Since more than half of U.S. Catholics (56%) favor legal abortion, we should review the Catholic connections to legal abortion history. Perhaps an understanding of how Catholics were targeted will help those deceived to see the value of the Church’s position.
Pro-abortion people say abortion is a women’s issue, so men should have no say in the matter. Funny thing, it was two men who founded NARAL and engineered the acceptance of abortion in America.
Lawrence Lader and Bernard Nathanson saw an opportunity to capitalize on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. They realized a backup to contraception was needed, and a lot of money could be made from providing abortion, if it was legal.
They tied the idea to the women’s movement claiming abortion would enable greater independence. Lader persuaded reluctant feminist leaders to include abortion as a goal when the National Organization of Women was formed.
Contrary to Lader’s arguments, abortion exploits and harms women. It entraps them more with emotional and physical damage as it frees men of responsibility. That is why 67-72% of abortions are coerced. When men force women to have abortions, there is no “choice.”
Most likely, Lader and Nathanson knew what an advantage abortion would be for men.
Larry Lader: Anti-Catholic Strategist
Lader was rabidly anti-Catholic. He unsuccessfully sued the IRS in an attempt to strip the Church of tax exemption. His excuse was that the Church’s opposition to abortion amounted to political activity. Other lawsuits against the Church followed.
Lader and Nathanson knew that Catholic opposition was politically crippling. So, they devised a “Catholic Strategy.” According to a 2019 article by Fr. Peter Logsdon, the intent was to shift enough Catholic voters to support pro-abortion candidates by
“1) blaming the Pope, bishops and priests anytime a woman died due to complications of an illegal abortion,
“2) emphasizing Catholic politicians who were softening their position against abortion,
“3) supporting Catholic candidates who were in support of decriminalizing abortion, and
“4) implementing the ‘Catholic Strategy’ which persuaded Catholics, politicians and voter that they could straddle the fence on this issue by remaining ‘personally’ against abortion but vote with the idea that every woman deserves the right to choose.” https://www.prweb.com/releases/terry_beatley_of_hosea_initiative_reveals_dr_bernard_n_nathansons_eight_point_plan_used_to_legalize_abortion/prweb16320308.htm
Sound familiar? The media hypes these points. New York Governor Mario Cuomo became nationally famous for his “personally opposed” speech at Notre Dame that other cowardly politicians have rushed to embrace and now use as an accepted, even expected, standard.
Lader wrote a biography of Margaret Sanger, the eugenicist that even Planned Parenthood disavows now, and was thus convinced that women had to control their childbearing, by whatever means.
It was Lader’s argument about the right to privacy in sexuality and birth control that was used by the Supreme Court to justify legalizing abortion.
Bernard Nathanson, The Abortion King
Dr. Nathanson became known as “The Abortion King” because he supervised or performed 60,000 abortions. He personally persuaded Planned Parenthood to do abortions and trained their staff.
However, Nathanson was eventually repulsed by the killing. He admitted in his books Aborting America and The Abortion Papers: Inside the Abortion Mentality that they always knew abortion killed a human who was separate from the mother.
Focusing the debate on “choice” was an intentional diversion from the reality of abortion. In fact, he hired a public relations firm to help coin slogans like “My Body, My Choice” and other euphemisms used by abortion advocates to center on the woman and dehumanize the child.
Nathanson also admitted that they lied about the number of illegal abortions annually in the U.S. (1M versus the actual 100,000) and of the women who thereby died (10,000 vs. 250). The CDC reported for 1972, the year before Roe, there were only 39 deaths from illegal abortions. Unfortunately, the media proliferated the lies, as Nathanson and Lader expected.
Once Nathanson had his change of heart, he became a pro-life advocate and produced the film Silent Scream to show the brutality of a child’s death by abortion.
He also journeyed from being an atheist to being a Catholic.
Conversions from Pro-Abortion to Pro-Life and Catholic
Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, never had an abortion, but she worked at an abortion facility. There she was influence by protestors to become a Christian and later a Catholic.
There are multiple former abortionists/abortion activists who have become pro-life Catholics. Their choice has often stemmed from the Church’s leadership and message in defending the unborn.
There are also several books on the history of abortion in America. One by another Catholic convert and a witness to much of the manufactured connection of abortion to the women’s movement is Sue Ellen Browder’s Subverted.
We Catholics should be proud that these abortion advocates received the grace to convert to pro-life and Catholic. We should do all we can to help others down that path.
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