Vera Drake is a 2004 British period drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh and starring Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays and Eddie Marsan.

During her working day as a house cleaner, Vera performs constant small acts of kindness for the many people she encounters.

However, her partner Lily, who also carries on a black-market trade in scarce postwar foodstuffs, charges two guineas (two pounds and two shillings: equivalent to £87 in 2023) for arranging the abortions, without Vera's knowledge.

The doctor refers her to a psychiatrist, who prompts her to answer questions in a certain way, so that he can legally recommend an abortion on therapeutic psychiatric grounds: that she has a family history of mental illness and that she may commit suicide if not allowed to terminate the pregnancy.

He grew up in north Salford, Lancashire, and experienced a very ordinary but socio-economically mixed life as the son of a doctor and a midwife.

"Leigh's actors literally have to find their characters through improvisation and research the ways people in specific communities speak and behave.

Critic Roger Ebert explains: His method is to gather a cast for weeks or months of improvisation in which they create and explore their characters.

Though much has been made of the controversial subject matter—back street abortion—its main theme is the buried family secret, the ticking time bomb that can lurk underneath even the most stable marriage.

The site's consensus is that "with a piercingly powerful performance by Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake brings teeming humanity to the controversial subject of abortion.

This involves using a Higginson bulb, which is a type of enema syringe, to introduce a warm, dilute solution of carbolic soap and an unspecified liquid disinfectant into the woman's uterus.

She called the film itself "dangerous", as it could be shown in countries where abortion is illegal and the method depicted copied by desperate women.

[10] In reply Leigh told interviewer Amy Raphael that Worth's criticism overlooked several factors, such as how the film undoubtedly highlights the risk of infection by exploring such misadventure as a means to ultimately curtail Drake's work and the fact that it was based on many testimonies from women who once had such abortions, thereby proving that the procedure did not "almost always" result in death.