After having sex for the first time, Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) realizes that she needs the morning-after pill.
However, she lives in a rural part of South Dakota, where access to reproductive care is limited. A pharmacist rejects Sunny’s attempt to purchase Plan B, citing that, under South Dakota law, he does not have to give it to her if he finds it morally unethical.
As a result, Sunny and her best friend, Lupe (Victoria Moroles), decide to drive three hours away to a Planned Parenthood in Rapid City. Along the way, chaos ensues.
It’s been interesting to see how other critics have responded to the film. Many reviewers have described the movie as a light-hearted buddy comedy with some reproductive angst thrown into the mix. It is certainly a dark comedy, one that ricochets from clever barbs and wacky mishaps to worry and despair. But the core of the story is a horror movie. This is a film about a young woman who is told, over and over again, that she has no control over her body. With the support of her best friend, the protagonist pushes through multiple obstacles in order to achieve bodily autonomy. And, in the end, she almost fails.
Throughout the film, Lupe and Sunny work to protect each other at all costs. Whenever Sunny begins to feel disillusioned or hopeless about their journey, Lupe grows assertive and confident. She tells her best friend that they will get the Plan B pill, no matter what. She, too, harbors anxiety about their ever-shrinking timeline (the efficacy rate of Plan B continues to drop after the first twenty-four hours), but she refuses to let her personal nerves affect Sunny.
This is a story that demonstrates, over and over again, how women step up for each other. Reproductive autonomy is a human right, but it has been completely shredded by the oppressive legislature of the American government. Every day, women must grapple with a reality where we are told that our bodies do not belong to us. Yes, the female leads of Plan B often lean into slapstick humor and quips. But that, too, is wholly real. We feel anger and horror and unease and then we make ourselves laugh at the monsters in front of us. We laugh because it is just another tool in our arsenal. It is a way to keep ourselves from falling down or falling apart.
In 2013, Senator Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat, engaged in a thirteen-hour filibuster on Texas’s Senate floor to prevent the state’s passage of HB2. However, Davis’s actions only briefly stopped the omnibus antiabortion bill from being enacted. A few weeks later, Governor Rick Perry signed HB2 into law; the controversial piece of legislation criminalized abortion after twenty weeks and enforced strict regulations on abortion providers that proved costly—a majority of facilities, including Planned Parenthood, shuttered their doors, unable to implement HB2’s harsh new protocols. While Perry and other Republican officials defended the bill as a necessary measure to promote female health, opponents criticized HB2 for triggering a significant decline in the accessibility of reproductive health services— while also neglecting to markedly enhance the state’s development of health in any way.
The bill was not a form of legal protection, but an obstacle to female autonomy.
In a scene that toes the line between comedy and horror, Sunny and Lupe attempt to buy the morning-after pill from a drug dealer in a playground at night. He promises them that it’s “probably” Plan B, but he’s not totally sure. Then, he upcharges the price. Desperate, Sunny tells him that they can’t afford it. In response, the drug dealer attempts to extort her for sexual favors. Sunny and Lupe look at him, disgusted. Immediately, they get into an extended fight over who should do it. Both girls urgently want to protect each other, and both of them are willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing to keep the other one safe. When it comes to defending each other, these girls will do whatever it takes. Eventually, Sunny and Lupe figure out a way to sidestep the drug dealer and his exploitative offer and they make a run for it.
Of course, they still need to find an available Planned Parenthood.
In early 2016, a group of abortion clinics, under the domain “Whole Woman’s Health,” petitioned against HB2. That year, the Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of Texas’s bill. The transcript for the proceedings are both frustrating and fascinating. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor questioned the validity of Texas’s claim that HB2 offered substantial benefits to women.
In one passage, Sotomayor noted that the risks of early-stage abortions are minuscule when compared to other common procedures that women undergo in health clinics, including colonoscopies and liposuction, yet the “legislature is only targeting abortion when there is nothing…that show[s] a risk so unusual that it needs greater attention.”
This fact reveals the disingenuous agenda of HB2, which succeeded on the misleading basis of “women’s safety.” In reality, the Texas legislature allowed other surgical practices, including surgeries requiring general anesthesia, to be performed in a physician’s office. The proponents of the bill were more interested in enforcing a specific brand of cultural principles, ones that prevented women from exercising their reproductive autonomy in ways they found “wrong.”
And, of course, many facilities geared toward reproductive health do not solely offer abortions (although there is absolutely nothing wrong with those that do). They also provide pap smears, birth control medication, pre-cancer screenings, and, as Sunny herself knows, the morning-after pill. These are all necessary forms of care. Yet, multiple states nationwide have instituted anti-constitutional measures like HB2 that have closed down these clinics. Multiple facilities, lacking the funds to refurbish their offices to match arbitrary layout rules, have closed; physicians, likewise, have struggled to receive “admitting privileges” from hospitals unwilling to associate themselves with the “controversial” procedure of abortion.
As a result, thousands of women no longer have access to basic reproductive care.
As Sunny frantically drives her mother’s car, the boy she hooked up with continues to try to call her. Eventually, she answers the phone. He frets about premarital relations and going to hell. She hangs up on him. While Sunny must fight to achieve some semblance of bodily control, the boy gets to stay at home and hem and haw about the morality of sex.
Finally, Sunny and Lupe reach Planned Parenthood.
They discover that it has been shut down by the state.
At this point, Sunny loses it. In the parking lot, she drops to her knees. Her face crumples. And she weeps. Sunny weeps because she has no control over what happens to her body. She weeps because she lost days of her life on the road, because she and her best friend had to navigate unexpected and scary situations, because all of her sacrifices meant nothing when it came to a group of old white men in suits who decided they knew more about her body than she did.
And Lupe cries with her.
Then, Lupe helps her best friend up and she takes her home.
After fearfully trying to hide her situation, Sunny approaches her mother. She has spent years acting like the perfect daughter. She can’t bear to disappoint the person she loves most. And yet, Sunny needs help. She confesses everything.
And Sunny’s mother takes her and Lupe to the pharmacy and stares down the pharmacist as she orders the morning-after pill.
With two women beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder, Sunny finally takes Plan B.