“Converted to the Cause of Truth”

Few people write about the intellectual core of the pro-life movement quite like Robert P. George of Princeton.  He is a comely figure, whose spirit always impresses foes even as his keen intellect often shames them by exposing the flaws in their logic.  When my students seem to be allowing their pietistic impulses to supplant their rational abilities, I often will point them to his writings as an illustration of someone who successfully (and correctly) joins the two in the pursuit of godliness.

His essays always are insightful, but his recent posting at Public Affairs, a publication of the Witherspoon Institute, is quite moving.  It’s a tribute to recently deceased Bernard Nathanson, the abortionist who helped to push us into Roe v. Wade but then had a change of mind and heart on the issue and began to campaign against the culture of death that was ushered in by that court decision.  It’s hard to read Nathanson’s story and not be struck by its parallels to Saul’s incredible conversion in Acts.

Nathanson admitted that he lied frequently in the defense of abortion, but asserted that he would never lie in the other direction: 

“You said that I was converted to the cause of life; and that’s true.  But you must remember that I was converted to the cause of life only because I was converted to the cause of truth.  That’s why I wouldn’t lie, even in a good cause.”