Who You Got?

Nothing speaks as powerfully for a movement as the type of converts it is able to make. The ability to move hearts and minds over a sustained period is usually a testimony to the potency and veracity of the arguments.

Put more simply, you can fool people in the short term, but the truth always comes out.

This is particularly striking when it comes to abortion. The radical abortion on demand agenda is being pushed on the American people by a surprisingly small but vocal minority.

I decided to embark upon a small scope research project to see which philosophy had more or better converts (as distinct from adherents or proponents); people who started out in one camp and ended up in the other.

My research was definitely unscientific but very telling all the same: Google "pro-life convert" vs. "pro-choice convert" and look at the top 50 or so hits.

The results were overwhelming for the "pro-life" camp vs 1 girl for the "pro-choice" side whose rationale was "I started having sex".

Notables on the pro-life convert camp:

• Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade)
  
• Dr Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League (N.A.R.A.L.)
  
• Dr. Alveda King, niece of civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  
• Jean Garton, the founder and president emeritus of the Lutherans for Life
  
• Mitt Romney
  
• George W. Bush
  
• Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer
  
• countless abortionists themselves
  

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Washington DC, Oct 1, 2008 / 02:48 am (CNA).- Pro-life leader Dr. Alveda King, niece of civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., recently discussed her past experiences seeking services from a Planned Parenthood clinic in an interview. Saying the organization gave her “bad advice, bad counsel” and lied about her abortion, she called for taxpayer funding to be pulled from Planned Parenthood.

Speaking to Cybercast News Service, Dr. King described how she had two abortions and then later a miscarriage in the early 1970s, years before she joined the pro-life movement.

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One is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, whose 1979 book "Aborting America" was a revealing glimpse at a man whom at that point had taken a few steps on a journey which culminated in a full turnabout on abortion.

Once the operator of the largest abortion mill in the world, Nathanson eventually became a pro-life stalwart and creator of the immensely powerful video, "The Silent Scream."

Pro-life convert Dr Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League (N.A.R.A.L.), has admitted that abortion advocates consistently lied about maternal deaths from illegal U.S. abortions.

He worked with Betty Friedan and others for the legalization of abortion in the United States. Their efforts essentially succeeded with the Roe v Wade decision. He was also for a time the director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH), New York's largest abortion clinic. Nathanson has written that he was responsible for over 75,000 abortions throughout his pro-choice career.

The development of ultrasound, however, in the 1970s led him to reconsider his views on abortion. He is now a staunch supporter of the pro-life movement. In 1984, he made the documentary The Silent Scream which showed an abortion from the perspective of ultrasound. His second documentary Eclipse of Reason dealt with late-term abortions. He has also stated that the numbers he once cited for NARAL concerning the number of deaths linked to illegal abortions were "false figures".[2]

He has written the books Aborting America and The Hand of God. Although he grew up Jewish, he described himself as a "Jewish Atheist"[2] and later converted to Catholicism in 1996 through the efforts of a member of Opus Dei. Before that conversion, he had been divorced three times.

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More recently, Norma McCorvey--the "Jane Roe" of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision--has embraced the cause of life.

Norma Leah McCorvey (née Nelson born September 22, 1947, in Simmesport, Louisiana) is best known as the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe" in the landmark Roe v. Wade lawsuit in 1973. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion is a Constitutional right, overturning individual states' laws against abortion. Years later she recanted her support of abortion.[1]

At a signing of I Am Roe, in 1994, McCorvey was confronted by pro-life activist Flip Benham.[citation needed] Within a year, McCorvey converted to Christianity. She was baptized on August 8, 1995, by Benham in a Dallas backyard swimming pool, which event was filmed for national television. Two days later she announced that she had become an advocate of the pro-life movement (specifically, "Operation Rescue"), campaigning to make abortion illegal.

In 1998, she released a statement that affirmed her entrance into the Roman Catholic Church, and she has been confirmed into the church as a full member.[5] She has also stated that she is no longer a lesbian.[6] On August 17, 1998 She was received into the Catholic Church by Fr. Frank Pavone, the International Director of Priests for Life and Fr. Edward Robinson in Dallas, TX.


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She is the renowned author of "Who Broke the Baby?" one of the two books that turned me (and no doubt countless others) from an instinctive pro-lifer into pro-life activist.

That author is Jean Garton, the founder and president emeritus of the Lutherans for Life, and a friend of many, many years. To be honest I hadn't thought of Jean's story for years until I discovered the fall 2007 edition of Lutheran Woman's Quarterly on my desk under a stack of papers.

In "A Celebration of Life," Jean recounts her life and how she and her husband (and three children) struggled when her husband decided to become a Concordia Seminary student… at age 40. "

"I joined an activist group seeking to promote abortion-on-demand," she writes. "I spent six months studying the abortion issue from numerous perspectives in an attempt to find confirmation that abortion, as its advocates claimed, helps women, doesn't take a human life, and is a choice God allows us to make."

How did she "come out the other end of that exhaustive research"? "[W]ith a changed heart and mind and with a commitment to be a voice in defense of the unseen, unheard, unborn child."

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