Dr George Tiller was gunned down in cold blood in front of his family whilst at a Sunday Service in a church in Wichita, Kansas in 2009. The killer was a rabid anti-abortionist activist who wanted to stop Dr Tiller performing third-trimester abortions. After he succeeded there were only four other Doctors left in the US who were qualified to perform this specialist procedure, and this new documentary is the story of how they continued with their work after their colleague was assassinated.
Three of the remaining Doctors …LeRoy Carhat, Susan Robinson and Shelley Seila were proteges of Dr Tiller’s and the 4th was his contemporary Warren Hern, and they are all aware that their late leader was the eighth abortion provider to be murdered since Roe vs Wade, and he may not be the last.
Filmmakers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson follow these four remarkable physicians as they calmly go about their daily work with a quiet fierce dedication. It is their encounters with patients, many of whom come to them as a last resort that makes the most emotional viewing : they are the ones that put faces on all the figures and statistics that are banded about at random in the vigorous debates. When you witness them having to deal with both moral and ethical dilemmas and with the realities of what these mothers are dealing with, you cannot possible be persuaded by any vague theorizing or hot headed religious arguments that what they are doing is wrong. The filmmakers are definitely not, and although they attempt to be as partisan as possible with this documentary, its clear to see where their sympathies lie.
Labels: 2013, biography, documentary, Sundance
