Streaming giant Netflix released the documentary Reversing Roe on Sept. 13, with its directors touting it as an impartial investigation into both sides of the contentious abortion debate in America. As reported by MRC Culture on Sept. 18, the film did not live up to its lofty expectations as hours of interview footage with pro-life women were excluded from the film.
On Sept. 19, MRC Culture’s Katie Yoder and March for Life President Jeanne Mancini sat down with EWTN Pro-Life Weekly host Catherine Hadro to discuss where the documentary had gone awry in portraying the pro-life side of the spectrum:
Mancini, whom Netflix had reached out to for the documentary, claimed that camera crews were with her for “around an hour” on the morning of the March for Life. Despite delivering several impassioned points on how “pro-life and pro-woman go hand in hand,” Mancini reported, nothing she said made it into the Netflix picture.
Hadro then asked Yoder what her research at MRC revealed about pro-choice bias in the media. Yoder said she had directly compared coverage of the Women’s March and March for Life in 2017, which brought to light that the major news networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) gave seven times the coverage of the latter to the former. Yoder continued by encouraging pro-life advocates to take action: “[they] need to speak out about this, the media need to be held accountable, whether that’s by social media, talking to friends and family about this, or going to other news sources ...”
Hadro then shifted to a discussion of the documentary’s content itself, where Mancini lamented the filmmakers’ choice to put “emphasis on a male-oriented pro-life movement.” She called it a “disservice,” saying that many pro-life institutions in the United States are led by women. Yoder corroborated Mancini’s assertion, naming several leading pro-life females aside from Mancini who sat for talks that were unused by Netflix. Yoder noted that the documentary contained 13 interviews with pro-choice women and only one from a pro-life woman.
Reversing Roe, she said, is clearly “misleading American viewers.”
