Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller is a film about abortion. But it’s not a politically charged, weighted, audience-baiting film. Abortion – or more particularly late-term abortion, the topic of this doc – has been blown into a major political and moral issue in many countries, leaving the very word to describe the procedure a hot-button that most try to shy away from. What After Tiller does is try to present the calm realities of late-term abortion without too much proselytizing. It clearly supports a woman’s right to choose, but it’s not going to depict its subjects as heroic rebels.
The subjects are a quartet of doctors – the only four in the country, Warren Hill, Susan Robinson, Shelley Sella, and LeRoy Carhart – who perform late-term abortions, much to the chagrin of many lawmakers and protestors. By subduing the controversy and allowing the doctors to have mere conversations about what they do, we begin to see them more as working stiffs who are doing work they believe in, and whose job can occasionally be shockingly dangerous; the title alludes to Dr. George Tiller who was shot and killed at church in 2009 by an anti-abortion protestor.
Yes, the doctors get angry phone calls, and yes, they are regularly threatened, but they all focus instead on their patients, fulfilling what they deem to be a vital and practical medical service. The filmmakers wisely never film the patient’s faces, allowing the women to tell their stories, wring their hands, squeeze tissues, and weep for their decision. “Of course they don’t want an abortion,” Dr. Robinson astutely observes. “No one wants an abortion.”
This is not to say some of the doctors aren’t torn about what they do. Robinson listens sympathetically to every story that comes across her desk, and eventually begins to wonder aloud whether the story is good enough to warrant treatment, or just the storytelling. We also get a few peeks into the personal lives of the doctors, revealing them to be usual people. Dr. Hern talks of his late marriage to a Spanish woman who he is totally in love with. Dr. Sella is seen cuddling with her wife. Dr. Carhart, meanwhile, seeks to open up a new practice following the success of his last one. Protestors go to his daughter’s school.
The protestors are filmed in After Tiller, and for the most part they are seen slumping lazily over protest signs, loitering. They do not seem aggressive or even passionate. But then you see a massive march against abortion and footage of court hearings, and you see the controversy.
After Tiller gives a human and compassionate face to a complex and touchy issue. It doesn’t prod into the more difficult cognitive areas the way Tony Kaye’s deliberately confrontational 2006 film Lake of Fire did (making it perhaps the best film on the topic of abortion), but it does try to depict the fact that this is not an abstract political issue, but a story of women’s health.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles B-Movies Extended, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
