Former abortionist agrees to help pro-life movement in RP

An American Jewish abortionist-turned-pro-lifer accepted yesterday an invitation of pro-life groups in the Philippines to help in their mission to persuade Filipinos "not to follow in the bloody footsteps of the United States and Western Europe with respect to abortion."

Dr. Bernard Nathanson said there are innumerable alternatives to contraception, some of which are virtually fool-proof.

He said natural family planning, if done on a scientific basis, could lower the incidence of failed contraception.

"In that case, it becomes a social problem," he said in a press conference at the Manila Hotel.

Nathanson said abortion, or an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy is not a medical problem. "It is a social problem. And to force doctors to become social engineers by doing abortions is totally wrong," he added.

If it is a social problem, which it is, Nathanson said it should be dealt with by social, not medical, means.

Nathanson said he was one of the founders and strategists of a pro-abortion movement in the United States, and that one of their tactics was to distort, magnify and fabricate data.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they claimed that there had been one million legal abortions in the US annually and that 10,000 women died due to abortion every year.

But actually, he said, there were only about 200,000 legal abortions and only 200 to 300 women died due to abortion a year.

Nathanson doubts claims that there are 300,000 to 500,000 abortions in the Philippines.

Nathanson said he abandoned his work as an abortionist and turned pro-life advocate not because of any religious or theological grounds but due to scientific evidence he had gathered from 1973 to 1977 as obstetrics chief of the St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.

He was then doing clinical research on the fetus using new technologies such as the ultrasound.

He said of the fetus: "It is no different from any of us. It is simply confined to a small area. And it is in a period of development as children and infants are. But it’s like any of us. It’s a member of the human community."

Nathanson said abortion illustrates the failure of social policy. "That it is up to the government, the provincial level or federal level. But every single abortion represents a social failure," he said.

"We are failing our women, our family. The answer is not to destroy innocent human beings. That is too easy. Why stop there? Why not kill all the people who are (an) inconvenience (to) society?" he said.