‘GRAPHIC IN THE EXTREME’ : ANTI-ABORTION DOCTOR PLANS FOLLOW-UP FILM

A New York doctor who narrated “The Silent Scream” and plans a graphic follow-up film, said Wednesday he has interviewed a teen-ager who survived when her mother had a saline abortion.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist who became a crusader against abortions, said his new film will be “graphic in the extreme.”

He said he performed a saline abortion, in which a saline solution is injected in the womb and the fetus is expelled through labor, that resulted in the live birth of a girl in the middle to late 1960s. The fetus was “somewhat in excess of 20 weeks” when aborted, he said.

Nathanson said his interview with the girl was “staggering” and may be included in the follow-up film.

“I think the interest is obvious. This is a unique experience for a human being. How many people do you know walking around like that?” Nathanson said in a telephone interview.

Dr. Hani Atrash of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said studies suggest about 1% of saline abortions result in live births.

Nathanson said the film also would include witnesses to the abortion filmed in “The Silent Scream.”

“This time everything is crystal clear. There will be no questions, no innuendo. This is graphic in the extreme,” Nathanson said. “It’s regrettable we’ve had to do it this way. We were forced because of the fabrication, the innuendo by the pro-abortion people after the last film.”

“The Silent Scream” outraged supporters of abortion with its images of a 12-week-old fetus being aborted and Nathanson’s narration that “we see the child’s mouth wide open in a silent scream” as instruments entered the womb. He claimed the fetus being aborted feels pain.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said there is “no legitimate scientific information” that a fetus feels pain early in a pregnancy.

The follow-up film is expected to be released in April. Nathanson said he had hoped to complete it by Jan. 22, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. He would not say what else might be in the film.

Barbara Radford, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, said she would not comment on the film before seeing it but “my expectation is that it will be as misleading and unrepresentative of a true abortion procedure as his first film was--another piece of propaganda.”

Referring to “The Silent Scream” and a filmed response to it made by Planned Parenthood, the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Assn., in a report prepared for a meeting of AMA’s House of Delegates to begin here Sunday, said:

“Science was used inappropriately in both films to advance particular points of view on abortion, rather than to focus on and clarify scientific issues in an objective manner.”