortion protester proceeds to flip that sign over, showing a photo of an aborted fetus, making an unsettling comparison between the two.
“We need to honor the clinic escorts … They are heroes,” Winstead said during a Q&A session after the film’s screening.
Despite the heavy topic and intense moments, the documentary and AAF itself allows humor to lead the conversation. Not only do we see comics at work, using their humor to fight for a social issue, we see the documentary’s overall editing style enforce the importance of the fight for abortion rights.
The editing reminds me of “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways: aggressively feminine for the sake of empowerment. The animations added to the film’s humorous, serious-but-not-so-serious tone as they were bright and vibrant and in your face. Oftentimes, the film would pause and it would transition to an animated version of a still moment. These moments allow the audience to take a breath from an intense moment.
Another amazing aspect of the film is when we see AAF prepare for an upcoming protest or when we see their social media content. When the court decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked, they dressed as the Supreme Court judges and held up huge cutout signs of their faces.
During the Q&A session following the film’s screening, Winstead notes that a good tactic for going against anti-abortion protesters is to have bigger signs. This sentiment was apparent throughout the film as AAF would bring absurdly huge signs to every protest and abortion clinic they visited. Clinic workers would have their own signs as well, and the clinic escorts used their umbrellas for this very reason.
All in all, “No One Asked You” does an impeccable job of balancing humor and comedy with such a heavy topic. Not only do they showcase the long-running fight for abortion rights, the audience is put onto the physical frontlines of the fight. We get a first-person look into the clinic escorts as well as AAF’s work at abortion rights protests.
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