DR. BERNARD N. NATHANSON (JULY 31, 1926 TO FEBRUARY 21, 2011)

  

Bernard N. Nathanson (July 31, 1926 – February 21, 2011) was an American medical doctor from New York City, co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws — NARAL — later renamed National Abortion Rights Action League. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was also the former director of New York City’s Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, but later became a pro-life activist. He was the narrator for the controversial 1984 anti-abortion film The Silent Scream.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Nathanson

Early life and education

Nathanson was born in New York City. His father was an obstetrician/gynecologist, the same career that Nathanson held in his professional life. Nathanson graduated in 1949 from McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal.

Career

Nathanson was licensed to practice medicine in New York state in 1952 and became board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology in 1960. He was for a time the director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH), then the largest freestanding abortion facility in the world. In 1974 Nathanson wrote: “I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.” He also wrote that he performed an abortion on a woman whom he had impregnated.

 

We fed the public a line of deceit, dishonesty, a fabrication of statistics and figures. We succeeded because the time was right and the news media cooperated. We sensationalized the effects of illegal abortions, and fabricated polls which indicated that 85 percent of the public favored unrestricted abortion, when we knew it was only 5 percent. We unashamedly lied, and yet our statements were quoted [by the media] as though they had been written in law. – Bernard Nathanson

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/678081]

Activism

Pro-choice

Originally a pro-choice activist, Nathanson gained national attention as one of the founding members of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (later renamed the National Abortion Rights Action League, and now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America). He worked with Betty Friedan and others for the legalization of abortion in the United States. Their efforts essentially succeeded with the Roe v Wade decision.

Pro-life

With the development of ultrasound in the 1970s, he had the chance to observe a real-time abortion. This led him to reconsider his views on abortion. He is often quoted as saying abortion is "the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States." He wrote the book Aborting America where he first exposed what he called "the dishonest beginnings of the abortion movement." In 1984, he directed and narrated a film titled The Silent Scream, in cooperation with the National Right to Life Committee, which contained the ultrasound video of a mid term (12 weeks) abortion. His second documentary Eclipse of Reason dealt with late-term abortions. He stated that the numbers he once cited for NARAL concerning the number of deaths linked to illegal abortions were "false figures."

Referring to his previous work as an abortion provider and abortion rights activist, he wrote in his 1996 autobiography Hand of God, "I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age." Nathanson developed what he called the "vector theory of life", which states that from the moment of conception, there exists "a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby."

  

There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy. – Bernard Nathanson

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/551129]

Religious conversion

Nathanson grew up Jewish and for more than ten years after he became pro-life he described himself as a "Jewish atheist". In 1996 he converted to Catholicism through the efforts of the Rev. C. John McCloskey. In December 1996, Nathanson was baptized by John Cardinal O'Connor in a private Mass with a group of friends in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He also received Confirmation and first Communion from the cardinal. He stated that "no religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church" when asked why he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Personal life and death

Nathanson married four times; his first three marriages ended in divorce. He died of cancer in New York on February 21, 2011 at the age of 84. He was survived by his fourth wife, Christine, and a son, Joseph, from a previous union, who resides in New Jersey.

Works

• Aborting America. Garden City, NY:Doubleday, 1979. ISBN 0-385-14461-X.
• The Silent Scream (1984 documentary).
• The Abortion Papers: Inside the Abortion Mentality. New York:Frederick Fell, 1983. ISBN 0-8119-0593-4.
• Eclipse of Reason (1987 documentary).
• The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind. Washington D.C.: Regnery, 1996. ISBN 0-89526-463-3.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/he-convinced-america-to-accept-abortion.-before-he-died-he-pleaded-stop-the/ & https://web.facebook.com/LifeSiteNews/posts/10155093099653203

Claire Chretien Follow Claire

Fri Feb 10, 2017 - 2:47 pm EST

The untold story of America’s ‘abortion king’ – and one woman’s mission to share his pro-life conversion

February 10 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Many pro-lifers are familiar with the conversion story of former abortionist and NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson, but fewer know the full story of how he convinced Americans to embrace abortion.

One woman is on a mission to change that because of a promise she made to Nathanson when he was dying of cancer. 

That woman is Terry Beatley, the founder and president of the Hosea Initiative. She got her start in pro-life ministry doing outreach to minority communities, educating them about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s racist, pro-eugenics agenda.

In 2009, “I was just being obedient to the Lord” when the idea to meet with Nathanson came to her, Beatley told LifeSiteNews. She was at a 24-hour-prayer vigil at her church when she asked God what He wanted her “to do with these experiences and this head full of information.”

“All I could hear back was, ‘go and interview Dr. Bernard Nathanson,’” she said. “Within about two weeks, I was on a plane [on] December 1, 2009, and it literally changed my life forever.”

Nathanson, one of the founders of the powerful abortion lobby group NARAL Pro-Choice America, committed more than 60,000 abortions. He gradually began to realize that abortion kills a whole, distinct, living human being and eventually became one of the strongest voices in the pro-life movement. 

When Beatley met with Nathanson, “it was just a very heavy interview,” she said. He told Beatley to “teach the strategy” of how he deceived our country about abortion. Then he told her, “tell America that the co-founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America says to love one another. Abortion’s not love; stop the killing. The world needs more love, and I’m all about love now.”

“The only time” Beatley saw a “glimmer of hope” in Nathanson’s eyes was when she promised him, “America’s going to know your story, how you deceived our country.”

Out of this promise the Hosea Initiative was born. Its mission is to bring healing truth to a broken world by teaching the eight-point marketing strategy Nathanson used – and later regretted – to convince people to support abortion.

Through speaking engagements, pro-life activism, and her new book, What if We’ve Been Wrong? Keeping my Promise to America’s “Abortion King,” Beatley is sharing Nathanson’s full story.

Early abortion lobbyists developed a ‘Catholic strategy’

“Dr. Nathanson knew that in order to push this pro-abortion campaign forward back in 1969, they needed to frame the debate around ‘choice,’” said Beatley. “They weren’t framing it around ‘murder’ or ‘terminating a pregnancy,’ it was just simply around ‘choice.’”

“In order to overturn the anti-abortion law in New York in 1970, Dr. Nathanson had to make sure that enough Catholics would support pro-abortion candidates,” she explained. “They knew that they already had about 50 percent of the Catholics in their back pocket, because they were already contracepting. … They had kind of bought the lies of Margaret Sanger. But they needed to ensure that the other group of Catholics – that enough of them would not shift their votes over to pro-life candidates.”

“So they developed what’s called the ‘Catholic Strategy’” to win over Catholics to vote for abortion supporters, said Beatley. Interestingly, she said, “we saw the Catholic Strategy being executed by Tim Kaine during the last political election.”

“We go into church groups, women’s groups, men’s groups, really any kind of setting [and] we teach,” said Beatley. “We teach the 100-year history of how Malthusian philosophy of population control management became the social policy of the West. And a big chunk of that, of course, is Dr. Nathanson, but then the root of it is Margaret Sanger and Malthusian philosophy.”

The ‘abortion industry will be crushed’ if Nathanson’s full story is told

The Hosea Initiative was given unexpected but miraculous, exposure at the 2017 March for Life. Beatley credits the Blessed Virgin Mary for this. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception invited her to do three book signings over the March for Life weekend.

“The book is dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, and as a revert who’s totally embraced Our Mother,” doing the major book signings at America’s largest Catholic Church – one of the March for Life’s main activity hubs – was very special to Beatley.

She was able to share Nathanson’s strategy with thousands of pro-life pilgrims at the Basilica, and then a group of marchers carried giant blown-up signs of the cover of the book, giving it further exposure.

Sam Casey of the Jubliee Campaign read aloud from What if We’ve Been Wrong? to hundreds of pro-life leaders and activists at an anti-Planned Parenthood rally. The portion he read was Nathanson’s never-seen-before resignation letter to NARAL's Board of Directors. His widow shared it with Beatley for the book.

The Hosea Initiative, in partnership with Nathanson’s family, has the movie rights for his story. Beatley is now working to establish Hosea Initiative affiliates in all 50 states.

The group is developing a curriculum for middle and high school students at “inner city schools, churches,” and Catholic private schools, Beatley said.

“Any pro-choice woman needs to know Dr. Nathanson’s story,” Beatley insists. “He called himself the keeper of America’s abortion industry keys. To unlock the story and the message of Dr. Nathanson is to unlock the demonic stronghold this abortion industry has over America. The abortion industry will be crushed.”