Noted Abortionist Finds God and Faith

Dr. Bernard Nathanson. <The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to 
Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind.> Regnery 
Publishing: Washington, 1996.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson has written an important book. In time it 
will rank with Merton's <Seven Storey Mountain> and Malcolm 
Muggeridge's <Chronicles of Wasted Time>, and even the epochal 
<Gulag Archipelago> of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as the books which 
our descendants, both familial and spiritual, will examine closely 
in the 21st and 22nd centuries in order to understand both man's 
inhumanity to humanity and to his personal self and the 
possibility of redemption.

Only in this context will the reader understand the power and 
grace of the message of the Church and most particularly the Roman 
Pontiff John Paul II, who in his Encyclical <Evangelium vitae> so 
clearly enunciated the sacredness of human life from natural 
conception to natural death and, in between, the centrality of the 
"dignity of the human person" in the face of a century of mass 
slaughter and degradation.

The book has historical significance but it also possesses 
importance in the present moment. As I write this review the U.S. 
Congress is attempting to overturn the presidentially vetoed 
Partial-Birth Abortion Act, and a presidential race is drawing to 
a close between two candidates who clearly have radically 
different views on the sacredness of human life. Bernard 
Nathanson's intellectual and moral honesty has enabled many other 
abortion providers or accomplices, including recently some 
legislators to acknowledge their mistakes and join the fight for 
human life at its most defenceless. Quite simply abortion and its 
auxiliary issues ranging from the euthanasia antics of "Dr. 
Death", Jack Kevorkian, to the frozen embryos of Great Britain are 
the issues that simply will not go away as they deal with the 
meaning of human life itself. Nowhere more clearly than in the 
United States in this historical moment can one see the divisions 
lining up be hind the forces of the "culture of death" and 
"civilization of love". Dr. Bernard Nathanson's conversions both 
to the cause of life and to Christianity are in deed highly 
significant as witness both to the power of scientific evidence 
and of prayer. It also manifests so clearly the inexorable 
connection between God and the natural law that he has in scribed 
in human nature. If you ac knowledge and follow the natural law, 
you may very well find God and the Church.

A powerful witness to possibilities of grace

The basic facts about Dr. Nathanson are well known to many 
readers. He was co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for 
the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL, later renamed the National 
Abortion Rights Action League), and former director of New York 
City's Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, then the largest 
abortion clinic in the world. In the late 1970's he turned against 
abortion to become a prominent pro-life advocate, authoring 
<Aborting America> and producing the seminal pro-life video, <The 
Silent Scream>. The video was truly revolutionary in its use of 
the most up-to-date medical technology to show definitely the 
horrors of abortion as it actually takes place in the womb of the 
mother. The video, along with its successor <The Eclipse of 
Reason>, was widely shown not only on television globally, but in 
many cases directly to legislators in many countries.

During the late 1970's Dr. Nathanson became an icon to the 
cultural anti-life forces in America, the subject of ridicule and 
satire in comic strips and news commentary, and the butt of jokes 
of television comedians for his change of heart and mind regarding 
the objective reality of abortion, the taking of innocent human 
life. Since then along with a distinguished obstetric medical 
practice and university teaching he has given hundreds of lectures 
throughout the world in defence of the unborn. Now upon the verge 
of retirement he has written his autobiography, which contains 
searing personal revelations about how a man could possibly become 
an abortionist, yet also a powerful witness to the possibilities 
of divine grace as he draws near to the final step of Baptism and 
incorporation into Christ's Church.

A warning to the reader: this is not an easy or pleasant book to 
read because it tells the truth about evil acts that are truly 
repugnant. What is remarkable and praiseworthy is that the doctor 
does not make excuses for his behaviour. The reader certainly has 
many reasons at least to understand without condoning his 
behaviour after reading about his childhood and adolescence in a 
familial setting that can truly be described as loveless. 
Nathanson recounts in painful detail his bringing up in New York 
by a family that appears to have been seriously dysfunctional for 
at least a couple of generations without the slightest semblance 
of religious faith or familial loyalty or affection.

The first chapter is entitled "The Monster", referring to his 
father, and spells out very clearly the young Nathanson's 
relationships with his Jewish Canadian physician father and his 
family. "We would take long walks together, he and I, and he would 
fill my ears with poisonous remarks and revanchist resolutions 
concerning my mother and her family and ... I remained his weapon, 
his dummy, until I was almost seventeen years old, when l-as-he 
rebelled and told him I would no longer function as his robotic 
surrogate assassin". About his sister, "her mental health