Geraldine "Gerri" Santoro (née Twerdy; August 16, 1935 – June 8, 1964) was an American woman who died after attempting a self-induced abortion in 1964.

[3] They intended to perform a self-induced abortion, using surgical instruments and information from a textbook which Dixon had obtained from Milton Ray Morgan, a teacher at the Mansfield school.

[2][6] Police took a photograph of Santoro's body as she was found naked, kneeling, and collapsed upon the floor, with a bloody towel between her legs.

[4][6] Santoro's daughters had been told their mother died in a car accident, which they believed until the photo became widely distributed.

"[3] Later, Joannie became an abortion-rights activist, attending the March for Women's Lives in 2004 with her teenage daughter Tara and Gerri Santoro's sister Leona,[8] and blogging in memory of her mother.

[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.