Gerri Santoro

Geraldine "Gerri" Santoro (née Twerdy; August 16, 1935[1] – June 8, 1964) was an American woman who died because of an illegal abortion in 1964. A police photograph of her dead body, published in 1973, became a symbol of the abortion-rights movement.

Gerri Santoro
Born
Geraldine Twerdy

(1935-08-16)August 16, 1935[1]
Connecticut, United States
DiedJune 8, 1964(1964-06-08) (aged 28)
Connecticut, United States
Spouse(s)
Sam Santoro
​
​
(m. 1953; separated 1963)​
Partner(s)Clyde Dixon

Biography

Santoro was raised, along with 14 siblings, on the farm of a Ukrainian-American family in Coventry, Connecticut.[2][3] She was described by those who knew her as "fun-loving" and "free-spirited".[2] At age 18 she married Sam Santoro; the couple had two daughters together.[3]

Circumstances of death

In 1963, her husband's domestic abuse prompted Santoro to leave, and she and her daughters returned to her childhood home.[2] She took a job at Mansfield State Training School, where she met another employee, Clyde Dixon.[2] The two began an extramarital affair and Santoro became pregnant.[2]

When Sam Santoro announced he was coming from California to visit his daughters, Gerri Santoro feared for her life.[3] On June 8, 1964, twenty-eight weeks into her pregnancy, she and Dixon checked into the Norwich Motel in Norwich, Connecticut, under aliases.[3][4] They intended to perform a self-induced abortion, using surgical instruments and information from a textbook which Dixon had obtained from a coworker at the Mansfield school.[2] Dixon fled the motel after Santoro began to bleed. She died, and her body was found the following morning by a maid.[2]

Dixon was apprehended three days later[2] and charged with manslaughter and attempting to commit abortion, while Milton R. Morgan was charged with conspiracy to commit abortion.[4][2] He was sentenced to a year and day in prison;[2] police officers who worked on the case called his term "negligible".[3]

Famous photograph
The famous photograph of Gerri Santoro's body taken by the police.

Police took a photograph of Santoro's body as she was found: naked, kneeling, collapsed upon the floor, with a bloody towel between her legs. The picture was used in placards and famously published in Ms. magazine in April 1973, all without identifying Santoro.[3][5] It has since become a abortion-rights symbol, used to illustrate that access to legal, professionally performed abortion reduces deaths from unsafe abortion.[3]

Leona Gordon, Santoro's sister, saw the photo in Ms. magazine and recognized the subject.[6] Santoro's daughters had been told she died in a car accident, which they believed until the photo became widely distributed.[3] Of the photo's publication, Santoro's daughter, Joannie Santoro-Griffin, was quoted in 1995 as saying, "How dare they flaunt this? How dare they take my beautiful mom and put this in front of the public eye?"[3] In more recent years, Joannie has become an abortion rights activist, attending the March for Women's Lives in 2004 along with Leona and Joannie's teenage daughter Tara,[7] and blogging about the memory of her mother.[8]

In 1995, Jane Gillooly, an independent filmmaker from Boston, Massachusetts, interviewed Gordon, Santoro's daughters, and others for a documentary about Santoro's life, Leona's Sister Gerri.[2] The film was initially broadcast on the PBS series P.O.V. on June 1, 1995. It was later screened at film festivals, opening in the United States on November 2, 1995.[2] In the documentary, Leona expressed that she was initially shocked by the photograph's publication, but that "as years went by... [she] thought it was good that it was printed."[9]

See also

References
  1. Bloom, Marcy (June 8, 2007). "The Woman in the Photo". Rewire News Group. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
  2. Stroebel, Ken (March 9, 2001). "Sister: Story of photo that galvanized a movement needs telling". Norwich Bulletin. Archived from the original on 5 May 2007.
  3. Maslin, Janet. (March 31, 1995). "Film Festival Review: The Woman Behind a Grisly Photo." New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2008.
  4. "Motel Death Cases Are Continued". Hartford, Connecticut: The Catholic Press. p. 16. Retrieved 2 December 2020. Milton R. Morgan, 39, has pleaded innocent to conspiracy to commit an abortion.
  5. Rosenfeld, Megan (6 November 1995). "The Death of an Ordinary Woman". Washington Post. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
  6. "Leona's Sister Gerri." (1995). The New York Times. Retrieved December 23, 2006.
  7. Williamson, Elizabeth (April 24, 2004). "A Family's March to Redemption: 3 Generations Join Abortion Rights Rally in Honor of Woman Who Died". Washington Post. p. B1. Archived from the original on 2010-02-01.
  8. "Joannie Santoro, June 8, 2006: Remembering 42 years ago today". Archived from the original on January 8, 2009. Retrieved January 16, 2008.
  9. Gillooly, Jane (director, producer); C.L. Monrose (producer); Kaufman, Jane (producer) (November 2, 1995). Leona's Sister Gerri (Documentary).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.