Word: screaming
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Kenneth Johnson, one of Harvard's anti-choice "Human Rights Advocates," believes that "The Silent Scream" could "clarify certain medical isasues" surrounding abortion. In fact, the film goes to great lengths to confuse the abortion debate. The narrator of the film is a doctor, complete with white coat and stethescope, lending a deceptive air of medical authority to the views he presents. But rather than a sincere exploration of medical issues, "The Silent Scream" is piece of anti-choice propaganda...
...centerpiece of "The Silent Scream" is an ultrasound film of an abortion, which is purported to depict the fetus opening its mouth "in a silent scream" of pain and fear, proving that the fetus is "just another person, like you and me." In a panel discussion at the University of Washington School of Medicine, obstetricians with extensive experience in ultrasound reported that they could not make out the fetal features and gestures--including the "silent scream" which the narrator described. The type of camera, doctors and technicians agreed, is switched during the procedure to one that provides less resolution...
...crux of "The Silent Scream" (is its implied contention that the fetus can sense pain. The Crimson reporter seems to buy this line when she writes that "presumably, the fetus reacts to perceived or potential pain." The film very carefully builds up this impression through visual tricks and manipulative narration. What it lacks, however, is a basis in fact...
...ultrasound are thus not reactions to perceptions of pain, aggression, or "imminent destruction," as the film's-narrator asserts. They are simple avoidance reactions, like the reflex of a knee when the doctor taps it. Contrary to the intentionally misleading implications of the film, there is no "silent scream...
...Silent Scream," far from contributing to the abortion debate, relies on medical non-facts and deliberate manipulation to obscure the real issues. How we decide the abortion issue ultimately comes down to how much we respect women as independent and free human beings. The film shows astonishingly litle respect for the lives of grown women. A uterus is not a "sanctuary" for a fetus, just a bunch of muscles surrounding a fetus, as the narrator suggests; it is part of a woman's body and of her person. To subordinate her to the interests of a fetus is to turn...