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]
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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]
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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
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.”
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