This film, made in 1984, was produced by American anti-abortion activists with the sole purpose of provoking emotions against abortion and horror among viewers. It is distributed all over the world, including the internet. It contains proven lies, half-truths, and exaggerations.

Quote from an anti-abortion website: “The world-renowned physician Dr. Nathanson filmed the behavior of an embryo during an abortion more than 20 years ago. He was so shocked by these recordings that from that day on he did not perform an abortion anymore and became a determined fighter for the unborn life.”

FALSE
Nathanson had completely stopped performing abortions more than 5 years before the film.
 The film was conceived from the beginning as a crusade against abortion.
 “The Silent Scream was produced in 1984 by the organization Cruisade for Life. 
It is not Nathanson himself who carries out the abort in the film, as is sometimes claimed.
Biography of Dr. Bernard Nathanson:
Born in 1926
In 1960 he settled in New York as a gynaecologist. 
As an assistant doctor at a hospital in Manhattan, he had observed the consequences of illegal abortions – mostly on poor women – and had come to the conclusion that laws banning abortion had to be changed. Together with journalist Lawrence Lader and feminist Betty Friedan, he founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws NARAL in 1969.
In 1970, after New York introduced a regulation, he was one of the founders of the Klinik Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health CRASH in New York and its director for two years.
In 1973, he became chief gynaecologist at St. Luke’s Hospital.
In 1974, after the introduction of ultrasound technology, he became increasingly reluctant to terminate a pregnancy.
In 1978 he performed such an operation on a cancer patient for the last time.
In 1979 he published the book “Aborting America”.
In 1984 he realized the movie “Der Stumme Schrei”.
In 1996 he converted to the Catholic faith.
In 2011 Nathanson died in New York.

Nathanson boasts in the film that he personally carried out several 1’000 abortions and is responsible for several 10’000. He had deliberately lied to the public about the numbers of suspected illegal abortions in the 1960s – later, after he had changed fronts as a “repentant sinner”, should we believe him?
His film demonstrably contains many false statements up to plain lies. Thus Nathanson disqualified himself as a missionary zealot.
Professor Étienne-Émile Baulieu, who qualified the film as “scientific fraud and manipulation” in a TV programme, was accused of slander by the authors of the film, but acquitted by the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris (17th Chamber). The court wrote in its judgment of 20 February 1992: “The film obviously aims at dramatising the subject and cannot be regarded as an objective scientific document. Rather, it is a propaganda film which seeks to convince by all means, in particular by arousing the emotions of the public”.