Never Rarely Sometimes Always Is a Moving Testament to the Necessity of Abortion Access

Never Rarely Sometimes Always tells a big story on a small, personal scale. Written and directed by Eliza Hittman, the movie focuses on one 17-year-old’s complicated process of pursuing an abortion.

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We learn that Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is pregnant within the first 10 minutes of the film, along with some of the other basic facts of her life: She lives in rural Pennsylvania with her mother, stepfather, and two elementary-aged siblings. She works at a grocery store with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder). She sings and plays guitar with an earnestness that anyone who is, was, or has known a teenage musician will recognize with tenderness. The identity of the father of her pregnancy is not a basic fact of her life.

Autumn spends the first half of the movie functionally and emotionally on her own, even as she interacts with family, grocery-store customers, and the staff at the first place she goes for care—which offers a free “self-administered” test, a sonogram they claim puts her 10 weeks into the pregnancy, and a video about the evils of abortion. After she confides in Skylar, the two of them form a plan to secretly travel to New York City together so Autumn can access an abortion, which is unavailable closer to home.

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The movie’s thoughtfulness is revealed in how little it makes Autumn’s circumstances the focus. Though Never Rarely Sometimes Always is tonally and circumstantially quite different from Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child (2014), both are clear in their refusal to waste time justifying the protagonist’s abortion. A less subtle film might have used the circumstances of Autumn’s life—being a teenager, having little family support or financial resources, no positive relationship to her sexual partner—to overwhelm the decision-making and inner life of Autumn herself. But Hittman is not concerned with building a case to “prove” the necessity of Autumn’s abortion, just with portraying how difficult it is to access.

The lack of focus on Autumn’s circumstances also helps the film resist universalizing her position. Although the struggle for reproductive care access affects every demographic, and though the economic, geographic, and gendered challenges Autumn and Skylar have to navigate are significant, barriers to care are especially high for nonwhite, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ communities (and of course any intersections elevate the barriers even higher). It also provides an opportunity to incorporate the misinformation war often waged by “crisis pregnancy centers” like the one that Autumn visits early in the movie without requiring a ton of extra context. We experience only what Autumn experiences, which is an engrossing journey no matter what amount of prior knowledge about abortion access you bring to the movie.

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Stylistically, the film is compellingly understated. Hittman takes advantage of unique lighting opportunities when they’re available naturally in the characters’ experiences (particularly during their time in New York), and the rareness of those moments highlights how special they are. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is generally light on dialogue, with long stretches in which we’re meant to focus on Autumn’s and Skylar’s faces and actions with just ambient music and noise in the background. The dialogue that does exist is often guttingly realistic, which is thanks both to the writing and to the skill of Flanigan and Ryder. There’s a particularly stunning long scene in which the camera simply holds on Autumn’s face while a clinic employee off camera asks her a series of questions about her sexual health and safety, and the emotional range and restraint displayed is an impressive testament to Flanigan’s skill as an actor and Hittman’s as a director.

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The title serves multiple purposes: it’s the list of possible answers to the questions Autumn faces in the questionnaire, but those who follow reproductive access policy will also recognize the naming of frequent spots on that spectrum. It includes those who believe abortion shouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances (with a few allowing grudging exceptions for rape, incest, and threat of life to the pregnant person); the “safe, legal, and rare” position historically popular among some at the left-leaning center of the issue; those who support it with caveats; and those who support it unreservedly. I don’t know how likely the film is to reach anyone at the “never” end of the spectrum, but anyone even slightly open to being moved by the experiences and hurdles of these characters (or of any real person seeking an abortion) certainly will be. In an especially fraught time for reproductive rights, Never Rarely Sometimes Always offers a beautifully made reminder of their importance.