He was one of my first pro-life heroes. His explanation for how one must be pro-life even if they were, like him, atheists, was brilliant.
The atheist pro-lifers are the pro-lifers’ best weapon. They can see the wrongness, even without the help of dogma.
An atheist friend who writes for the pro-life journals gets angrier than the rest of us about the whole thing. He can’t understand why people don’t see the evil, whereas we can tend to brush it off as a symptom of godlessness. It is, but it isn’t just that.
I love Hentoff and have been reading him for years, ever since we got a subscription to the Village Voice for our high school library. May he rest in peace.