Critic Reviews

Plan C is an emotional journey into American culture, focused solely on one hot topic.

Plan C presents how, within a concise timeline that includes before, during, and after a pandemic and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a determined group of women, veteran public health advocates, researchers, social justice activists, and digital strategists fight to increase access to abortion pills in the United States outside of a clinical setting.

Extensive archive news material is drawn on to explain key moments in the struggle over reproductive rights, but mostly the story emerges organically from the interviewees themselves.

Urgent and unvarnished, Tracy Droz Tragos’ documentary Plan C is an early entry in what might be considered post-Roe cinema, focusing less on pro-choice ideology than on the practicalities of ensuring choice in a system increasingly stacked against the idea.

Despite the understandably emotional and deeply personal nature of Plan C’s work, Tragos’ film remains startlingly clear-eyed and concise, letting the stories she shares from abortion organizers, healthcare ambassadors, doctors, clinic workers, and patients speak for themselves.

Tragos and her brave, badass subjects spend almost all of Plan C zipping through explanations of a constantly evolving abortion landscape.

At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.

Through interviews with women on all sides of the issue, “Plan C” paints a well-rounded picture of their operations but struggles with where to direct its focus.

The patients, experts, and tireless doctors and activists who director Tracy Droz Tragos (“Rich Hill,” “Abortion: Stories Women Tell”) interviews are dedicated and admirable, but this documentary’s humanity comes at the expense of basic facts.