Americans United for Life published “Studies in Law and Medicine” in the 1970s and 1980s, spotlighting issues pertaining to the human right to life across the bioethics spectrum. As Americans United for Life celebrates our 50th anniversary, we are making these issues available for the first time since their print publication.
Defending ‘The Silent Scream:’ A Rejoinder to Planned Parenthood by Thomas L. Jipping
The pro-abortionists are on the defensive. Their most recent flurry targets the film “The Silent Scream,” narrated by Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., depicting a suction abortion filmed with realtime ultrasound imaging. “The Silent Scream” is sound, accurate medically and in every other way. Planned Parenthood’s critique is a collection of unfounded, unsupported, misleading, ignorant statements that prove nothing in themselves. If this is Planned Parenthood’s best refutation, it only lends credibility to that which it would discredit. Such a flurry casts doubt on Judy Goldsmith’s assertion that the film, “is nothing for pro-choice activists to fear.”
There could perhaps be no more significant support for the film’s accuracy than the sworn affidavit of Dr. Ian Donald, former Regius Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Glasgow, the inventor of ultrasound and the world’s foremost authority on its use and interpretation. That statement reads in part: “I the undersigned Ian Donald… having had experience in the development and exploitation of diagnostic ultrasound from 1955 onward until 1981, the last four years of which were taken up with filming fetal activity at various stages of pregnancy… have studied Dr. Nathanson’s videotape not less than four times and affirm that I am of the opinion that the fetal activities depicted by ultrasound realtime scanning in this film are not faked, nor the result of artifact, intentional or otherwise.”
