Bernard Nathanson "Rememberance" in Wall Street Journal

The link may not function - WSJ is a subscriber website.

But here it is - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703610604576158894030077096.html

Here are some excerpts:

Onetime Abortionist Who Joined Other Side

A onetime self-described militant for abortion rights, Dr. Nathanson in 1969 picketed a New York City hospital and pushed for passage of the New York state act legalizing abortion the following year. He acted as a spokesman for NARAL in its early years, calling for increased access to abortion for the poor, and became director of Manhattan's Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health.

"We're interested in the poor people who have had to use the back-alley butchers in the past," Dr. Nathanson told the Christian Science Monitor in 1970.

Yet within a few years, Dr. Nathanson, at the time a self-professed "Jewish atheist," became convinced by ultrasound and EKG imagery that the fetus was a human life.

"There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists within the womb from the very onset of pregnancy," he wrote in 1974.

Dr. Nathanson's conversion brought with it a denunciation of his former allies, whom he accused of "moral myopia" in his 1979 book, "Aborting America."

He accused pro-abortion crusaders—including his former self—of outright lies about the number of women killed by illegal abortions, said by supporters of abortion rights to be 5,000 to 10,000 a year. The real number, he wrote, was far lower.

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Joan Andrews Bell, a Catholic anti-abortion activist who has served time in prison for blocking access to clinics, said, "He knew what the other side was thinking, but he also humanized the other side for us."

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In 1996, he was baptized a Catholic at St. Patrick's Cathedral by Cardinal O'Connor. "I have such heavy moral baggage to drag into the next world," he told the Washington Times that year.

 

Comments

[Eileen Peterson]

May the soul of Dr. Bernard Nathanson rest in peace. Amen. May be be welcomed home by Cardinal O'Connor and all the babies he tried to save.