Criterion Now – Episode 131 – A Conversation with Imogen Sara Smith

**Aaron West** (0:05)
Has anything happened this week, Jill?

**Jill Blake** (0:07)
Not a thing, nothing at all. It's been a perfectly quiet, uneventful few days.

**Aaron West** (0:16)
Is there a state on our naughty list now?

**Jill Blake** (0:22)
Yeah, there is. So we, you know, some stuff happened in Texas this week.

**Aaron West** (0:29)
Hey, you know what? This is Ty Gresham, and by the way, hi Imogen.

**Imogen Sara Smith** (0:32)
Hi Aaron, it's great to be here.

**Aaron West** (0:35)
I actually got, I lived in Houston for a little bit, and I got attacked by the drunk people, and they broke my jaw. So I have no love for Texas.

**Jill Blake** (0:46)
Oh my goodness.

**Aaron West** (0:47)
Texas is fine. Yeah, that's when I was 20, yeah.

**Jill Blake** (0:52)
That's a brawl. Were you in like a roadside, like a honky tonk?

**Aaron West** (0:58)
It was a gas station, and I was next to a van with some people that had cussed them out, and they thought it was me. And so I didn't mean to get into this. So they came around the van with a quarter roll.
And yeah, so anyway.

**Jill Blake** (1:13)
Okay, so Texas.

**Imogen Sara Smith** (1:14)
This is a very, very noir opening.
This is like, all of this is just gonna be. Be noir here.

**Aaron West** (1:23)
Screenwriters are welcome to take that story.

**Jill Blake** (1:28)
That's fantastic. I mean, not that you got your jaw broken, but what a story.

**Aaron West** (1:34)
So Jill, I was very proud of you this week for, do you wanna just kinda talk about what you?

**Jill Blake** (1:39)
Yeah, so we had this thing happen in Texas where the government in Texas had drawn up this ridiculous, and Greg Abbott signed into law this very, very, very restrictive abortion bill in Texas.
And you know, abortion activists had been keeping an eye on this for some time. And it went into effect on a midnight central time, Texas time, this past Wednesday. And basically the Supreme Court had an opportunity to speak up and say, no, this is unconstitutional. This can't go through. And a lot of the more restrictive abortion bills, like in my state of Georgia, did get shot down even after signed into law because they were found unconstitutional. And so that was kind of the hope here. However, the Supreme Court has changed in makeup over the last couple of years, especially last summer after Ginsburg died. And so the worry was that this would stand, this new law would stand. And so a lot of people, myself included, were up all night, Wednesday night, refreshing, or Tuesday night, refreshing our Twitter feeds to see if the Supreme Court was gonna speak up before the deadline. They did not.
And so the law went into effect at midnight. And then it was another full day before the Supreme Court spoke up, and the law stands.
And so it effectively overturns Roe in the state of Texas. And like a lot of women, I was really pissed off about it. And so I wanted to, I'm already a sustaining donor to Planned Parenthood, but I wanted to do something more to one of the abortion access funds in Texas that are doing the hard work of making sure that women have safe access.
So I decided to donate some money to Lilith Fund, which is one of the organizations on the ground in Texas. And I am a freelancer, and work has been extremely light as of late. And so I can't do much. I was only able to donate $50. And I thought, well, how can I maximize my donation? Well, I can reach out to the people on Twitter who follow me, and maybe I can incentivize a little bit and tie it in to classic film, which many of my followers are classic film fans. And I got to thinking about all of the women, the actresses who had had an abortion before it was legal, and in very unsafe conditions. And the first actress I thought of was Myrna Loy. And she had an abortion in the 30s, and she talked about it in her autobiography, Being and Becoming. And then later, I believe it was Emily Leiter in her biography that talked about it more, and it actually had left her infertile. So I said, well, how about if you donate to Planned Parenthood, or Lilith Fund, or really any abortion access fund, any amount, I'll draw, randomly draw a name and send you a copy of Myrna's book. And then I had some offers, my friend Kate Gabrielle, who has a store and she designs all kinds of pins and t-shirts and things. And she has a Myrna Loy pin that she's offered up, and some stickers she's offered up. And then my friend Christina Rice, who wrote the biography of Anne de Borac, and then just did one on Jane Russell. She offered up her Jane Russell book, because Jane Russell, who was very right wing, and very Catholic, and very pro-life, also had an abortion early on in her career that also left her infertile. So she offered that up. So we've raised, last I checked, it was like $900 in a couple days.