Silent Scream Analysis

Introduction | Ultrasound Technology | Images and Anchorage in Medical Discourse | Dr. Bernard Nathanson and Auteur Theory | Pro-choice Discourse








Throughout this video, produced in 1985, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and founder of the Abortion Rights Action League (ARAL), a fetus is shown being aborted through ultrasound technology. While the picture quality is low and colors are minimal, Dr. Nathanson provides anchorage for the image throughout the video by describing, through his medical power/knowledge what is happening through the abortion procedure.

Communications theorist, Celeste Condit, makes a strong argument against this documentary, emphasizing the poor quality of the image which she states is nearly indistinguishable without the commentary provided by Nathanson,

"This highly controversial film- attacked and defended on national television- claimed to include a real-time 'sound picture' of the abortion of a twelve-week- old fetus. Pro-Choice advocates made many criticisms of the accuracy of the film, but the most important group of comments all centered on the fact that, although pro-Life movement touted the images of the film as most convincing, the commentary of the film really made the argument. Most basically, the ultrasound image is so vague that without commentary many viewers would not have had the faintest idea what they were watching. It is often very hard to see the fetus in this image. Moreover, even when the 'wispy clouds on a radar screen' can be visualized as a fetus, the fetus does not appear dramtically human. The resolution of the image is simply too poor to make a forceful argument in itself" (87).






Silent Scream Narrative


"The child has now moved back to the profile view and the suction tip is flashing across the screen. The child's mouth is now open... and we will see that in a freeze frame in a moment... but this suction tip which you can see moving violently back and forth on the bottom of the screen is the lethal instrument which will ultimately tear apart and destroy the child. It is only after the fluid has been broken, the sack has been disrupted, that the tip will actually come against the child. We can see the tip move back and forth as the abortionist seeks the child's body. Once again we can see the child's wide mouth open in a Silent Scream in this particular freeze frame. This is the silent scream of a child threatened eminently with extinction."

"Now the child's heart rate has speeded up dramatically. And the child's movements are violent at this point. It does sense aggression in its sanctuary. It is moving away ...one can see it moving to the left side of the uterus...in an attempt ... a pathetic attempt to escape the inextricable instruments which the abortionist is using to extinguish its life.

"Now the heart has again perceptibly speeded up. We can time this at approximately 200 beats per minute. There is no question that this child now senses the most mortal danger imaginable. The membrane has now has been punctured and the fluid has escaped. One no longer sees that large reservoir of fluid surrounding the child. But once the fluid, has been drained off, the suction tip has been firmly clapped to the child's body and the child is being pulled in a downward direction by the abortionist's suction tip with the negative pressure applied to it. And the body is being torn systematically from the head ... the head of the child being in this direction here... I am now outlining the child's head here."

"The lower extremities have already been lost and we see the suction tip flashing from time to time within the screen as a typhoon-like series of echoes and the child is being tugged back and forth as the suction tip has now been applied to the body and the abortionist is exerting his traction on the child in this manner. The child's head is still discernable here. The body is no longer discernable. The body has been torn from the head. What we see now is the head itself.... with what is called the midline echo of the head and the spiccuals or fragments of bone."

"Now this head which I am outlining here on this 12 week child, is simply too large to be pulled in one piece out of the uterus. The abortionist is going to have to employ this instrument, the polyp forceps in an attempt to grab the head. The abortionist will attempt to crush the head with this instrument in this manner and remove the head piece meal from the uterus."

Nathanson claims that there is a type of metonymic langage used within the procedure between the abortionist and the anesthesiologist: "The abortionist and the anesthesiologist have a secret language between them which shields them for the grisly reality of what is going on. The abortionist and the anesthesiologist together refer to the head of this child as number one and the anesthesiologist will inquire of the abortionist, "Is number one out yet? Are we finished."




How Ideology and Anchorage are Used

Through this video, it is apparent through auteur theory that visual ideologies are at play. Ideology is a knowledge that is constructed in such a way as to legitimate unequal social power relations; science, instead is a knowledge that reveals those inequalities. Pro-life discourse will use the science of ultrasound technology to reveal the inequalities within the act of aborting a baby. Pro-choice discourse will use ideology in one way to construct the image of the fetus in the relation of the mother being invaded by the growth and obligation to the baby growing inside of her.

Anchorage in this case allows the viewer to understand images that are confusing, or as Condit believes, unrecognizable. The narrative provided by Nathanson allows viewers to understand the actions of an abortion procedure and what is occuring in the relationship between the abortionists and the tools, the fetus, and the mother. In relation to the image on the screen, the voice narrative is complementary, creating a relay-function.




Nathanson's Second Film: The Eclipse of Reason


Eclipse of Reason (1987) shows a late term abortion occurring sometime after the fourth month of pregnancy. The film focuses on the limbs of the fetus while in the womb then proceeds to show the abortion in graphic detail. While the fetus in Nathanson's previous film was little more than a black and white pulsating image, the fetus in Eclipse of Reason was shown vividly in full color. Different women who have had abortions and suffered harmful effects from the procedure give testimony later in the film. Nathanson concludes Eclipse of Reason with a montage of photographs that depicts his idea of opposing worlds, one filled with abortions and one without abortions. He argues that we cannot achieve a "World of Reason" without completely eliminating abortions.






Works Cited

Pickering, B., & Lake, R. 1999. "Visual Images as Reason: The Argument of Eclipse of Reason." Conference Proceedings -- National Communication Association/American Forensic Association (Alta Conference on Argumentation), 253-261. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Several Sources Shelters. http://www.silentscream.org/silent_e.htm. 1998-2007.

Condit, Celeste. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change . University of Illinois Press: Chicago, 1990. br>