Gerri Santoro
Encyclopedia
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Twerdy) (August 16, 1935 – June 8, 1964) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
woman who died because of a illegal abortion
Unsafe abortion
An unsafe abortion is the termination of an unwanted pregnancy by persons lacking the necessary skills, or in an environment lacking minimal medical standards, or both...
in 1964. A photograph of her after death, published in 1973, became a symbol of the pro-choice movement
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
.
Biography
Santoro was raised, along with 14 siblings, on the farm of a Ukrainian-AmericanUkrainian-American
Ukrainian Americans are citizens and permanent residents of the United States who have recently emigrated to the United States and are of Ukrainian ancestry. According to U.S. census estimates, in 2006 there were 961,113 Americans of Ukrainian descent representing 0.33% of the American population...
family in Coventry, Connecticut
Coventry, Connecticut
Coventry is a town in Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 11,504 at the 2000 census. The birthplace of Captain Nathan Hale, Coventry is home to the Nathan Hale Homestead, which is now a museum open to the public....
. She was described by those who knew her as "fun-loving" and "free-spirited". At age 18, she married Sam Santoro, a few weeks after meeting him at a bus stop. The couple went on to have two daughters together.
Circumstances of death
In 1963, domestic violenceDomestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
prompted Santoro to leave her husband, and she and her daughters returned to her childhood home. She took a job at Mansfield State Training School, where she met another employee, Clyde Dixon. The two began an extramarital affair — Dixon was also married — and Santoro became pregnant
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
as a result.
When Sam Santoro announced he was coming from California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to visit his daughters, Gerri Santoro feared for her life. On June 8, 1964, six-and-a-half months into her pregnancy, she and Dixon checked into a motel
Motel
A motor hotel, or motel for short, is a hotel designed for motorists, and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles...
in Norwich, Connecticut
Norwich, Connecticut
Regular steamship service between New York and Boston helped Norwich to prosper as a shipping center through the early part of the 20th century. During the Civil War, Norwich once again rallied and saw the growth of its textile, armaments, and specialty item manufacturing...
, under alias
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
es. Their intent was to perform a self-induced
Self-induced abortion
A self-induced abortion is an abortion performed by the pregnant woman herself outside the recognized medical system. Although the term can include abortions induced through legal, over-the-counter medication, it also refers to efforts to terminate a pregnancy through alternative, often more...
abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, using surgical instruments and a textbook, which Dixon had obtained from a co-worker at the Mansfield school. However, when Santoro began to hemorrhage
Bleeding
Bleeding, technically known as hemorrhaging or haemorrhaging is the loss of blood or blood escape from the circulatory system...
, Dixon fled the motel. She died, at age 28, and her body was found the following morning by a maid.
Dixon was apprehended three days later. He was charged with manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
and "conspiracy to commit abortion" and sentenced
Sentence (law)
In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime...
to a year-and-a-day in prison. Police officers who worked on the case called this term "negligible".
Famous photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
of Santoro's body as it was found: naked, kneeling, collapsed upon the floor, with a bloody towel between her legs. This picture was published in Ms. magazine
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...
in April 1973. It has since become a pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
, used to illustrate that access to legal, professionally-performed abortion reduces deaths from unsafe abortion
Unsafe abortion
An unsafe abortion is the termination of an unwanted pregnancy by persons lacking the necessary skills, or in an environment lacking minimal medical standards, or both...
.
Leona Gordon, Santoro's sister, saw the photo in Ms. magazine and recognized the subject. In 1995, Jane Gillooly, an independent
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
filmmaker
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
from Boston, Massachusetts, interviewed Gordon, Santoro's daughters, and others for a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about Santoro's life, Leona's Sister Gerri. The film was broadcast initially on the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series P.O.V.
P.O.V.
POV is a Public Broadcasting Service Public television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....
on June 1, 1995. It was later screened at film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
s, opening in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on November 2, 1995.
Of the photo's publication, Santoro's daughter, Joannie, was quoted in 1995 saying, "How dare they flaunt this? How dare they take my beautiful mom and put this in front of the public eye?" However, in more recent years, Joannie has become an abortion rights activist, attending the March for Women's Lives
March for Women's Lives
The March for Women's Lives was a demonstration for reproductive rights and women's rights, held April 25, 2004 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. The National Park Service no longer makes official estimates of attendance after the Million Man March controversy in 1994, so official estimates...
in 2004 along with Gerri's sister Leona and Joannie's teenage daughter Tara, and blogging about the memory of her mother.
See also
- Abortion in the United StatesAbortion in the United StatesAbortion in the United States has been legal in every state since the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, on January 22, 1973...
- Becky BellBecky BellRebecca "Becky" Suzanne Bell was an American teenage girl who died as a result of a back-alley abortion in 1988. She lived in Indianapolis, Indiana....
died of an unsafe abortion in 1988. - Susannah LattinSusannah LattinSusannah Lattin was an American woman who died of a postpartum infection at an illegal abortion clinic at 6 Amity Place in New York City, operated by Henry Dyer Grindle...
died of post-partum complications in 1868.