12 Weeks is not an Abortion Film

By Ning Chang

Anna Isabelle “Sunshine” Matutina is a whirlwind of energy in a bright pink top and a chic pixie cut – it was hard to believe she had stepped off a flight from the Philippines less than 12 hours earlier. When she heard I had already watched the film in advance of the interview, she wrung her hands nervously. “It is my international premiere!” she admits. “I don’t know how it’s going to resonate [with] international audiences. I’m very wary about that.”

12 Weeks is about Alice, a successful, career-oriented 40-year-old who grapples with an unexpected pregnancy, its impact on her life and interpersonal relationships, while also seeking an illegal abortion in the strongly Catholic country. Yet, Sunshine resists defining 12 Weeks as an abortion film – the label is too “sensationalist” and “festival bait” – to her, the film is more so about modern womanhood in the Philippines.

The Philippines has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, where abortion is broadly banned with no exceptions. It was only recently that the Philippine Commission on Human Rights has called for the decriminalisation of abortion, a long way from its original statement in 1999 which cited Catholic doctrine and deemed the medical procedure “immoral.”

“I really wanted to do the film in a way where I can bring to the centre of the story what it means to actually have the [abortion] rights that we are asking for,” Sunshine says. “What we’re fighting for in the Philippines is at least decriminalised abortion, but if you haven’t changed the culture, it’s not a guarantee that things will change for the women.”

In framing 12 Weeks, Sunshine deliberately keeps the men of the film on the sidelines.  The men in the film exist as shadowy ghosts of maleness on the periphery of Alice’s worldview, yet the weight of their social power over her is palpable in each frame. Sunshine notes: “even when you don’t see the men around you still feel the patriarchy because it’s so systemic.”

“One of the main reasons I wanted to do this kind of film was because I was trying to come to terms with the habits that I’ve formed due to internalised misogyny,” Sunshine says.  “We get that from our own mothers, and it’s passed down from generation to generation. That’s how much men came to manipulate and control the narrative – we don’t even realise that we’re perpetuating this system that they built for us.”

12 Weeks is not an Abortion Film

By Ning Chang