Review of After Tiller (2013) by Jonathan D — 19 Sep 2015

You couldn't ask for a more controversial subject for a documentary. After Tiller focuses on the lives and practices of four abortion doctors. These are not just any practioners. All, if I got this correctly, worked with the murdered doctor George Tiller, and all specialize in late term abortions, often performed at the end of the second trimester or even early third.

The film clearly takes a sympathetic view toward their practices. The doctors are often threatened, intimidated, legally restricted, and forced to move, but all act with conviction that they are doing the right thing. Generally, they are working with patients whose fetuses have severe abnormalities which were only manifest late into the pregnancy. The director plays a little trick - at one point showing an interview between one of the doctors and a woman whose pregnancy clearly does not justify having waited so long before termination - only to reveal that in fact the woman is not there for an abortion.

Protesters are sometimes presented - not to lampoon or demonize them - but just to present them as facts of life - opponents that the doctors need to deal with in their daily lives.

While generally there is a sense to their practice, and why they do what they do, I did find a bit of cheating. One doctor is shown making the decision to turn down a patient who simply acted irresponsibly in waiting so long to terminate her pregnancy - but then later (I think) that same doctor says she is not here to second guess her patients and does seem to take on a late term case that need not have been so advanced.

It's good to see these people's personalities - even if you hate what they do, it is good to separate a demonized image from one that is fleshed out, which shows these doctors, clearly from a sympathetic point of view, as being both compassionate and forthright.