For young people, horror films have a special power. Yes, they’re scary and intimidating, but they’re also incredibly exciting, precisely because they’re illicit.
In my early teens, there was one horror film that terrified me more than the others, not only because it touched on all sorts of forbidden subjects, but because we were told that it was all true.
It was called The Silent Scream and if you went to a Catholic school in the 1980s or 1990s, it’s highly likely that you’d have seen it. I never did, although among my classmates it was rumoured that the school had a VHS copy, hidden away in the library. So the threat of a screening was always there.
What made this film so sensational was that it was billed as a documentary in which you’d see an actual abortion occurring. Or, as we Catholic kids understood it: a real live baby murder. This was a snuff film, then, but one that had the approval of our teachers.
But what really haunted me about it was the eponymous scream itself, evoking the tagline from another horror classic, Alien: in space, no one can hear you scream.
Well, apparently the same was true of in utero shrieks. Those poor little babies, screaming silently as they were killed by godless abortionists. What greater horror could there be than that?
Made in 1984, just over a decade after Roe v. Wade, The Silent Scream was a graphic retort to the liberalising of abortion laws in the USA. It soon became the anti-choice film de rigueur, a triumph of anti-abortion propaganda intended to change the hearts and minds not just of the young, the impressionable and the pregnant, but also of legislators.
And it did become a blockbuster of sorts, gaining wide distribution through churches, schools and community groups. In the United States, The Silent Scream also screened numerous times on national television, while here in Australia, it was still being shown in Catholic schools decades after it was produced.
Ronald Reagan even screened it at the White House, and reportedly said that if everyone in Congress saw it, abortion would be outlawed immediately. That didn’t happen, but its legislative impact was profound, contributing to the decision by some US states to enact legislation that required women to view an ultrasound of their pregnancy before being allowed to have an abortion.
The final measure of the film’s success – how many minds it actually changed – is harder to quantify. Certainly, it did have a significant impact on the way the contemporary abortion debate has evolved. And it was highly successful in traumatising generations of Catholic school children. Myself included. Even though I’d never even seen it.
One of the driving forces behind the film, was its narrator, Bernard N. Nathanson, a doctor who had helped set up the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, before swapping sides in the 1970s and joining the National Right-to-Life committee.
The idea of using ultrasound technology to further his recently adopted cause was exceedingly clever. Ultrasound imaging, still new and dazzling to the general public, meant that for the first time we were able to peer inside a pregnant woman’s body, and view her foetus. Best of all, the resultant images proved readily amenable to manipulation and interpretation. All of which was a boon for anti-choice activists.
As has often been observed, what we see in a foetal ultrasound is highly subjective. The ‘baby’ floating around the screen, that so delights expectant parents when they get their first scan, is really a magician’s trick. Because the ‘baby’ you’re seeing is actually only a few centimetres long, and is being presented completely out of context, divorced from its placenta, and the rest of the mother’s body. So the image you get is entirely focused on the Unborn. Almost as if the mother isn’t there. Which, once again, is just the way anti-abortion activists like it.
Trading on this, The Silent Scream claimed to give us a new perspective on abortion, for the first time depicting the procedure from the ‘victim’s’ point of view, making the foetus into the hero of the film – albeit a tragically doomed protagonist.
While the film was not specifically made for us Catholics, its approach resonated perfectly with the official Church stance on abortion, which explains why it was such a hit with Catholic RE teachers. According to Church doctrine, the primary objection to abortion is that the foetus has a soul. Indeed, according to Catholic theologians, a soul is present from the moment of conception. And it’s the soul that makes a person special and sacred. So to perform an abortion, no matter how early in the pregnancy, is to kill a person.
The problem for anyone relying on this logic is that, if you don’t believe in souls, or in God, or in their sort of God, the argument loses its force. Jesus says abortion is murder, but I don’t believe in this Jesus guy. So we’ve hit an impasse.
The genius of The Silent Scream was that it made no appeal to spiritual or religious belief, but instead confronted you with the evidence, replacing faith with science and technology, and using that to arrive at the same conclusion. Look for yourself. Here’s a living thing. Small, vulnerable and human. A person, or so it seems. And then the wicked abortionists murder it!
A horrifying spectacle, whether you believe in souls or not.
Since high school, I’ve cleansed myself of most of the toxins left by my Catholic past. And as far as abortion goes, I’ve been passionately, vocally pro-choice since my late teens. The two children I subsequently birthed have only deepened my understanding of the importance of women’s reproductive autonomy.
Still, a Catholic education has a way of getting under your skin. Intellectually, you might know something is true, and insist upon it with real conviction. Yet in your gut there’s still a vague discomfort. Because, as all good propagandists know, the best time to plant the seeds of belief is in childhood. And once those seeds have worked their way into you, good and deep, it’s hard to dig them out again.
As a result, I’ve always been obsessive in my use of contraception (also a sinful practice, according to the Church). Because for me, the idea of that screaming foetus has always lingered. A little kernel of dread at the very idea of it. Even though the logical part of me knows that the whole idea is ridiculous.
It’s often observed that the scariest horror movies are the ones where you don’t actually see the monster. Instead, your imagination fills in the blanks, and creates something far more awful than even the cleverest special effects person could possibly conjure. So, in a similar spirit, I decided that it was time for me to watch The Silent Scream. To confront that imagined monster.
Thanks to YouTube, it proved a very easy thing to do. And so, one afternoon, with a cup of tea in hand, I finally saw The Scream. Or, rather, I didn’t. Because, of course, it turns out that it never existed in the first place.
The film opens with chilling organ music, the stuff of B-grade schlock. Which is appropriate, since there’s something very hokey about the whole production, from the scary font used for the title card, to the opening zoom in to a door with a nameplate on it: ‘Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D.’
And there’s our Bernard, standing by his desk, shelves full of serious looking books. The message is clear: our narrator is white and in late middle age, he owns loads of books and he has his very own nameplate on his office door, so he must know what he’s talking about.
Addressing the camera like The Simpsons’ Troy McClure, Nathanson launches straight into it, telling us that, since the 1970s, the science of foetology has ‘exploded’, because of a ‘host of other dazzling technologies’. All this dazzle has taught us that a pregnancy involves not a foetus, but an actual baby. The only reason we ever thought differently was because we couldn’t see it. How silly of us! But now, thanks to ultrasound, we know better.
We then cut to a woman getting one of those newfangled scans. There’s gentle music in the background, and the woman looks happy – presumably because she’s not getting an abortion. ‘The abdomen is now suitably draped,’ Nathanson adds, confirming that it’s all above board. He couldn’t take a peak at her lady parts, even if he wanted to.
From here on in, Nathanson spends a lot of time playing with a plastic model of a twelve-week foetus, insisting again that it’s just like a fully formed human being in miniature. He handles it affectionately, as if he’s about to give it a cuddle.
A twelve-week foetus’s bodily functions, he says again, are just like ours. It is ‘another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us’. Except for the fact that it’s five centimetres long, lacks a cerebral cortex and cannot exist outside of the womb. But hey, other than those small differences, these guys could be driving your Uber, or making a skinny flat white at your local cafe, and you wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
Amidst all this we see a woman having an abortion. But the discretion that was shown towards the happy woman getting an ultrasound is forgotten now. No coy draping for the abortion woman. We don’t see her face either, or her body, just her legs in stirrups with a doctor pushing into her, blood streaming down her inner thighs. The image is graphic and violent, as if she’s being violated. Which is precisely the point. Because this image is cautionary. Look at this horror, it says. If you get a termination, this will be you!!!
When we come back to Nathanson he’s wearing a lab coat. Things are obviously getting serious now. Here he explains how an abortion is performed, showing us the various instruments that are employed, including a device that he tells us is used for crushing the foetus’s skull. Nathanson seems particularly focused on the skull crushing part.
And now, finally, it’s time for the film’s climax: the actual abortion, seen via ultrasound. Nathanson settles down next to a television set, with his plastic foetus beside him – suddenly a much larger plastic foetus, one that really does look like a baby – and describes what we’re seeing on the screen. Which is just as well, because to me it looks a lot like grey, grainy fuzz.
‘The child is moving quietly in its sanctuary,’ he explains. He then tells us to look out for a ‘shadow at the bottom of the screen’, which is the suction instrument, there to bring about this child’s ‘imminent extinction’. This ‘child’ he insists ‘does sense aggression in its sanctuary’. In support of this, Nathanson points out that its heartbeat has sped up to 200 beats per minute, although I have no idea whether this means anything since I have no idea what a foetal heartbeat rate should be. Nor, I assume, would most viewers, especially Catholic school children. But he has the white coat, and the books, so who’s arguing?
According to Nathanson, the baby is now trying to get away from that big scary pointy instrument. ‘There is no question that this child senses the most mortal danger imaginable.’ Again, I have to trust what he’s telling me, because I can’t actually see very much.
And now, the big moment arrives. Nathanson pauses to point out the foetus’s open mouth. Its screaming mouth. The silent scream itself!
But hang on, was that it? I don’t think I saw anything that looked like a scream. I know it’s meant to be silent, but is it invisible as well?
Seems I’m not the only one who’s had that reaction, because Nathanson says he’s going to show it to us again, in freeze frame. Just in case we missed it. But once again, I’m stumped. Not horrified – just a little annoyed.
In fact, I feel cheated.
Because there was nothing to see. I don’t mean, I intellectually know that the foetus wasn’t screaming, even though it looks like it was. I mean, there’s literally nothing that even resembles a scream. Nathanson could equally have told me, ‘And now the foetus is singing Yankee Doodle Dandy while tap dancing. Here, I’ll freeze frame it on the good bit!’
Because all I saw was more grainy fuzz. The ultimate moment, the thing the film trades on, the idea that haunted my young Catholic psyche, proves to be a blurry washout.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by any of this, because I already knew that The Silent Scream is a breathtaking concoction of misinterpretation, misinformation, and wilful lies – as accurate a depiction of abortion as My Little Pony is a nature documentary about equine behaviour.
But I had expected them to try a bit harder with the manipulated visuals.
Immediately after The Silent Scream was first screened on US television it was slammed by many in the medical community for its profoundly inaccurate depiction of a termination, and its false claims about the physiology of a twelve-week foetus.
Planned Parenthood convened a panel of experts to counter the claims made in the film, including the idea that it is possible for a twelve-week foetus to experience pain (it’s not), or that a foetus of that gestational age could carry out purposeful movements (again, it can’t happen).
Nathanson’s overwrought description of the procedure was also challenged on factual grounds, as were his references to the ‘crushing instruments’ that are supposedly required to remove the foetus’s head. The panel pointed out that if performed properly, a termination at this stage of gestation requires nothing more than a suction cannula. Maybe Nathanson was just a particularly ham-fisted doctor?
But even beyond the factual errors, there is something particularly tricksy in the way the visual ‘evidence’ is presented. For example, the ultrasound footage has been slowed down, and then sped up to make it look like the foetus’s movements become intentional and frantic. So the supposedly recoiling foetus is nothing more than a special effect – and a pretty rudimentary one at that.
And what about the scream? Well, first of all, you can’t scream without air in your lungs. Which pretty much rules it out right there. And in any event, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the neural pathways of a foetus are not sufficiently developed until well into the late stages of a pregnancy. So air or no air, it’s simply not possible for a twelve-week foetus to scream. If you can see mouth movement, or you think it looks like the foetus’s mouth is open, it’s almost certainly a reflex, unrelated to the termination that’s taking place.
As some doctors pointed out, it’s possibly not even a mouth that Nathanson is pointing to during the abortion sequence – it could just as likely be the space between the chin and neck that he’s indicating. But then, The Silent Chin Flap just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?
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If the scream is such a grainy washout, then why were so many children upset by this film? It can’t just be Nathanson’s creepy relationship with the plastic foetus, can it?
As a kid, most of my knowledge about the film came from my brother, who’d seen it twice. Being a year older than me, he’d started bringing all sorts of astonishing information home from school.
When my brother first told me about The Silent Scream, his account was confused, but also layered with hinted at meanings that he didn’t quite grasp himself. The film was so charged with tantalising but forbidden adult stuff, stuff that neither of us properly understood. My brother didn’t even fully understand how conception worked, so how was it that anyone deemed it appropriate to show him a film that featured the supposedly bloody and horrific end consequences of an unwanted conception?
Once you’ve actually seen the film, the decision to show it to children becomes even more inexplicable. There’s that woman in the stirrups, the overwrought narration, the insistence that we are watching a murder, the misleading, ghoulish claim that a skull is being crushed. Any one of these details might be deemed sufficient to award the film an MA rating. But there’s something worse than all that.
Near the end of the film, flashing on the screen, are images of what are most likely stillborn babies, or perhaps very late-term terminations, all in various stages of decay, some dismembered, others in plastic vessels. There is absolutely no context for these images, no explanation. Just more schlocky, B-grade horror organ music.
And these images really are awful. But of course they have nothing whatsoever to do with the twelve-week abortion that the film purports to observe. They might as well have shown close ups of open-heart surgeries, or corpses in a morgue. So it’s a simple piece of manipulation. Not subtle, not clever, but probably very effective. Particularly when you show it to a class full of naïve young teenage Catholic boys like my brother. Twice.
To paraphrase Stephen Fry, any God who would deny women their bodily autonomy is no God that I would care to worship. But in the end, that’s a matter of faith. We can argue with the religious, insist that we live in a secular society, and point out that their views, based on personal faith alone, should have no role in determining what the rest of us can and can’t do. But in the end, the religious person will believe what they believe because those beliefs are based on something that’s beyond the rational.
By contrast, The Silent Scream claimed to be grounded in science and technology. It purported to be rational, and used our collective respect for science and technology to fool us. Of all the many reasons I find it despicable, this is the greatest, the one that really makes me furious.
You might think people who justify their beliefs with reference to an invisible person in the sky are silly or deluded. But they’re not necessarily dishonest. By contrast, The Silent Scream is just a cheap con job. Nasty, manipulative and disingenuous. Like a tacky horror movie, it trades on our worst fears, while also exploiting our best selves – our desire to protect the vulnerable.
Sadly, the film shows no similar compassion for the women who are featured. There’s the Happy Pregnant Woman Getting an Ultrasound, the Violated Woman Getting a Messy Abortion, and of course the sad women who appear later in the film, the Women Who Regret Having a Termination, looking off into the distance, pained, like they’re concentrating on doing a particularly difficult poo. But none of these women are given a voice, an opinion, or even the personhood that Nathanson works so hard to award the foetus.
Which, once again, is just the way the anti-choice brigade have always liked it.