"Autumn, has anyone ever forced you into a sexual act ever in your lifetime? Has your partner made you have sex when you didn't want to?
Answer from these multiple-choice options - Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always."

The appointed financial counselor asks. She assures, these are just routine questions.

But Autumn doesn't answer, the teardrops that were burgeoning and swelling in her eyes were answer enough.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) by Eliza Hittman is a realistic dramatization of sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and societal coldness as well as the emotional, psychological torment even the toughest teen girl goes through.

Eliza Hittman had a natural flow making the film, nothing feels imposed and exaggerated and the story is not trying to shock the audience, rather it wants to be the voice of every young woman, to make us realize where society stands with them and the abuses aren't isolated events — they are a constant, happening always, all around us. If you're a man, just ask your closest female friend or a sister. I did and I didn't like what I found.

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Autumn is a 17 years old teen with a few weeks of gestation. Due to the hormonal changes in her, she's always in foul mode. Her family, being unsupporting, doesn't help much, neither they know of her pregnancy. She goes to the local medical aid to be sure about it and to know what her options were.
She wants an abortion but they seemed like an anti-abortion cult. From there she goes to another facility and then to New York with her cousin, the only confidant.
Turned out, they'll have to be there for two days.

Two young teens, with a handful of bucks, in a big damn hostile city of New York, to make an abortion. Let that sink in.

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Both of the actors acted quite adeptly. I visited the actor's page who plays Autumn on Instagram and her persona seemed very unlikely to the character she plays.

There are some takeaways from the film.

** The anti-abortion cult. When Autumn visits her first facility, they show her a video of how killing a fetus is murder. That's clear propaganda.
I'm glad the filmmaker passively rooted for abortion and rightly so.

What a woman does with her body is entirely up to her and a fetus is part of her body. It's only a matter of choice. Unwanted pregnancies shouldn't put the burden on the woman, no matter how you see it.
And then there's the moral question. Personhood. Is a fetus a person? Can it be considered as killing another human being?
Well, not when abortions usually take place.
A fetus only grows consciousness after 24-28 weeks of conception (that's about 6-7 months) and statistically, hardly anyone goes through abortion then unless it's likely to cause serious health injuries to the mother.
And even then, consciousness alone doesn't make something a person. A grown-up dolphin or a whale or a crow can be considered as a person, a human fetus in the womb cannot. It has to pop into the world and earn its right to personhood.

** How unfavorable the system is. They make up meaningless rules and make people go through them. Autumn was insured but she didn't want her parents to know, so she had to pay. I know enough stories about people being bankrupt just to pay medical bills.
Things will be a lot harder in the future when the AI revolution will take away jobs. Without money to pay, there won't be insurances. And how will the medical sector deal with it? Will they stop treating patients and let them suffer and die? I guess time will say.

However, I didn't like how she (Hittman) used another boy to further support her message. Not every one of us has to be an opportunist. If that were so, we wouldn't be able to survive as a race for so long.

Nonetheless, a fine film. Can't say it's visually aesthetic but the story kept me seated.

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