By late September, the filming was done. Editor Seth Bomse had been working on the project since July, helping Aronson decide what material would work best in the film. As video came in, Bomse and Aronson reviewed it, labeling some sequences to keep, some to discard, and some to decide about later. The next step was to create the “rough cut” or first draft of the film. Typically, a rough cut ran about 50 percent longer than the final product, so for an hourlong documentary the rough cut would be 90 minutes long. Aronson had shot nearly 100 hours of video. That meant only she, Baxt, and Bomse saw most of the material; it never went to Fanning or Wiley.

Aronson tried to think through her narrative. Her theme was the legislative history of abortion and, as its most recent chapter, the strategies and tactics of the pro-life movement. When she consulted him, Fanning urged Aronson to “stay close in the story, don’t widen out.” Aronson, he says, “has a tendency to reach out and gather a lot of material.”

She had a thoroughness to her own reporting, and felt an obligation to explain a lot more. My job was to say to her, “Don’t get bogged down, keep narrowing in. Trust to the judgment that instinctively that one-liner, ‘the last abortion clinic,’ is your headline, it’s your title.”

Aronson and her team were confident that they could chronicle the legal story accurately and in a fair fashion. They had good footage of interviews with articulate and sincere people on both sides of the debate, who would present arguments in a cogent and credible fashion. While it would be tricky to explain some of the subtleties, Aronson knew it would come together.

More challenging was to choose among the numerous “scenes” she had shot, which portrayed real people whose lives were touched in some way by the abortion debate. Most often, that meant pregnant women. These scenes would provide the human drama, and the narrative glue, for her documentary. Aronson had numerous very powerful pieces of video that she could use in the film if she wanted to. But at the same time, she realized that their emotional impact had the potential to overwhelm the important legal story she wanted to tell. She would have to choose carefully.

Aronson looked over her list of scenes. Several she was already pretty sure she would use:

• In an interview, Pat White (the ob/gyn at the clinic in Clarksdale) mentioned that Coahoma County had the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the state. That segued nicely into a consultation by White with one of those teens, Melanie—who already had two children at home. As Aronson’s camera rolled, the young woman learned that she was fully six months pregnant—apparently a surprise to her.

• A woman identified only as Tracy visited the unnamed abortion clinic in a neighboring state. Tracy explained that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy because she already had a toddler at home, and her boyfriend had died in a car accident. “I prayed about this decision, and I finally got my answer from God,” Tracy told the clinic counselor.

• A woman named Shanine was given a sonogram at the Jackson Center for Pregnancy Choices. In the scene, center Director Barbara Beavers stood by while Shanine watched the image of the fetus on a screen. “I just can’t believe that’s a baby inside there,” Shanine commented.

• Extensive footage from outside the Jackson abortion clinic showed protestors chanting, “I love you, Mama! Please let me live! I want to see your face, Mama!” The protestors’ avowed purpose was to close down the clinic, meaning there would be no abortion clinics in Mississippi.

But there was another scene about which Aronson was uncertain. It was powerful, a meeting of three women who had had abortions—and who regretted it. As the rough cut began to come together, Aronson, Bomse, and Baxt debated whether the scene was right for the film.