Comedian Lizz Winstead came away from the January 2017 Women’s March exhilarated but chagrined. With Donald Trump newly situated in the White House, the momentum for bold and unapologetic abortion access activism was there. Sustaining a movement, though, requires engaging activists in more than one-off marches. 

That’s when The Daily Show co-creator and former head writer, who founded Abortion Access Front two years earlier in 2015 to destigmatize abortion and promote community organizing for independent clinics and their patients through humor and pop culture, had an out-of-the-box idea. Why not round up a bunch of stand-up comics for a whirlwind tour through cities in the Midwest and South, which are home to many such clinics as well as anti-abortion political agendas? Each show would provide some laughs—and an excuse to convene local advocates and foster support networks for abortion providers where they were needed most. And so the Vagical Mystery Tour was born. “16 shows. 8 weeks. In a van,” Winstead joked with tour audiences. “That’s very ‘Hunger Games’ for your vagina.”

For veteran feminist film director Ruth Leitman, filming the tour began as a “personal lifeline” out of her own Trump administration blues. She planned to follow the group “for a year of inspiration and that would be it,” she tells City Paper. Seven years later, the resulting documentary, No One Asked You, which captures AAF’s humor as an act of rebellious activism while chronicling the deteriorating access to reproductive health care across the country, is premiering in D.C. on Feb. 24 at the 25th annual DC Independent Film Forum. 

Wanting the film to be “a fun movie-going experience,” Leitman leavened the classic road movie format with AAF’s DIY renegade vibe. The film contains plenty of lighthearted-with-an-edge snippets from the comedians’ tour sets, such as Gina Yashere from CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola and Joyelle Nicole Johnson, whose stand-up special, Love Joy, is streaming on Peacock. Musicians Pussy Riot and Neko Case, among others, provide a rocking, on-message feminist soundtrack. 

At each Vagical Mystery tour stop, AAF also offered physical and moral support to local clinics—the comedians painted walls, did landscaping, and threw barbecues for clinic staff. “This is how you party with abortion people. They bring out a gurney and use it as a bar,” Winstead quips at one such gathering captured on film. The opportunity to show the often-silenced abortion providers, staff, and clinic escorts “in their full humanity” was key to Winstead agreeing to be involved in the documentary, she tells City Paper.

As the legislative measures and court decisions that continue to limit abortion access mount, the need for AAF’s creative minds to pump out new content did as well. Over the past five years, AAF has rolled out viral sketch comedy videos calling out the antics of the anti-abortion side, an abortion “telethon” featuring Sarah Silverman, ingenious merch (Abortion Fight Club hoodie, anyone?), and the weekly Feminist Buzzkills podcast. Leitman kept the cameras rolling.

“A lot of documentaries out there aren’t bringing new angles to issues,” Deirdre Evans–Pritchard, DCIFF’s executive director tells City Paper. In her opinion, No One Asked You succeeds in showing that “you can come at the abortion issue with levity … and that really brings more people to the discussion.”

Research backs up Evans-Pritchard’s belief. As Rutgers University professor and co-author of the 2020 book, A Comedian and An Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, Lauren Feldman, explains, humor defuses “overwhelming and scary” issues such as abortion and climate change, which makes it easier for people to engage. “If you use comedy as a way in, people are more willing to pay attention,” Feldman says. 

DCIFF is an important stop for No One Asked You’s festival run because, as Leitman says, “D.C. is the belly of the beast, politically speaking.” The screening will be followed by an audience discussion with Leitman, Winstead, and Renee Bracey Sherman of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify. The conversation will specifically address the political landscape and opportunities for local activists to get involved in the coming months ahead of and during March 26 when the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments over access to mifepristone, one half of two drugs used to end pregnancies.

Before the March hearing, AAF is spearheading a petition drive demanding the Food and Drug Administration protect access to the drug. The day of the hearings, AAF is recruiting volunteers to rally with their trademark hypocrisy-busting posters on the Court steps. They’re also looking for folks to provide practical support to local abortion clinics to keep them operating without disruption while the political theater plays out on the Hill. 

Winstead hopes that politicians, finally ready to lean in to AAF’s approach, will be among Saturday’s audience members. “Abortion is a winning issue, and it’s activists and the advocates who have centered it effectively,” she says. “The politicians who don’t have a strategy for how to talk about it—hopefully, some will come to the screening and be willing to have a dialogue with those of us who really know how to talk to people about this issue.” 

During this election year, the filmmakers and AAF are fundraising to hold as many community screenings and discussions as possible. They plan to return to a number of the original Vagical Mystery Tour stops, several of which are in states with ballot measures against and for reproductive rights. (This includes Maryland’s proposed state constitutional amendment to establish the right to make “decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy.”) The Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Leitman is based, and college campuses are other priorities. 

This is all part of AAF’s strategy to not only provide easy on-ramps to activism but to also sustain engagement. Winstead is also optimistic after witnessing the impact of AAF’s irreverent humor paired with serious direct action. “The structures that are in place are scary and they’re doing really scary things to limit access to abortion care,” she says. “But knowing that how we [at AAF] communicate gets people off their asses and that they have found a place for themselves in the [abortion] movement is why I have hope.”

No One Asked You screens at 6 p.m. on Feb. 24 at Regal Chinatown Theaters, followed by a panel discussion with the film’s director Ruth Leitman, star Lizz Winstead, and other guests, as part of the DC Independent Film Forum. A second screening takes place at 3 p.m. on Feb. 25 at Regal. dciff-indie.org. $14.

The 25th Annual DCIFF runs through Feb. 25 in theaters across the city. dciff-indie.org.