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"Trapped"

U.S. Documentary Competition

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At once sensitive and hard-hitting, the documentary "Trapped" shows the real-life consequences of efforts to chip away at women's constitutional rights to abortion access. Some 250 laws over the last six years have passed state legislatures, mostly in the South, trying to regulate women's health clinics out of existence. (They're called TRAP laws, for "targeted regulation of abortion providers.") Director Dawn Porter (who examined the world of public defenders in "Gideon's Army") profiles clinic owners and abortion doctors at clinics in Alabama and Texas, where anti-abortion laws have hit hardest. The clinic workers detail the deliberately impractical and medically unnecessary details of these new laws, and the harsh effects these laws have on real women — including the very real outcome that women will risk their lives by self-aborting. "Trapped" is an urgent snapshot of an issue that citizens should understand before the U.S. Supreme Court decides on such laws by this June.

— Sean P. Means

"Trapped" screens again at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival: Saturday, 12:15 p.m., Holiday Village Cinema 2, Park City.