Bernard Nathanson

Bernard Nathanson, who died this year, is the only gynaecologist to get it in the neck from both sides of the abortion debate. In the 1960s and 70s he was a passionate advocate of easy abortion. He was first under the spell of his father at New York Women's Hospital and then dominated by passionate pro-abortionist Larry Lader who recruited Nathanson to perform the first large series of suction terminations necessary to cope with the industrial workload.

Nathanson soon became a leading campaigner for the liberalization of abortion laws until the mid 1970s when he found the 'moral whipsaw' of both aborting and delivering babies intolerable. In 1984 after he and a fellow abortionist examined ultrasound tales they had recorded during abortions, neither of them did a single abortion again. Nathanson was seized by a black despair and contemplated suicide. For the first time in his life he began to seriously entertain the notion of God who had led him through the proverbial circles of Hell, only to show him the way to redemption and mercy through his grace.