The co-directors of After Tiller' take a personal look at late-term abortion care in the United States told through the eyes of the only four doctors in that practice in the country.
In 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a religious family man, was assassinated while at his church. Some people were happy about his murder because Dr. Tiller was one of the few physicians left who performed late-term abortions. Intrigued by the story and the details omitted by the media, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane set out to make a film about the courageous doctors who practice third trimester abortion care through their eyes and through the stories of their patients.
Compelling and heartbreaking, After Tiller is an intimate exploration of the lives of these four doctors who ignore their own safety to maintain their practices. We spoke to co-directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane about their collaborative process, what drew them to the project, and the advice they'd give to filmmakers who want to tackle a difficult subjects in their documentaries.
Tribeca: Lana, I know you had been particularly interested in the issue of abortion once you watched the news coverage of Dr. Tiller's assassination. What about the coverage sparked your interest?
Lana Wilson: I was watching the news and started to have all these questions about who Dr. Tiller was as a person rather than as a political symbol. He was a religious man who returned to work even after having been shot in the arms in the 1990s. He drove an armored car to work everyday. All these little facts that were in the news made me curious about him as a person. Despite all these nuggets of information, I realized that the news was not going to go beyond his bare bones biography.
The news left out a lot of details they were not going to say he was a military veteran. They were not going to reveal the reason that he got into abortion care. His father was a doctor who was killed, along with other members of his family, in a plane crash. When Dr. Tiller took over his practice, he learned that his father had been secretly doing abortions for years. The news is just going to stay away from that story because it's too polarizing.
So at first I was like, Oh it'll be cool to do a documentary about Dr. Tiller. But then I thought, No, wouldn't it be great to be in the present day lives of whoever is left doing this work? I wanted to look at the issue in a much more personal way, less about the abstract controversy and just more about the particulars, the intimate details; what is it like personally to do this work and why are you doing it?
Tribeca: Martha, what was your first reaction when Lana approached you with the project?
Martha Shane: (laughs) I think Lana had first mentioned to me this idea of making a documentary about Dr. Tiller. I thought that would be really fascinating, but I've always been more interested in doing verite documentaries. So when she had the idea of following these four doctors, I just remember being shocked that only four doctors are openly doing this work in the country. I started to wonder why are there only four? You know, what are their lives like? I was just curious about pulling back the curtain and getting a sense of their stories through their own voices. I think we've heard so much about abortion but so little from the patients and the doctors who are really the ones who know this issue best. I thought it was an amazing idea, and I was really excited to start work on it.
We found that in general, men are more emotional watching the movie and women are more judgmental about a lot of the patients.
Tribeca: I thought it was very interesting especially Susan Robinson's story to find out how these doctors came to the practice. No one sets out to be an abortionist. They seem to have fallen into the profession in various ways out of necessity simply because they are the only four practicing doctors in the United States. Were your surprised by their various paths?
LW: We were both surprised. When we first found out Dr. Sella was a midwife, we were taken aback, but then we realized it makes so much sense. A lot of people who work in abortion care in general have pasts as midwives or are currently midwives. We were surprised that Dr. Carter, like Dr. Tiller, was a military veteran, which made so much sense later on because it takes a kind of stubbornness to do this work.
Dr. Carter says in the film, The mission comes first. Dr. Carter is even a registered Republican actually. They didn't go into this to be political figures. They're doctors, and they want to take care of their patients. The path to abortion care came later after they were in medical school.
MS: If you're a heart surgeon, a certain percentage of your patients are not going to make it. Dr. Robinson has always said, I think the amazing thing about this work is I can help every single woman who comes through these doors. Seeing that transformation from someone who's coming in and really struggling grieving in certain cases about fetal anomalies or in other cases trying unsuccessfully to get an abortion for a long time and to see them over the course of four days and help them go back into their communities prepared to move forward with their lives is an amazing experience. They really love this work. Dr. Robinson was saying it's like a vocation or a calling almost.
Tribeca: I was really surprised when that woman called from France and, unfortunately, they were unable to help her. Did you ever think about looking at the issue or late-term abortion in sort of a global way?
LW: We knew we wanted to focus on these four doctors and to limit our scope to them and their patients. We didn't realize until things like this started happening that they see a lot of international patients. There are patients coming from a
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The co-directors of After Tiller' take a personal look at late-term abortion care in the United States told through the eyes of the only four doctors in that practice in the country. 
