Blackballing Pro-Lifer Nat Hentoff

A couple weeks ago I got a call from Nat Hentoff. Hentoff, 86, is a legendary civil libertarian and journalist. He's at the point is his career when he should just be sitting back and receiving lifetime achievement awards. But there's one problem.

Nat Hentoff is pro-life. He had called from New York to thank me for some pro-life columns I had written. I was stunned; Hentoff is one of my favorite writers, and him reaching out is a tremendous honor. I'm a jazz fan and have been reading Hentoff's columns for 25 years. (The man actually met Duke Ellington!) We talked about our jazz favorites, including my favorite singer Kurt Elling. Hentoff is still mentally sharp, even if he is doing physical therapy for various age-related issues.

Hentoff's conversion from pro-choice to pro-life, and the fallout that resulted, is explained in an essay in the new book, The Debate Since Roe: Making the Case Against Abortion 1975-2010. It's a compendium of essays from the journal Human Life Review.

A famous liberal who was a staple at the Village Voice and who had a column in the Washington Post, in the 1980s Hentoff actually let himself be swayed by evidence about abortion. It happened when Hentoff was reporting on the case of Baby Jane Doe.

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Randy131

"Early death as a management option" for infants "considered to have little or no hope of achieving meaningful humanhood." Could this philosophy possibly lead to testing, say 3rd graders, and those who were considered inferior intellectually end up having the same done to them? Or lets take it even further, say upon graduation from high school a test is required, and all those who fail to pass, that would prove them unable to meet the standards of achieving meaningful humanhood in the society of that day, the same be done to them? For once you go down this road, these are the normal progressions of this type of policy, whether it be used on infants, or the adult homeless of the future. Why can't people understand that 'EVIL' is evil, and nothing else, despite any mitigating circumstances, and why abortion should be illegal, as apparently the hero of this article finally understood, probably through the same determination that I just surmized.
- EVERMYRTLE
  
  Excuses, any excuse you want to use, does not make you GOD to pick and chose who is to live ans who ids to die. If Tim Tebow's mother had listened to the doctors Tim would have e been murdered int eh womb. I do not remember the exacts but the doctors thought it would be impossible for a viable baby to be born. His mother refused to abort her baby. Now, she has a wonderful handsome viable son and we have a great Christian and football player because of her decision. Every time we deliberately kill a baby we have committed MURDER.
  - EVERMYRTLE
    
    Randy, I placed this blog in the wrong place, I agree with you, 100%. Nobody has the right to terminate a baby's life, there is no reason good enough.
http://www.believeroftheWAY.com believeroftheWAY

Infanticide is eugenics. We need to redefine the debate to the point when human life is created as being the time of that child's birth. Currently, birth is defined as when the baby leaves the womb, but birth is really when something is created. Age, location, state of development or ability have nothing to do with the humanness of a human being. If the DNA of a one cell human being is analyzed, it is exactly the same as the DNA of 30 year old human being. Innocent human life is sacred, a miracle of creation, and should be honored as such. The worth of a society is evaluated by how it cares for its most vulnerable and defenseless. Our society would seem repulsive to many cultures that we judge as being primitive.
aceituna

Thank God for people who are brave enough to tell what they believe even though it means that their former colleagues turn against them.
A. Reginald

I will admit ttat, at one time, I bought the argument of abortion "for the life of the mother." This all changed one night when I was an intern. I was taskewd with the care of a pregnant brittle diabetic who was pregnant. We fought like mad to preserve her life, certain that she would have a spontaneous abortion (misscariage.) She did not and subsequently gave birth to a healthy and viable baby. I admitted my error to myself and changed my opinion. This "health of the mother" attack on the pro-life bills in many states is nothing but an evil scam by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and that "deity" of Planned Parenthood, the evil Margret Sanger (now deceased.)
- Bighoss
  
  Ever heard of an ectopic pregnancy, "Doc"? It does indeed jeopardize the life of the mother.