Abortion figures who are now Pro-Life

[Milesian]

I posted this over in I-N, but thought it might be of interest here



Dr. Bernard Nathanson was one of the original founders of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) in 1969. NARAL is the pro-abortion group currently spending $40 million to block all pro-life judges and legislation. He presided over 60,000 abortions and was one of the pioneering forces in the legalization of abortion on demand in the early 1970s. Nathanson invented many of the political slogans that the pro-abortion movement is still using, such as “pro-choice,” “reproductive rights,” “freedom of choice,” and “a woman’s right to choose.” Through the technology of ultrasound, Nathanson saw for the first time the reality of what actually happens to the unborn child during an abortion and came to understand and support the pro-life position.

• “The truth never emerged in any way, shape, or form from NARAL.”

• “One of the major functions of NARAL and its executive board was the dissemination of false statistics regarding illegal abortion and deaths from abortion.”

• “The figures that we were releasing to the press were largely dead-designed to influence American public opinion. They had very little link or nexus to reality at all.”

• “The statistics that we gave to the American public about illegal abortions annually; the statistics we fabricated regarding the number of women dying from illegal abortions annually; all of these matters were pure fabrication and still persist to this very day.”

• “We spoke of 5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year. I confess that I knew the figures were totally false. It was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?”

• “We in NARAL were in the business of coining slogans principally for the media . . . we scattered catchy slogans for them . . . to use . . . in their stories. Slogans like “reproductive rights,” “freedom of choice,” “pro-choice.” For many years we’ve known them to be hollow and meaningless. They’re just catchy and, essentially, without substance.”

• “It’s amusing to me that many of the slogans I coined . . . in those years are still being used by NARAL . . . as arguments. They were never meant to be arguments. They were only . . . slogans . . . and many other things, but never the truth.”


The Hand of God - Dr Bernard Nathanson's autobiography

[Milesian]

Norma McCorvey was the “Roe” of Roe v. Wade , the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion on demand. Ironically, she never had an abortion. In 1969, when she found herself pregnant, she sought an abortion but could not get one because of strong pro-life laws in her home state of Texas. To garner sympathy for her case, McCorvey told people she had been raped. Still, she was not granted an abortion. She eventually placed the child she was carrying for adoption. In 1972 her case, Roe v. Wade, was heard by the United States Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in January 1973, they reversed the laws banning abortion in every one of America’s 50 states. Before becoming pro-life, McCorvey worked in an abortion clinic.

• “The public had certain misgivings about abortion in the early seventies, but there was much greater acceptance of abortion in cases of rape, so even though I wasn’t really raped, I thought saying so would garner greater public support.”

• “This means that the abortion case that destroyed every state law protecting the unborn was based on a lie.”

• “I’ve never had an abortion, so I really wouldn’t know how it felt to have one, but I do know the faces that I’ve seen, the women I’ve talked to in the pro-life movement.”

• “A lot of the women that used to come into the abortion clinic used to tell me, . . . ‘You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?’ And I’m like, ‘No, and you don’t have to tell me, either’. . . . They said, ‘I’m just afraid I don’t know how to be a mom.’ And I thought, ‘That’s sad.’”

• “I really hadn’t been happy with anything I saw in the pro-abortion movement. . . . They don’t really care about women. All they care about is your money. If you can give them $295 plus $100 for a sonogram, then they like you, but once you’re gone, they don’t know you.”

[Milesian]

Sandra Cano is the woman whose name was used against her will to legalize late-term, including partial birth, abortions in Doe v. Bolton , handed down by the United States Supreme Court in 1973. When Cano was pregnant with her fourth child, her children were put in foster care because her husband routinely abandoned the family. She sought legal help and, according to court documents, she sought an abortion but was turned down. Cano denies this. She tried to obtain this supposed request for an abortion from the abortion clinic, but the clinic claimed those records had disappeared. Even so, Cano’s alleged application for an abortion was used to legalize late-term abortions, and her name was the only one listed as a plaintiff in the class action suit that became known as Doe v. Bolton.

• “I don’t think that was my signature, but I can’t be sure, because I signed a lot of papers with [my lawyer]. She did not tell me what they were, and I trusted her. Every one of those statements was false.”

• “I do not believe in abortion. I have never believed in abortion. I have always been pro-life.”

• “I’ve never believed in abortion. I’ve never had an abortion. Never would have an abortion, yet my name was used on a Supreme Court case that legalized late term abortions.”

[Milesian]

CONFESSION OF AN EX-ABORTIONIST
By Dr. Bernard Nathanson


I am personally responsible for 75,000 abortions. This legitimises my credentials
to speak to you with some authority on the issue. I was one of the founders of the
National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws (NARAL) in the U.S. in 1968.
A truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most Americans were against
permissive abortion. Yet within five years we had convinced the U.S. Supreme Court
to issue the decision which legalised abortion throughout America in 1973 and produced
virtual abortion on demand up to birth. How did we do this? It is important to understand
the tactics involved because these tactics have been used throughout the western world
with one permutation or another, in order to change abortion law.

THE FIRST KEY TACTIC WAS TO CAPTURE THE MEDIA

We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal enlightened,
sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated,
we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we
had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favour of permissive abortion. This is
the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused
enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of
illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but
the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often
enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around
200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false
figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to
crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that
legalising abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then
be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of
birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since
legalisation.

THE SECOND KEY TACTIC WAS TO PLAY THE CATHOLIC CARD

We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its "socially backward ideas" and
picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain in opposing abortion. This theme was
played endlessly. We fed the media such lies as "we all know that opposition to abortion
comes from the hierarchy and not from most Catholics" and "Polls prove time and again
that most Catholics want abortion law reform". And the media drum-fired all this into the
American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under
the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favour of abortion are
enlightened and forward-looking. An inference of this tactic was that there were no non-
Catholic groups opposing abortion. The fact that other Christian as well as non-Christian
religions were {and still are) monolithically opposed to abortion was constantly
suppressed, along with pro-life atheists' opinions.

THE THIRD KEY TACTIC WAS THE DENIGRATION AND SUPPRESSION OF ALL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

I am often asked what made me change my mind. How did I change from prominent abortionist
to pro-life advocate? In 1973, I became director of obstetrics of a large hospital in New
York City and had to set up a prenatal research unit, just at the start of a great new
technology which we now use every day to study the foetus in the womb. A favourite pro-
abortion tactic is to insist that the definition of when life begins is impossible; that
the question is a theological or moral or philosophical one, anything but a scientific
one. Foetology makes it undeniably evident that life begins at conception and requires
all the protection and safeguards that any of us enjoy. Why, you may well ask, do some
American doctors who are privy to the findings of foetology, discredit themselves by
carrying out abortions? Simple arithmetic at $300 a time, 1.55 million abortions means an
industry generating $500,000,000 annually, of which most goes into the pocket of the
physician doing the abortion. It is clear that permissive abortion is purposeful
destruction of what is undeniably human life. It is an impermissible act of deadly
violence. One must concede that unplanned pregnancy is a wrenchingly difficult dilemma,
but to look for its solution in a deliberate act of destruction is to trash the vast
resourcefulness of human ingenuity, and to surrender the public weal to the classic
utilitarian answer to social problems.

AS A SCIENTIST I KNOW, NOT BELIEVE, KNOW THAT HUMAN LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

Although I am not a formal religionist, I believe with all my heart that there is a
divinity of existence which commands us to declare a final and irreversible halt to this
infinitely sad and shameful crime against humanity.



[Dr. Nathanson has since converted to Catholicism, being baptised in 1996.]