May he rest in peace...just recently on one of ourpost abortive retreats we offered a mass for him in his sickness. How good the mercy of God is, that post abortive women would offer the mass for a former abortionist...we are all in need of His Mercy...May Dr Nathanson be with Jesus who is Mercy HImself and intercede for us all!
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Pro-Life Champion, died at home
By Christopher and Joan Bell
FOR INFORMATION CALL 201.920.4986
Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., former abortionist, who’s conversion was a modern-day St. Paul story, died today, Feb. 21, at 84. He became one the most eloquent and informed pro-life voices in America and his death, at his New York residence after a prolonged battle with cancer, with his wife Christine by his side, will not silence his defense of life.
Bernard delivered our first daughter and became Joan’s godson.
Joan first met Bernard in Delaware at a pro-life meeting during 1980. He later visited Joan in a Florida prison where she was incarcerated for a peaceful, prayerful attempt to stop abortion.
She said about him, “His intellect was incredibly diverse. When he visited me in Florida he brought a large stack of books and he questioned me on a wide range of subjects including philosophical, historical , medical and theological. What an incredibly sharp mind with deep ethical insights he had.”
She add, “I was deeply honored by his presence in my life. He was a great doctor as well. I loved him and his goodness very much. He had a very great attraction to goodness and truth. I could feel his love for the pre-born children, including each child he had aborted and each child threatened by abortion today. It was a profound experience being in his presence and seeing the love and contrition in his eyes. I believe he came to totally accept God’s forgiveness. It all seemed real to him. His conversion is like St. Paul’s.”
Christopher first met Bernard at a N.J. Right to Life banquet where they sat together on the Dias. Bernard was fasting, as he often did, before speaking. He launched a boycott of McDonald’s hamburger restaurants at that banquet after explaining that McDonald’s foundation was funding research on unborn babies.
Christopher and Joan, along with hundreds of other pro-lifers including Bernard were in front of Planned Parenthood in New York City peacefully trying to stop abortions during 1990. Christopher saw how pensive Bernard was and asked, “May I ask you a question?” Bernard said, “Anything except about my spiritual life.” He was obviously contemplating the journey of his soul. He’d later explain that it was the love he saw in the pro-lifers he met which helped him believe in God.
It was then through the intellectual stimulus of Fr. C.J. McKlosky, a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei, that Bernard found his way to accepting Baptism in the Catholic Church. Joan was his godmother. Bernard attended the baptism of Mary, our daughter whom he delivered, in the crypt at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at the hands of Cardinal John O’Connor. Mary, who was then 4, witnessed Bernard’s baptism at the hands of Cardinal O’Connor in the same crypt of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on December 9, 1996.
Bernard was married in a Catholic ceremony to Christine Reisner, who was with him at the time of his death. She is the daughter of Dr. Edward H. Reisner Jr., a hematologist who was a longtime colleague of Bernard’s’s at St. Luke’s Hospital. Bernard is also survived by his son, Joseph, who’s mother, Adele Roban was always pro-life and once ran for the U.S. Senate on the Right to Life Party Line.
Born in New York to a Jewish family, Bernard received his medical degree from McGill University Medical College in Montreal, Canada, and served as a doctor in the U.S. Air Force for a few years. After his military stint, he built a thriving New York medical practice, at one time working at the same hospital as his father. In the late 1960’s, he was one of the founders of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called Naral ProChoice America), and later became the operator of the nation’s busiest abortion clinic, located in New York.
An obstetrician-gynecologist, Bernard estimated that he oversaw the performance of about 75,000 abortions in the 1960s and 1970s before performing his last procedure in 1979 and turning his support to the pro-life movement. He wrote a number of books, including the biographical “The Hand of God,” and produced the famous 1986 film “The Silent Scream,” showing ultrasound images of an unborn child shrinking from the instruments of an abortionist. Bernard said that the development of quality ultrasound technology and a class in perinatology brought him face to face with the personality of the pre-born child. Then he knew abortion is the murder of an individual human being. He said, “Even as an atheist I knew that it was just wrong.”
After joining the pro-life movement, he lectured widely, published numerous scholarly articles, and earned a master’s degree in bioethics from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he also became a visiting scholar.
A Funeral Mass is planned for St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, the current head of the Archdiocese of New York.
Peace,
christopher bell +
