Documentary: Roe Was Never Enough

The essay, written by documentary filmmaker Emma Dessau, describes her film about Holler Health Justice, a West Virginia abortion fund founded in 2018 after the state legislature stripped Medicaid coverage for abortion in a state where over 30% of residents rely on Medicaid. Dessau frames the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, as confirmation of something the fund's founders already understood: legal protection under Roe never translated into actual access in remote parts of Appalachia.

The film contrasts community-funded abortion funds, often staffed by former clients, with the growth of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which the piece describes as designed to discourage abortion through misinformation while drawing state and federal funding intended for low-income families. Dessau situates the fund's work within a longer history of extraction from West Virginia by coal, timber, and now data-center and bitcoin-mining interests, and credits it to a tradition of mutual aid filling gaps left by government.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.