The Founder of the Phrase Pro-Choice” Dies

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. — Mother Theresa

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the abortion advocacy group NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) and long thought to be the creator of the phrase "pro-choice," passed away on Feb. 21.

Sheryl Young, writing for Yahoo News reports: “Nathanson became a "foe" rather than a leader of abortion advocates within a decade of abortion's legalization. He announced he could no longer perform abortions or champion abortion rights. At that time, he had seen ultrasounds of unborn babies (fetuses) as young as 12 weeks' gestation struggling to avoid the abortion procedure.”

“Many people still assume Nathanson turned on the abortion industry because he became a Christian. However, in the early 1980's when Nathanson began denouncing abortion and began trying to reverse the abortion tide, he was, by all accounts, a Jewish atheist. Nathanson did not turn to Christianity until 1996.”

“In 1984, Nathanson made the film "The Silent Scream," showing an apparent in-womb baby's struggle and pain during an abortion.”

“In his 1981 book, "Aborting America," Nathanson asserts that he and others falsified and inflated many statistics about "back alley abortions" in order to convince the government to legalize abortion.”

“After performing more than 70,000 abortions himself, his efforts to rally for life by way of books, interviews and the movie have long been attacked as propaganda by those still advocating abortion. According to a report in the LA Times, feminist leader Betty Friedan once likened Nathanson to an American traitor.”

“In his 1981 book, "Aborting America," Nathanson asserts that he and others falsified and inflated many statistics about "back alley abortions" in order to convince the government to legalize abortion.”

“Nurse Brenda Schaeffer worked with a well-known abortionist. Her story of witnessing not only the abortion ultrasounds, but egregious acts against the unborn and their frightened mothers, at the abortion clinic where she worked was told in a 1996 film called "The Procedure."

“Ex-abortion clinic owner Carol Everett wrote the 1992 abortion industry exposé "Blood Money." Her back cover quote includes the fact that, while working for other abortion clinics before owning her own, she was not trained to discuss any option other than abortion. She was trained just to sell abortions at $25.00 apiece.”

“In 2009, ex-Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson turned pro-life for much the same reason as Nathanson — through the viewing of ultrasounds and evidence that fetuses are human life in the very early stages of development.”

“None of these people have ever been associated with any sort of violence against abortion clinics, nor are they known for writing or saying anything that would condone such acts.”

The abortion industry began in June 1969, Norma L. McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child. She returned to Dallas, where friends advised her to assert falsely that she had been raped, as she could then obtain a legal abortion (with the understanding that Texas' anti-abortion laws allowed abortion in the cases of rape and incest). However, this scheme failed, as there was no police report documenting the alleged rape. She attempted to obtain an illegal abortion, but found the unauthorized site shuttered, closed down by the police. Eventually, she was referred to attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington

In 1970, attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Texas on behalf of Norma L. McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe). The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, representing the State of Texas. At the time, McCorvey was no longer claiming her pregnancy was the result of rape, and she later acknowledged she had lied earlier about having been raped. "Rape" is not mentioned in the judicial opinions in this case.

The district court ruled in McCorvey's favor on the merits, and declined to grant an injunction against the enforcement of the laws barring abortion. The district court's decision was based upon the Ninth Amendment, and the court relied upon a concurring opinion by Justice Arthur Goldberg in the 1965 Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut, regarding a right to use contraceptives. Few state laws proscribed contraceptives in 1965 when the Griswold case was decided, whereas abortion was widely proscribed by state laws in the early 1970s.

Roe v. Wade ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal. Following a first round of arguments, Justice Harry Blackmun drafted a preliminary opinion that emphasized what he saw as the Texas law's vagueness. Justices William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell, Jr. joined the Supreme Court too late to hear the first round of arguments. Therefore, Chief Justice Warren Burger proposed that the case be reargued; this took place on October 11, 1972. Weddington continued to represent Roe, and Texas Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Flowers stepped in to replace Wade. Justice William O. Douglas threatened to write a dissent from the reargument order, but was coaxed out of the action by his colleagues, and his dissent was merely mentioned in the reargument order without further statement or opinion.

The Court issued its decision on January 22, 1973, with a 7-to-2 majority vote in favor of Roe. Burger and Douglas' concurring opinion and White's dissenting opinion were issued separately, in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton. The Roe Court deemed abortion a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, thereby subjecting all laws attempting to restrict it to the standard of strict scrutiny.

Advocates of Roe describe it as vital to the preservation of women's rights, personal freedom, and privacy. Denying the abortion right has been equated to compulsory motherhood, and some scholars (not including any member of the Supreme Court) have argued that abortion bans therefore violate the Thirteenth Amendment: “When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to 'involuntary servitude' in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, even if the woman has stipulated to have consented to the risk of pregnancy, that does not permit the state to force her to remain pregnant.”

In letter life Norma McCorvey recanted her position on abortion and in 2005 she petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn their 1973 decision with no success. She eventually converted to Catholicism and has become a fierce pro-life advocate.

McCorvey's second book, Won by Love, was published in 1998. She explained her change on the stance of abortion with the following comments: “I was sitting in O.R.'s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. 'Norma', I said to myself, 'They're right'. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that's a baby! It's as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth — that's a baby!”

“I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn't about 'products of conception'. It wasn't about 'missed periods'. It was about children being killed in their mother's wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion — at any point — was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”

According to the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) 39,290,477 abortions have been performed in the United States between 1973 and 1999. When looking at the figures posted by the NRLC, which go to 2009 the figure jumps to 53,310,843. The NRLC also sates that the annual number of abortions had dropped from a high of 1.6 million each year in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2009.

53 million is almost as high as the number of people killed in the Stalinist Soviet Union and more than 8 times the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It is one and a half times the total population of the State of California and the total number of people in Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Belgium combined.

I did not research the figures of abortions by race, but past articles and reports have claimed that abortions among the black community are much higher than white, Asian or Hispanic. Margaret Sanger and her eugenics colleagues must be jumping with joy in hell.

Nathanson’s conversion came about when he first saw ultrasounds of fetuses in the womb. He saw them as living and developing human beings, not as lumps a parasitic flesh. (The photo at the right is an ultrasound image of a 14 week fetus) When National Geographic TV shows elephants, lions, dogs, cats and monkeys gestating in the womb people get all teary-eyed over the development of these animals. But, God forbid they show a human fetus gestating and NARL, NOW and Planned Parenthood would have them in court in less than a day claiming a violation of women’s rights under the 13^th Amendment. This is why Planned Parenthood and their liberal supporters fight so hard against states that want to demand a woman seeking an abortion first see an ultrasound of her fetus. This might upset her and cause “mental distress” Yes, the mental distress they are concerned over is called pangs of conscience. Also they might lose the $350 dollars they get for each abortion. Even if the woman doesn’t pay they get the money from the government or misguided donors. Let’s see, if I use an average figure of $100 for each abortion for the total since 1973 would be $ 5,331,084,300 — that’s trillion with a “T”. Quite a good business for the baby killers. Hitler’s SS didn’t get nearly that much from the gold and loot stolen or extracted from the Jews.

Norma McCorvey, Dr. Nathanson, Nurse Brenda Schaeffer, Carol Everett and Abby Johnson saw the evils of abortion. When will the rest of us join them? It’s not about the right to choose, it’s about thou shall not murder.