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New York's Editors

When a newspaper styles itself, “The Newspaper of Record,” and boasts, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” people develop a certain set of expectations. So when the last founding member of NARAL is buried, and neither the paper of record, nor the two tabloid dailies of New York City print a story on the funeral, that is itself news.

Had he stayed true to the cause, no doubt Dr. Bernard Nathanson would have Laid in State in City Hall, been eulogized by a dewy-eyed City Council Speaker, and had Bill 371 officially named after the lion who ate our young.

But the ink on Roe v Wade wasn’t quite dry when Nathanson betrayed the cause. He showed himself to be a thoughtful man who was motivated by truth. And when the arrival of ultrasonography created a window into the womb, this Jewish atheist saw humanity under assault and cried foul. For this, his passing received grudging and perfunctory mention in the obits, and not one drop of ink more.

Thus it was that Dr. Nathanson’s funeral was not deemed worthy of mention, a funeral held in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and concelebrated by the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Love him or hate him, Bernard Nathanson was a very consequential man in human history, and helped birth the institution that has prevented the births of over 53 million Americans.

Lesser mortals receive far more attention in death. This was an intentional blackout, and a missed opportunity by the New York media. The story that saw its conclusion in the Cathedral (As I joined the National Black Pro-life Leadership in prayer outside of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s little shop of horrors in Philly) is a powerful story:

The man who worked harder than just about anyone to bring us abortion rights was an OB/Gyn who honestly did not believe that the embryo was fully human. His view of development was a static view, but changed with the advent of sonography. Thus, the canard we hear today, over thirty-five years after Nathanson’s epiphany (that we aren’t sure about when human life begins) was addressed decisively over three decades ago by one of abortion’s fathers. The persistence of this claim no longer has anything to do with legitimate uncertainty.

An atheistic Jewish physician told us so twenty years before he would become a Christian.

Today, thirty-eight years after Roe, there is no longer a shred of doubt in science about embryological development and human identity from the moment of conception. The claim, “It isn’t human,” is really a claim that it isn’t a human person, which means the human organism at that stage does not merit human rights because of its relative developmental stage.

In other words, the proaborts have had their veneer of legitimate doubt stripped away by Dr. Nathanson, and have been exposed for who and what they truly have been all along: narcissists who simply want their way.

That rubs many in the media the wrong way, and for his pains Dr. Nathanson’s funeral didn’t even merit a blurb in the papers. But all is not loss. There does exist one last outpost of journalistic fairness and objectivity, of truth in reporting.

At least the sports editors still report the whole story, even when their team loses the game.

Read the Homily Here