You Don't Just Have an Abortion

The film tells the tale of Iala, whose authority over his two sons, Raul and Bedan, is shaken. Raul has left to study in a seminary in the big city, where unknown to anyone, he has joined the liberation movement. Meanwhile, younger son, Bedan is rebelling against every possible tradition, even eyeing his father's young bride-to-be.

This beautifully photographed, revealing film about Egypt's women captures their separate and subordinate life under the Islamic code. Men and women speak about their traditions, expectations, and patterns of life. We meet articulate women who have had little schooling and whose lives are centered on childbearing and hard physical work. They acknowledge that their choices in life are limited. The Koran dictates behavior at every stage of life. Their husbands are selected by their fathers. Often, at puberty they are taken out of school. They unquestioningly accept circumcision, arranged marriages, huge families and polygamous husbands. Women after marriage are secluded and some may never set eyes on another man. By participating in this film, the women question for the first time some of the assumptions of their lives.

The struggle of the Dutch women's movement in the 1970s for the preservation and improvement of abortion legislation. Protest meetings, actions by Dolle Mina, political debates in the Senate, the occupation of the Bloemenhove abortion clinic, discussions on abortion migration from Germany and Belgium, and the conflict between the women's movement and Minister Van Agt.