The Turnaway Play

• Event Date: Sunday, November 9, 2025
• Time: 1:30 pm–3:30 pm (CST)
• Location: Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL

• Performance

Urbana-Champaign Reproductive Justice presents a staged reading of The Turnaway Play, in partnership with The Station Theatre and the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, directed by Christiana Molldrem Harkulich. This program is sponsored in part by an Urbana Arts & Culture Grant.

The Turnaway Play (external link) is about what really happens when people are denied access to abortion.

An urgent issue comes to life onstage through humor, drama, and audience participation.

Each performance will be followed by a talk-back discussion with the actors and director, led by Dr. Jeannie Ludlow, Director of Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Eastern Illinois University.

The Turnaway Play is inspired and informed by the groundbreaking Turnaway Study (external link), conducted by Dr. Diana Greene Foster, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Foster followed 1,000 women from across the country for five years and obtained the first scientific results on the consequences people face when either having or being denied an abortion. The main finding of the Turnaway Study is that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health, and family outcomes.

Characters in the play are based on Turnaway Study subjects and members of the research team. The play uses the words and experiences of these real people to bust myths and reduce abortion stigma. Drama, humor, and audience participation make it an engaging and thought-provoking theatrical event.

Cosponor: Urbana-Champaign Reproductive Justice