Omstreden vrijheid (2005)

Every year, throughout the world, fifty million women have abortions and about thirty five thousand of those are in the Netherlands. Abortion has only been legal in the Netherlands for the last thirty years and has since been carried out safely in safe surroundings. Legalisation was one of the major social and moral controversies of the last half of the 20th century. The right to abortion in Holland now seems so fundamental that it is difficult to imagine that it is still a major issue for many women in the world. Filmmaker Sherman De Jesus shows the course of an average day at the oldest abortion clinic in Holland, Bloemenhove. There they are nowadays confronted by anti-abortion demonstrators. But also by women who once stood and demonstrated at the clinic for the right to life, and who now come to the clinic with their own pregnant daughters. What do these pioneers wrestle with? And have their opinions changed over the years? The film also tells the open-hearted story of the abortion of a seventeen year old girl. The story is told from her own point of view and from that of her mother and takes a surprising turn when she unexpectedly faces a choice for the second time. Has this acquired freedom changed personal and social attitudes? Is a woman's decision to have an abortion any less painful now than it used to be? Has it given women more freedom to organize their own lives?