Martha Plimpton’s longtime championing of reproductive rights will be celebrated at the first rePRO Film Festival, a fest focused on women’s reproductive healthcare, awareness, and advocacy in the United States. She will receive the inaugural ChangemakeHER Award for her work with A Is For…, the nonprofit dedicated to strengthening reproductive rights and de-stigmatizing abortion she co-founded.
The ChangemakeHER Award “recognizes an exceptional individual who has provided a significant contribution towards the fight for women’s reproductive healthcare, including education, awareness, and activism,” the festival announced.
“I’m beyond excited by the work being showcased in this inaugural festival of films focusing on the vast subject of our reproductive lives,” Plimpton said. “These stories are vital to broadening our cultural vocabulary, and to be honored in this way means more than I can say. We still have so much work to do, and it’s high time that these stories are recognized and appreciated, encouraging those who have stories yet to be told.”
Plimpton is the president of A Is For…, which reclaims Hester Prynne’s scarlet “A.” Created in 2012 to combat the increasing legislative attacks on reproductive healthcare, the org offers financial support to groups working on the ground level to protect reproductive rights, and uses the arts to dismantle the stigma surrounding abortion care.
Plimpton has also lobbied Congress on behalf of Planned Parenthood and been active in the fight for reproductive rights since the ’80s.
“It’s been my lifelong belief that abortion is an inherent human right and that belief has never left me. I was raised by a feminist and generations of independent, self-made women,” she told Women and Hollywood. “I’ve always known that bodily autonomy is pretty much number one if you want to consider yourself a free citizen.”
“Frozen II,” “Baroness Von Sketch Show,” and “Flack” are among Plimpton’s more recent screen credits. She won an Emmy for her guest turn on “The Good Wife.” Also a theater mainstay, her stage projects include “Sweat,” “A Delicate Balance,” and “Cymbeline.”
rePRO Film Festival will be held virtually August 12-16.
Disclaimer: Women Together — a partnership of Women and Hollywood and Together Films — is consulting on this festival.
