Bernard Nathanson, MD, was a founder of the pro-choice movement and a tireless crusader for the legalization of abortion. By his own admission, Nathanson presided over more than 60,000 abortions and personally performed 5,000 abortions himself. He co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), which later became the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and is now NARAL Pro-Choice America.
“The Hand of God” is Nathanson’s recounting of his journey from being a pro-choice activist to being a pro-life activist; from being a “Jewish atheist” to being a Roman Catholic. This book covers his remarkable odyssey – medically, ethically and spiritually.
Family life for him was tumultuous – no faith, no maternal love, phobias, fantasies and fears. His father fed the monster that Nathanson would become with utilitarian views of women. “Women were generally relegated to the back of the bus.” He was married four times with his first three marriages ending in divorce.
His introduction to the “satanic world of abortion” came while in medical school when his girlfriend had an unplanned pregnancy. He “selfishly” insisted on an abortion which destroyed the relationship. Questions from the girlfriend riddled the relationship: “Why didn’t he marry me? Why couldn’t we have had this baby? Why should I have had to imperil my life and my future children for the sake of his convenience and academic schedule? Will God punish me for what I have done by making me barren?”
Then there was another unplanned pregnancy with a woman who loved him very much. He himself performed the abortion. He destroyed his own child. He had no feelings aside from the sense of accomplishment and pride of expertise. Nathanson relates this to the gates of the satanic world of abortion being opened by his selfish narcissism and inability to love. He names this hell as the “suffering of one unable to love.”
He aborted unborn children of friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances and even teachers. “There was never a shred of self-doubt, never a wavering of the supreme confidence that he was doing a major service for those who sought him out.”
Nathanson’s journey continued uninterrupted until he had the chance to observe a real-time abortion with ultrasound. He soon came to regard the procedure as unjustified homicide and refused to perform it.
Once exposed to the truth of his “horrendous procedure,” he stopped doing abortions for any reason; dedicated himself to the fight against abortion; and revealed to the world the lies he and his abortion movement colleagues had told to break down public opposition.
In 1985, Nathanson employed the ultrasound to produce a documentary film, “The Silent Scream,” which energized the pro-life movement and threw the pro-choice side onto the defensive by showing in graphic detail the killing of a twelve-week-old fetus in a suction abortion. Nathanson used the footage to describe the facts of fetal development and to make the case for the humanity and dignity of the child in the womb. At one point, viewers see the child draw back from the surgical instrument and open his mouth: “This,” Nathanson says in the narration, “is the silent scream of a child threatened imminently with extinction.
With his change of heart, pro-life conversion and activism, Nathanson became a target for the anti-life forces, the subject of ridicule and satire, and the butt of jokes. He came to regard the taking of innocent human lives as comparable to Hitler’s Dachau, Stalin’s Gulag, or Pole Pot’s Cambodia.
He spoke publicly of what was soon to come as a result of the misuse of science and the lack of respect for the sacredness of human life: genetic manipulation, sex selection, surrogate motherhood, frozen embryos, cloning stem cell research, and the sale and use of body parts. He was a true prophet for what he predicted would happen.
Nathanson’s spiritual conversion followed his ethical conversion (to pro-life). Those in the pro-life movement had a profound impact on him. He also came to understand the Catholic Church’s position on life. The Church, which he attacked for years, stood and continues to stand virtually alone in the defense of the sacredness of human life from conception to natural death.
Fr. J.C. McCloskey who served as a spiritual mentor to Nathanson calls “The Hand of God” one of the most important autobiographies of the 20th Century. John Cardinal O’Connor who baptized him at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral commented “that the lack of respect for life is rooted in the lack of self-respect, and the lack of self-respect as a consequence of sin.”
“The Hand of God” shows the power of God’s grace as Nathanson confesses his own heartlessness in his role as a leader of the pro-abortion movement and then becomes an important force in reversing the blind acceptance of the procedure.
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The Real Story about Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s Conversion from Pro-Abortion to Pro-Choice; from Jewish Atheism to Roman Catholic
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