The following is a chapter from Joe Scheidler's CLOSED: 99 Ways To Stop Abortion. To order CLOSED with a credit card or for information on mail-in orders, call 773-777-2900.
Chapter 38: Adopt an Abortionist
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Despite their violation of the ethics of their own profession, which is dedicated to healing and not to harming their patients, physicians who practice abortion are still open to redemption. They must live with their consciences and the reality that they destroy human life every time they perform an abortion. While abortion doctors who have converted to pro-life are few and far between, they do exist. Perhaps one of the best known is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who was not only a pioneer in the effort to get abortion legalized, but had founded a chain of abortion mills in New York City which, by his own admission, had destroyed some seventy thousand lives.
In his book Aborting America, Dr. Nathanson gives us another good reason to turn away from abortion: the fact that many doctors in his own clinics were suffering serious personal conflicts due to their abortion involvement -- nightmares, drinking, drugs, and divorce. Many pro- lifers have known doctors engaged in the abortion practice who have shown signs of distress. After all, nearly every doctor at some time in his training made a commitment to heal and to do good to his fellowman, and abortion is certainly a perversion of that pledge. It must be hard to live a constant lie.
One method that has been used successfully to get an abortionist to cut down on his practice and even to swear off doing abortions is for a pro-lifer to make him a target for conversion. The abortionist is addressed politely through letters, telephone calls, and in person. He is sent information, kept up-to-date on legislation, supplied with articles supporting life and statements by medical personnel defending the right-to-life position. Efforts are made to get to know this abortionist's family, his church affiliation, his memberships in professional organizations and clubs, and other facts about his lifestyle. Manifestation of this interest is always genuine, and persistent.
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Pro-lifers who want to befriend an abortionist should not hesitate to discuss the medical, moral, legal, ethical, and religious ramifications of abortion with him. They should try, to meet with him to discuss the issue.
"Take an abortionist to dinner" should be more than a humorous suggestion. It should be a genuine invitation. Pro-lifers may be surprised to discover that the abortionist may actually welcome the opportunity to try to justify his position on abortion and will take the invitation seriously. In the early days of legal abortion, one of our pro-lifers decided he would "adopt" one of the leading female abortion advocates in Chicago. He accompanied her on lobbying missions to Springfield, following her from one legislator's office to another, all the time praying for her conversion. He attended her seminars and encouraged his friends to fill up the front rows at every lecture she gave. He challenged her to public debates, organized people to question her at her talks, sent her pro-life literature, and took every opportunity to try to get her to stop promoting abortion. He succeeded. She eventually got a job with a public relations firm. Several years later, in a chance meeting on Michigan Avenue, she assured us that she was still uninvolved in the abortion controversy and intended to keep out of it.
Examples abound of pro-lifers either encouraging abortionists to curtail their support for abortion or, in some cases, to change their position. On many occasions we have met with abortionists-the doctors, clinic owners, newspaper editors, advertisers, and reporters- to discuss in depth all facets of the controversy. At one meeting, an abortionist admitted frankly that in every abortion he performed he realized that he was destroying the life of a fellow human being. At another meeting, a hospital administrator told us that he knew of cases of live births resulting from abortions and the mothers sometimes requested the bodies of their babies for burial. He predicted that any form of lifetaking would be acceptable at his hospital so long as it were legal. Asked if this would include infanticide, suicide, and euthanasia, he replied, "If it's legal, we would provide the service."
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Appealing to moral codes and ethical standards that may be lying dormant, or even appealing to values that the abortionist may apply to his own family and children, could provide the basis for a conversion. Dr. Naim Kasar said in a public address before the National Abortion Federation (NAF), that he found it difficult to perform abortions on women who were at the same term of pregnancy as his own wife. He found it distressing to remove arms and legs and heads of babies who were precisely the age of his own unborn but wanted child. So disturbing was the effect of mid-trimester abortions on Dr. Kasar that he urged the federation to seek ways of restricting or banning mid- and late trimester abortions.
Not long after Dr. Kasar had given this talk, I was picketing his abortion clinic in Kansas City. In the group of two hundred demonstrators was a young woman who told me she had had an abortion by Kasar and that she deeply regretted it but also felt compassion for him. I asked if she would consider "adopting" Kasar, pray for him, send him literature and even try to have a meeting with him. She agreed. Some other people in the group also wanted to adopt Kasar. A year later Dr. Kasar had stopped doing abortions and had moved to another region of the country.
Consider the effect it would have on abortion in America if every abortionist were "adopted" by an informed, pro-life activist who made every effort to engage him in conversation, and even befriend him, at his club, his clinic, his church. Think of the potential for good if every pro-lifer reading this chapter were to decide to "adopt" an abortionist -- be it a doctor, counselor, clinic owner, pro-abortion columnist, legislator, or judge. We recommend that you adopt an abortionist right now.
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