Abortionist Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in Kansas in 2009 in his church, but his colleagues carry on his work. Directors Martha Shane and Lana Wilson tried to document both sides of the story, striving for a bit of balance in what is an unbalanced world.
Pro-Life activists threaten a landlord if he leases space to an abortion clinic. (They picket his son's middle school.) His own father was a doctor who was firebombed because he too, had performed abortions. His son explains that early in his practice, his father had to try to save the lives of damaged women who had suffered self-induced or illegal abortions. He came to feel that a medical abortion was safer and many of his patients went on to have their own families when their circumstances changed. The landlord leases the space.
We see an interview with a couple whose obstetrician referred them to an abortionist because as their baby developed, an in-utero MRI showed that the baby's bones were already breaking from a genetic flaw. The baby, if born, will not be able to be held (it would break its bones), and it would only live for three or four painful months.
We see clinicians refuse abortions to women who don't have medical evidence to justify them. We see many counseling sessions, with liberal amounts of Kleenex dispensed to troubled parents.
We see NO grisly film, but we see a horse barn that belongs to one of the doctors, burned to the ground by an arsonist and some horses suffer horrific deaths. One couple picks their office location based on advice from a police specialist who determines if a window is within a sniper's range.
As I said, this is a lose-lose proposition....
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This link is to the SIFF preview:
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