A Q&A with Asha Dahya, Producer and Director of “Someone You Know”

In June 2022, in a 6-to-3 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The new ruling returned to individual states the power to regulate any aspect of abortion not protected by federal law. The aftermath of this decision has widespread consequences, including confusion among health care providers and, increasingly, patients being both persecuted and prosecuted on reproductive grounds.

“Someone You Know” is a timely new short documentary that follows the stories of three women who underwent late-term abortions. Asha Dahya, producer and director of the film, has a background in advocating for reproductive rights as the producer and host of a podcast series for ReproFilm.org and board chair of the national nonprofit Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC.org).

Dahya recently talked to the FBomb about “Someone You Know,” the importance of sharing abortion stories, and more.

The FBomb: How did you go about finding the women you profiled in this documentary? How does one reach out to strangers and ask them to share one of their most personal experiences with the public?

Asha Dahya: Abortion stories are often very personal, and not everyone wants to share their abortion stories. Especially later abortion stories because a lot of those people receive the bulk of harassment due to a lot of misinformation.

When we started working on the film, I had connections to a few organizations, including Planned Parenthood and We Testify. We Testify is a really great abortion storytelling and advocacy organization. I was already connected with the founder, Renee Bracey Sherman, an abortion justice and reproductive justice leader. And she recommended two people. Two of the people in the film, Valerie and Sharon, are We Testify storytellers.

The other woman in the film, Mindy, I was aware of from a Rewire podcast I heard a number of years ago, and I was just really impacted by her story. She was so candid, and she’d been through the wringer. Her experience was really awful. I reached out to the ACLU of Illinois, who helped coordinate her Rewire interview, and they put me in touch with Mindy.

I was really thankful they all had said yes. I had spoken to a few other people, but we narrowed it down to the three that are in the film because of the diversity of their backgrounds. One is Latina, one is African American, and one is white. Of course, it could be far more diverse, but in terms of the stories that we wanted to show and the backgrounds, those are the three that we selected.

I can only assume there must have been some very emotional or unexpected moments as you heard more about these three women’s lives. What are some of the things that you learned that were surprising or unexpected?

Yes, there are definitely some emotional moments we kept in the film because it really underscores how emotional these experiences can be.

Mindy talks about her experience where she was caught up in the Catholic hospital system quite a few years ago (pre-Dobbs), and she met barrier after barrier because the Catholic hospital system does not provide a lot of reproductive health care treatments like abortion, contraception, or tubal ligations. She learned there was a fetal anomaly fairly early on in the second trimester, but because of the religious directives within the Catholic hospital system, the doctors’ hands were tied — they were not able to help her. She ended up seeing 10 different doctors, and no matter where she traveled in the Quad City area where she lived (on the border of Illinois and Iowa), none of the doctors were able to help her. She was essentially forced to carry a pregnancy to term which was not viable. Thankfully, she survived; it could have been a lot worse. There have been a lot worse stories where the pregnant person does not survive. She did, but it was so traumatic for her. She kept saying that it never had to be this way; she could have gotten the abortion much earlier on if she didn’t have all these barriers. She would’ve been able to avoid all the trauma and look after her son, who she already had at home, and not have to deal with PTSD later and go on medications.

For me, it was eye-opening learning that for people who make these decisions about getting a later abortion, it’s not always an easy decision because of the barriers and because of all the hoops they have to jump through just to get a doctor who will provide for them. That was pre-Dobbs, and now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, it is even harder with a shortage of OB-GYNs in a number of states. Access to a later abortion is only going to become harder and harder and more expensive because people have to have the means and the money to travel, or they’re going to be forced to carry a potentially fatal pregnancy to term. So, that’s one of the things I learned through Mindy’s story and making this film.

What are some of the biggest things that you feel the general public does not know but should know about this issue?

I love this question because I feel like this is the purpose of why I’m making the film and what kind of message or impact I want to have. I’m really targeting pro-choice people because we are the majority now and we have a chance to really win on abortion in a number of states, especially with a number of state ballot measures coming up in November that are based around abortion.

I’ve also heard so many pro-choice people say things like, “Oh I’m pro-choice, just not in the seventh or eighth month — that’s just taking it too far.” Now having made this film, it really makes me understand that if you say those things, then you’re not pro-choice. We can’t be separating the good and the bad abortions — there needs to be more understanding why someone would choose an abortion later in pregnancy. There are three main reasons why, and all this data can be found on a website called whonotwhen.com — they compile data from the CDC, the Guttmacher Institute, and the Kaiser Family Institute.

So, the first main reason is a later discovery of pregnancy, and this is very common in young people or people who have medical conditions where they menstruate later than others, and so they don’t discover their pregnancy until they are already much further along than, say, eight or nine weeks, which is typical pregnancy discovery.

The second is that people find out information later in their pregnancy that they could not have known earlier, which are usually medical issues, fetal anomalies. When you are pregnant, you don’t do an anatomy scan until 20 weeks, which is halfway through your pregnancy. So, at that point, you are already well into the second trimester, and you could potentially find out something that is heartbreaking, a diagnosis that is incompatible with life, which a lot of people do hear about.

The third one, which is becoming increasingly more common, is because of the barriers put in people’s way that are pushing people later and later into pregnancy. Time-based restrictions — we see six-week bans, 12-week bans, 15-week bans, 20-week bans. The reason why they are not consistent is because no legitimate medical person would put a time-based restriction, knowing that anything could happen at any point in pregnancy where you need to access abortion care.

When I learned about those reasons, it made me realize we should be focusing on the barriers [to accessing abortion] and not the reasons why people choose [abortion]. Let’s start dismantling those barriers, let’s start exposing them, let’s start pushing back on them so that people can make the best decision for their lives and their bodies in an earlier time frame that potentially could be less harmful. Understanding why people need later abortions and why [abortion] must continue to be accessible and not so out of reach because it is going to continue to harm the most vulnerable people, young people, immigrant people, and low-income women.

What feedback has your documentary received from pro-life advocates and from pro-choice proponents?

So, it’s still fairly early on in the campaign in terms of showing it. I’m just starting my film festival run and partnering with organizations, but I’ve definitely heard feedback from mostly pro-choice people because that’s my target audience. The more that I tell people about this project, even people within my own network, there are people sharing their own stories, and I had no idea that they had been through this experience. And so that’s been a really wonderful and affirming thing to know, that there are people who go through this experience and maybe are too afraid to speak up. But when someone like me, and especially the women in my film, choose to share their real names and put their likeness on camera and share their real stories, that bravery becomes contagious. And other people want to share their stories and find community and know that they’re not alone in what they’ve been through.

I haven’t really looked at any of the anti-choice people, and I’m not really going to just because I don’t feel like that’s the strategy for me or for this film. I think abortion has typically been seen as this very divisive topic, and it’s very 50/50 down the middle. But actually, since Dobbs was decided and since Roe v. Wade was overturned, we’ve seen seven states vote on abortion ballot measures. And what we’ve seen in every single one of those cases, most notably in Ohio, is that abortion is a winning issue. And that when you put a vote directly in the hand of someone who can vote on this issue — whether they’re Republican, Democrat, conservative, on the fence — an overwhelming number of people voted in all seven states to protect access to abortion or to deny an anti-abortion measure. What that tells me is that, actually, abortion is a winning issue.

And now pro-choice people have a chance to do something really revolutionary and so it’s going to take a lot of boldness and courage in speaking out. There are about a dozen state ballot measures that we’re going to see in the election this year in November. I hope that people will be encouraged to know that even since the Dobbs decision, Pew Research and a few other polls have found that the number of pro-choice people have been increasing, and that includes Republican voters. They don’t want access to abortion to be completely decimated, because guess what: Even Republicans need abortions. Even conservative religious women need abortions.

What parting message would you want to share with the public?

My message would be: Everyone’s on a journey of their own. When we talk about a topic like abortion, I certainly have been on my own journey. I was a former anti-choice conservative Christian who never did any research. But then, doing research, educating myself, listening to stories, going through pregnancy myself, I went on my own journey in my own way, and I was able to challenge my own stigma first before speaking out. My message to people listening to this and watching my film would be, challenge yourself. What are the parts about later abortion that make you uncomfortable? What are the things that you don’t know about? If there is something that makes you feel uncomfortable or you’re not too sure about, just do some research, find out.

I guarantee that once you hear the stories and you see the three women in my film — they’re ordinary women. They’re like you and I. They’re your friends, they’re your colleagues, they’re your family members. They’re ordinary people who just want to live their lives and make the best decisions for themselves. If we can see ourselves reflected in these stories, I hope that each of us can do our own work first. Because once it starts within us, then naturally there’s an outpouring of growth, and we want to speak to other people and push back on stigma we see online or on social media. That all has to start within ourselves first. I hope it will generate empathy when people see these stories in my film.