Directed by Jane Gillooly • Documentary • With Leona Gordon, Gerri Santoro, Joyce Carboni • 1995 • 57 minutes
For Geraldine Santoro and so many women like her, the barriers to obtaining a safe, legal abortion were insurmountable and in 1964 the legal and the social system did not protect her. The film LEONA’S SISTER GERRI tells the story of Gerri Santoro, a working-class mother of two and the “real person” in the now famous police photograph of an anonymous woman on a motel floor. She is face down on the floor next to an unmade bed. She had died from an illegal abortion. Reprinted thousands of times on placards and in the media, this tragic photo became a pro-choice icon. Should the media have used this image? What circumstances led to Gerri’s avoidable death? Since the film’s debut in 1995, Leona’s Sister Gerri has been taught as women’s rights canon. The film addresses reproductive justice, domestic violence, and media ethics by tracing the use of an iconic image and how this photograph of Gerri Santoro’s death galvanized the abortion movement.
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