Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of you! As I considered what I would write about today, I decided to devote this blog post to the good people of Ireland, a country where the evil act of abortion remains illegal. The timing is perfect not only because of the Irish holiday, but also for the recent death of a pro-life icon.
Most of you, perhaps even all of you, did not hear anything about the demise of Dr. Bernard Nathanson. He died in New York just a couple of weeks ago at age 84, after a prolonged battle with cancer. Despite his long, illustrious career in the field of medicine, the liberal media ignored the story of his death and subsequent funeral mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
You see, to the left, Dr. Nathanson was the ultimate traitor. He was Brutus, Judas Iscariot, and Benedict Arnold all rolled into one. Why? Because he went from being one of the most renowned abortion doctors in America to becoming a staunch pro-life advocate. His credibility as a physician helped him exert enormous influence in the abortion debate that has raged in our country for decades now, and the feminist, pro-abortion liberals hated him for it.
Throughout the 1970's, Dr. Nathanson operated what was considered the nation's busiest abortion facility, located in his native New York City. By 1979, the statistics they accumulated were staggering. Dr. Nathanson had presided over 60,000 abortions as director of the facility, almost 7,000 per year. He instructed practitioners in the performance of 15,000 others, and carried out another 5,000 abortions himself. One of those was on his own child, which he executed after impregnating his girlfriend.
But as that decade wore on, Dr. Nathanson began to undergo a conversion. What sparked it, he said, was viewing ultra-sound images from the new technology that had been developed. He came to realize that what he viewed as a "thing" inside a woman's womb really was a human being. The more he realized it, the more guilt he felt over the evil he had done. Finally, the guilt overwhelmed him to the point that he switched sides and left the facility.
It was then that Dr. Nathanson began to expose the horrors of abortion and the deceptive, dishonest beginnings of the abortion movement. He himself had been a co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), and spearheaded the initiative to change public opinion on the issue. To gain sympathy for their movement, he admitted that he lied about the numbers of women who died from illegal abortions at that time, inflating the numbers from a few hundred to well over 10,000. He even outlined all of this in a book, Aborting America, which he co-authored with Richard Ostling of Time magazine.
But Aborting America was just the beginning. Dr. Nathanson went on to produce the 1985 film The Silent Scream, which showed sonogram images of children in the womb shrinking back from abortionists' instruments. Later, he would produce another documentary, titled Eclipse, which displayed and explained various abortion procedures in graphic detail. There can be no denying that both films had a significant impact on the abortion debate, because it was impossible for detractors to dismiss his pro-life witness as one-sided propaganda. How could they when Dr. Nathanson had such a high standing among abortion supporters for so long?
In his 1996 autobiography, The Hand of God, Dr. Nathanson lamented the role he had played, saying, "I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age." In addressing whether we could ever revert back to the way things were, he said, "Abortion is now a monster so unimaginably gargantuan that even to think of stuffing it back in its cage...is ludicrous beyond words. Yet that is our charge---a Herculean endeavor."
That same year, he converted from being what he described as a "Jewish atheist" to a devout Roman Catholic, receiving his sacraments from none other than Cardinal John O'Connor, then Archbishop of New York. Becoming a Catholic gave him a sense of peace, and the comfort of knowing that he was forgiven for his past sins. Catholic leaders would come to label him as a pro-life prophet who foretold the coming of the culture of death, noting that the legalization of abortion was just the tip the iceberg.
Let us honor the memory of Dr. Nathanson and never fail to acknowledge the massive role he played in exposing the truth about abortion. Though I lament his passing, it is a comfort to know that there are so many others following in his footsteps and fighting the battle for our unborn children. Just the other day, I wrote a blog post about Fr. Frank Pavone, President of Priests for Life, who traveled to Canada to rescue Baby Joseph from being murdered. He is one of many heroes stationed on the front lines in this ongoing war.
Despite our culture of death and the sense of hopelessness associated with it, I remain optimistic about society's chances of setting this right. As long as we continue to fight the good fight, there is always hope of accomplishing, as Dr. Nathanson put it, the Herculean endeavor of stuffing the monster back in its cage. Next time though, we'll be sure to throw away the key.
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