By Brian Trusdell | Friday, 02 April 2021 10:44 PM
The writer, producer, director and lead actor in a film about the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States said his purpose for making the film was for the public to see the truth about and the history of the case.
Nick Loeb portrays Bernard Nathanson, a medical doctor who co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) before becoming an anti-abortion activist, in the film ”Roe v. Wade.” He told Newsmax TV on Friday that he started the project after learning a film never had been made about the famous case.
A 1989 made-for-television film called ”Roe vs. Wade” starring Holly Hunter and Amy Madigan was a highly fictionalized version of the story.
”I want people to see the truth, and see what really happened [to] the court case on the way there,” Loeb said on ”Spicer & Co.” ”And I think at the end of the day, for people to truly understand that life begins at conception and that there’s a baby there.
”And whether people walk away from there converted or they don’t convert, as long as they understand that abortion is a difficult thing and not an easy choice, and it’s not just removing tissues or a bunch of cells, it’s actually killing the life of a child.”
The film, which stars Stacey Dash as National Right to Life Committee President Mildred Jefferson and Jon Voight and Robert Davi as Supreme Court justices Warren Burger and William Brenan, premiered in 2020 at the Vienna Independent Film Festival but began wide release via streaming services on Friday.
Loeb, who co-wrote the script with Cathy Allyn, says the story is told through the perspective of Nathanson, who dramatically changed his view on abortion after the development of an ultrasound offered the opportunity to observe one in real time.
In 1984, he directed and narrated the 29-minute documentary ”The Silent Scream,” which showed an ultrasound of an abortion on an 11-week-old fetus.
”I was really surprised,” Loeb said. ”I’ve been in Hollywood for over 20 years and I was really surprised that no one has actually made a movie about the most famous court case in American history. And then [I] thought, ‘Well, maybe that is because it’s a boring courtroom drama,’ but the more I researched that with all the lies and the manipulation it was almost like an Oliver Stone, ‘JFK’ movie, so I thought it was going to be entertaining.”
Loeb said there are many interesting aspects of the story that are not generally known by the public.
”I tell everybody Roe v. Wade is the court case that everybody has heard of but nobody knows anything about,” said Loeb, relating how Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, was used as a plaintiff to bring the lawsuit in Texas but never consulted throughout the process.
”A tremendous amount of interesting things that happened in this film that happened during history that nobody really knows about.”