AFTER TILLER

AFTER TILLER is a documentary about late-term abortion doctors and some of their “patients” dealing with laws against abortions in the final three months of pregnancy. It also talks a lot about the dangers of being in such a business, especially after the shooting murder of notorious late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in Kansas in May 2009. Needless to say, AFTER TILLER is a one-sided piece of political propaganda that avoids the main issues concerning the vast majority of late-term abortions. It deliberately obfuscates the issues (and the whole abortion controversy) by focusing mostly on a few cases where pregnant mothers are faced with unborn babies with fatal or extremely serious physical defects.

The documentary interviews the only four American “doctors” left who openly provide third-trimester abortions. One doctor, LeRoy Carhart, decides to leave his clinic in rural Nebraska to open a clinic in Maryland, a more “favorable” state. Another doctor, Warren Hern, has trouble reconciling his practice with his family life that includes his second wife and her young son. The other two doctors are female. Susan Robinson and Shelley Sella (a lesbian who promotes her same-sex “marriage” during the movie) used to work with Tiller, but since his death, they’ve found a new place in New Mexico, another liberal state with lax laws concerning abortion.

The documentary mixes interviews with these abortion “doctors” with scenes of the doctors discussing abortion with some female patients. Most of the unborn children in these cases supposedly have fatal or extremely severe physical problems. However, one of the patients simply can’t “afford” having another baby, while a second patient, a 16-year-old girl simply refuses to have the baby. Here, it’s absolutely vital to note that both of these “mothers” refuse to even consider giving their babies up for adoption. Nowhere does the documentary mention that some Christian denominations (including some of the biggest ones) and “crisis” pregnancy groups offer to find funding for such women so that they can give their babies up for adoption.

As even this documentary notes, the Guttmacher Institute reports that late-term abortions comprise less than one percent of all abortions! Of that number, less than half can be said to have a fatal, severe, or even a “serious” birth defect (see http://sacfl.org/blog/“what-about-abortion-serious-or-fatal-birth-defects”). In fact, for a teenager of 16 (the age of one of the female patients in this documentary, there’s only 1 in 570 chance of such a problem. In other words, 99.82 percent of their babies are perfectly healthy. Not only that, but about 90% of all preborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted (see http://sacfl.org/blog/“what-about-abortion-serious-or-fatal-birth-defects”). Down syndrome is a serious health issue for children, but it’s certainly not a fatal or “severe” birth defect of the kind discussed by this movie. So, how come the filmmakers don’t focus on any “late-term” abortions for children with Down syndrome? The four gruesome “doctors” depicted in this documentary must certainly perform many abortions of unfortunate unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome. In fact, it’s probably a main part of their practice. Yet, they and the filmmakers are totally silent about this probable fact.

Finally, as expected, AFTER TILLER doesn’t have any serious discussion or interviews regarding the abortion issue from the viewpoint of pro-life leaders. This is itself a fatal flaw in any work that claims to be a “documentary,” as opposed to just a propaganda piece. Thus, the filmmakers and their subjects virtually skirt around the main issues regarding the abortion issue. Their movie turns out to be just another fallacious piece of radical leftist propaganda.

MOVIEGUIDE® doesn’t want to make light of the problems faced by parents of unborn children with truly fatal or severe birth defects. Ultimately, however, the only thing AFTER TILLER offers viewers is a bunch of anecdotal sob stories for a grotesque, gangerous gang of Modern-Day Nazis. Like the murderous thug Joseph Goebbels, who ran Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist propaganda machine, the filmmakers behind AFTER TILLER are just advancing lies, distortions, and partial truths in an emotional manner to deceive the hearts and minds of the general public. This is exactly how Goebbels used movies to promote euthanasia and the murder of millions of Jews. It’s also how Joseph Stalin and Mao used movies to promote the mass murder of their real enemies and imaginary enemies, including a whole class of people labeled the “bourgeoisie” (which included Christians and Jews).

The rabid, vile pro-abortion, and radical feminist, ideology of these doctors, and the filmmakers, becomes completely clear, when one doctor, the “compassionate” Susan Robinson, justifies the 16-year-old mother’s decision to murder her baby for no good reason whatsoever, simply because it’s the teenager’s personal “choice”! Adoption isn’t an option for this teenager because she doesn’t “feel” like doing it. How evil is this? And, how telling!

AFTER TILLER and its “doctors” are morally bankrupt. These “doctors” are rationalizing their own behavior by focusing on fringe, albeit very sad, cases. Worse, they get paid lots of money for doing it. Shame on them!

By the way, hard cases and fringe cases make bad law. So, the issue of fatal and severe birth “defects” discussed in AFTER TILLER is legally a moot point that’s truly of no legal consequence. One can feel compassion and empathy for the parents of unborn children with such serious defects, but that doesn’t mean the parents should slaughter their child either in or out of the womb.