Insert Yourself

SYNOPSIS

The IUD is back. After the 2016 US election it returned as a symbol of feminist resistance. A tiny T-shaped device printed on protest signs, turned into earrings, praised as a two-term insurance policy. In the years since, every political shock has driven another surge. When reproductive justice feels fragile, people reach for the one thing they're promised can't be voted away: an invisible device living inside an estimated 160 million bodies worldwide.

But the IUD's promise comes with a catch and, often, with pain. Behind the "set-it-and-forget-it" mythology lies a fraught history. The modern American IUD was developed by the Rockefeller-funded Population Council and promoted globally as a population control tool, administered primarily in the Global South. Domestically, the IUD has been disproportionately marketed to and sometimes forced upon marginalised communities. In the 1970s, the Dalkon Shield disaster killed 21 women, harmed hundreds of thousands, and nearly removed IUDs from the US market entirely.

Using urgent verité, darkly-funny tableaus, and a rich archive, Insert Yourself tells the IUD's comeback story through the people most shaped by it. A diverse chorus of users alongside contributors including Loretta Ross and leading experts in IUD biopolitics and person-centered care. Can understanding the IUD's coercive past unlock real control?

This is a complex film asking a simple question: In a country obsessed with "choice", who gets to choose?