Abortion Film Sponsored By 'Right-to-Life' Croup

A Harvard "right-to-life" group last night sponsored the showing of the controversial film "Silent Scream" to a politically mixed.

Hence of about 65 at Phillips, Brooks House.

The 28 minute-long documentary attempts to show "abortion from the victim's vantage point" and has generated a great deal of recent discussion.

The "silent scream" of the title comes from a fetus in the womb--shown by an "ultrasound," computer generated picture--whose mouth opens as a doctor conducts probes necessary for an abortion. Presumably, the fetus reacts to perceived or potential pain.

The moving image is used as proof of the film's thesis that fetuses are "indistinguishable in every way" from both humans.

Bernard N. Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, guides the audience through the abortion procedure, explaining that what he has seen through the new technologies of "fetology" have changed his mind about abortion.

In the early ultrasound images, Nathanson points out what he says are the head and body of the fetus and the pulsing rhythm of the fetus' heartbeat.

He then follows the various body parts through the abortion operation outlining the legs, middle body, and head as they are "torn apart, dismembered disarticulated... by the unfeeling, steel instrument of the abortionist."

Kenneth D. Johnson, a member of the Harvard Human Rights Advocates, which organized the presentation, said he "believed that there are certain medical question" which could be clarified by the documentary.