Independent Lens
Ratified
Ratified brings to life the push to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution through the legal battle in Virginia—the final state needed to ratify the amendment.
Leona's Sister Gerri
A woman whose nude body was abandoned on a motel room floor after an botched illegal abortion became an icon for an extraordinarily divisive issue. Who was she?
- Series
- POV
- Premiere Date
- November 4, 1995
- Length
- 60 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Open Call
Producer
Jane Gillooly
Jane Gillooly is a non-fiction and narrative film and video maker. Projects include Today The Hawk Takes One Chick (2007-08) an observational film shot in a rural Swaziland; Rockefeller-nominated experimental feature film script, The Not Dead Yet Club (2006); Dragonflies, The Baby Cries (2000) which premiered at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and… Show more
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The Film
"A thoughtful, dignified and intensely moving documentary.”
— The Nation
Millions have seen the photograph, and no one who has seen it will ever forget it: a naked woman, dead from a botched illegal abortion, lying on a motel room floor. The picture appeared in Ms. Magazine in April 1973, and quickly became a symbol for the abortion rights movement. Leona’s Sister Gerri tells the dramatic story of Gerri Santoro, a mother of two and the “real person” in the now famous photo. She was the 28-year-old mother of two young daughters, and she had summoned the courage to leave an abusive husband. When she became pregnant by a lover, her circumstances forced her to accept the lover’s offer of a D.I.Y. abortion. The man left her when the illegal abortion went awry, and her body was found the next morning in the gruesome, bloody crouch the crime-scene photograph captured. When the photo was published by Ms. Magazine in 1973 to illustrate the dangers of criminalizing abortion, Gerri became an icon of pro-choice activists nationwide.
