Sundance review: "After Tiller" | The Salt Lake Tribune

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"After Tiller"

U.S. Documentary

*** 1/2 (three and a half stars)

Filmmakers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson blow open America's abortion debate simply by answering a long-dormant question: Who are the people who perform late-term abortions? The film delivers intimate profiles of the four doctors in the United States who still perform the controversial procedure. ( — all of whom were friends and colleagues of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered by an anti-choice assassin in his Topeka, Kan., church in 2009. The film visits the four in their clinics (in Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico), where they counsel pregnant women, most of whom carry babies with fetal deformities that guarantee a short, pain-filled life. Shane and Wilson get beyond the shouting match to tell a moving story of real people who act on their belief that women and doctors — not politicians and priests — should control their own destinies.

- Sean P. Means

"After Tiller" screens again: Saturday, 9 p.m., Salt Lake City Library; Tuesday, noon, Sundance screening room, Sundance resort; Wednesday, 8:30 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Thursday, 9:30 p.m., Redstone Cinema 1, Park City.