Maisie Crow – ‘The Last Clinic’ was originally published on an expired domain created for the Kent State and Anglo American University‘s Journalism Program sponsored by Prague Freedom Foundation that I participated in during the Winter Semester of 2014-2015.
I thought I was done collecting sources for my final project when Lance gave me a flier for a presentation in Franklin Hall by someone called Maisie Crow. He said that she was doing something involving abortion. When I Googled her later that day, I found out that she made a movie about the last abortion clinic in Mississippi that is under the threat of being shut down.
I was immediately interested and decided to go to the presentation, but I wasn’t expecting to be inspired. Maisie looked like one of the college students and was just as short as me. She was given very impressive introductions by two staff members at Kent that I actually knew, Thor and David. She herself didn’t say much because she wanted us to watch the movie first. Her passion and determination for her project was obvious right away when she stopped the movie a few minutes in because the speakers had a weird buzz and she wanted her movie to be presented at its best.
In the movie she managed to capture on film exactly what I want to capture on paper – a story about abortion from both the pro-choice and pro-life sides. Although she is open about being pro-choice, she has a good relationship with the pro-lifers at the abortion clinic because she spent an equal time with them as she did the other side. Her movie was even shown in a church.
She is continuing her story and wants to develop her 45 minute movie into a full length feature film and she is extremely devoted to sharing this story. After the presentation I had to line up with a bunch of other people who wanted to talk to her. I was excited when it was my turn and I told her a bit about my project in Ohio and we exchanged information. Because she was leaving at 10AM we didn’t have time to meet in person but we did spend about 30 minutes on the phone talking about abortion, our projects and life in general.
I got a quote from her for my paper and we promised to stay in contact. It is amazing what Maisie has accomplished and I think we can all learn from her. I look forward to watching her other videos and sharing my paper with her once I am finished. It is amazing finding people who are successful yet levelheaded and who inspire you to do what you love and to use it to make a difference in the world.
