The Bridgehead

The Missing Hitchens Sibling(s)

• Jonathon Van Maren • Episode 40

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Jonathon Van Maren looks at the missing Hitchens siblings, and how they contributed to the views of both Christopher and Peter Hitchens on the topic of abortion.

Included in this episode are clips from public Hitchens debates, as well as Peter Hitchens own comments about his missing siblings.

To watch this on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/L35EccAhQUU

For Further Information:

Christopher Hitchens’ 2003 article, titled, "Fetal Distraction:" https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/2/fetal-distraction

Christopher Hitchens’ comments on abortion are found in his Jan 27, 2008 debate with Jay Richards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZTzZyloR8w

A republished version of Christopher Hitchens’ 1988 interview with Crisis Magazine: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-left-wing-atheists-case-against-abortion

The Abortion Pill Procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnEHZiud8dg&t=65s
1st Trimester Abortion Procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-Kc5HLHP8&list=PLRCroccSjXWR9HVr_ooA3ErEAR0SifdwY
2nd Trimester Abortion Procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR1Ut4BPbOw
3rd Trimester Abortion Procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBIhez7C1dM

Peter Hitchens’ full debate with atheist scientist Adam Rutherford on the “Unbelievable?” radio show, hosted by apologist Justin Brierley in 2010: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-peter-hitchens-vs-adam-rutherford-the-rage-against-god-classic-playback/12466.article

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You can find Jonathon’s new book, “How We Got Here,” at the following locations:

In Canada:
On Amazon Canada: https://a.co/d/05YUPqU
On thebridgehead.ca: https://thebridgehead.ca/product/how-we-got-here/

In the USA:
On Amazon: https://a.co/d/66YAOI7
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#Christopherhitchens #peterhitchens #hitchens

You've probably heard of the late atheist Christopher Hitchens and his brother, the Christian writer, Peter Hitchens. They are two of the most famous journalists in the Western world. But did you know that there are not one, but two missing Hitchens siblings? What happened to them? How do we know that they existed? Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011, first mentioned the two missing Hitchens siblings in an essay for Vanity Fair titled 'Fetal Distraction.' He writes,"I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh." He added that at least two of his children had gone the same way. He writes, "at least once I found myself in a clinic, while"products of conception" were efficiently vacuumed away. I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I allow myself to be present at such a moment again." When he says on the last such occasion, that indicates that he was in a clinic at least two times. These experiences, one suspects, contributed strongly to Christopher Hitchens' opposition to abortion, a subject, of course, that he differed strongly on with his fellow atheists. He writes, "anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or spent an hour with a textbook on embryology knows that emotions are not the deciding factor. In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain, and, whatever the method, break some bones and rupture some organs." In fact, in one debate, he actually affirmed that he considers himself to be a fellow traveler of the pro life movement. Watch. and the religions that say you should admire infanticide as proof of the love of God have no claim, no claim at all to be preaching ethics, let alone morality. So then, are you opposed to abortion? Christopher, Christopher, Christopher Christopher so, does that mean that you are, are you involved in the pro life movement in that case? Um, I believe that the concept"unborn child" is a real concept, yes. Um, and I've had a lot of quarrels with uh, some of my fellow materialists and secularists on this point. I think that if the concept "child" means anything, the concept "unborn child" can be said to mean something. And actually all the discoveries of, um, embryology, uh, which have been very considerable in the last generation or so, and of viability appear to confirm, uh, that opinion. Which is, I think it it should be innate in everybody, is innate in the hippocratic oath, is instinct in anyone who's ever watched a sonogram. And so forth. So, yes is my answer to that. Despite fellow atheist Sam Harris and others insisting that Christopher Hitchens was pro choice, Christopher Hitchens, in fact, expressed his support for a federal abortion ban, albeit with exceptions, all the way back in 1988. He said, " I would like to see something broader, much more visionary. We need a new compact between society and the woman. It's a progressive compact because it's aimed at the future generation. It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now I know most women don't like having to justify their circumstances to someone."How dare you presume to subject me to this?" some will say. But sorry, lady, this is an extremely grave social issue. It's everybody's business." That is a pretty blunt endorsement of an abortion law by Christopher Hitchens. And interestingly, on one of my articles about the Hitchens brothers on abortion, somebody left a comment, a long time follower. Here is what she wrote." When I was a grad student at UC Berkeley Journalism School, Christopher was a visiting lecturer, so I was in a small class with him in which his hero- George Orwell featured prominently. I wrote an essay comparing slavery and abortion, which he affirmed 100%. My master's thesis was actually on pro-life liberals and he was the sole professor who supported me. In class, he often put me on the spot for my faith and later apologized, saying it was because his brother had become a Christian and they were at odds. It fascinated me how he ended up around so many Christians, and to this day, I wonder if the Hound of Heaven finally got him in his last moments. Only the Lord knows." That's just another piece of evidence from a private anecdote about Christopher Hitchens pro life convictions. He didn't just say these things in public. Christopher also observed that one reason so many feel ambivalent about expressing opposition to pro life views is because they find it difficult to make this case when it becomes personal." I myself was reluctant to do this even when my wife got pregnant," he said,"It came at the worst possible time. Neither of us wanted to have a kid. My wife was considering having an abortion. I urged her not to get one, and ultimately she decided not to, and didn't. But I wouldn't have, even if I could, gone beyond an effort to persuade her." Our ingrained libertarian impulses often override even the most basic instincts where they are still present to protect our own offspring. Now for years, his brother, Peter Hitchens did not speak publicly about his aborted siblings until very recently when he spoke about them for the first time publicly that I am aware of. In 2023, Channel 4 ran a series titled Banged Up, which featured minor celebrities locked in a decommissioned prison with ex-prisoners. Peter Hitchens, who's the author of books such as A Brief History of Crime and The War We Never Fought, participated and he described his experiences in essays for the Mail on Sunday and The Spectator. The cameras captured several moments of extraordinary power while he was locked behind bars. At one point, a young ex-con named Tom Roberts actually asked Peter Hitchens to read the Bible to him. And sitting in their small cell, Hitchens read aloud from the greatest of English Bibles, the King James Version. The series contains one scene that I have rewatched many times over the past year, especially as abortion dominates international headlines. Take a look at that scene. Do you have any parents? No, my parents died long ago. How did that affect you? Well, it affects you a lot at the time. It was particularly bad with my mother because she took her own life. Oh. Your mother took her own life? She did, yes. The first any of us heard about it was when it was in the papers. And it was quite a business at the time. It was very upsetting. Have you got any brothers and sisters? I had one brother. I would have had two other siblings, uh, but my, my mother had two abortions. So they were, I'd rather guess, the sisters I wish I'd had. I do really wish I had sisters. Why's that? I, I, I just would have liked to have had that in my childhood. Sorry. I get that. I've got sisters and you saying that's made me feel very grateful. Peter Hitchens' grief there is so palpable and abortion is clearly an issue that is so personal for him. And again, Peter Hitchens has spoken about abortion many, many times, but never in a way that actually discussed his own loss and what he felt abortion took from him and took from his own family. But he has long been one of the most eloquent defenders of unborn children in the United Kingdom. He has debated the issue. He has mentioned the issue in speeches and on panels. And here's one example of him defending the rights of the unborn, which I think in the context of realizing his own personal grief about abortion becomes that much more impactful. So for example, in the case where, uh, a woman's the, the mother's life was at risk or the child was going to be born with severe abnormalities, in those situations acceptable or not? Well, I think a mother's life being at risk is a difficult problem. I don't know whether you can give me any instances of it, uh, where, where an abortion would be the only way of dealing with the problem. I can't give any specific instances. No, not sure it's raised all the time, and I'm not quite sure what these, what these positions are. I mean, caesarean, uh, caesarean section is extremely easy these days. I don't know of any, of any circumstance. And the response to, to, to a baby being imperfect doesn't seem to me to be to kill it. Uh, we, we aren't, we're not entitled to do so and that you wouldn't do it if, if, if, if, if an imperfect child existed outside the womb. We all know, uh, which regime it was that used to, that used to massacre imperfect people, uh, after they'd been born. I don't myself see a fundamental difference between killing someone because they're imperfect in the womb and killing someone because they're imperfect outside the womb. Maybe you do. I don't know what it is. Uh, well, let, so let me ask you this question. You, I'm assuming that you believe that a person that's at the point of conception, when a sperm fertilizes an egg, that becomes a person. That is, that seems to me to be the only sustainable view. You, I, you can't find, I don't think science has been able to find any other point at which you can define the beginning of life. Do you believe there's a sort of- that's justified scientifically that we can come to these conclusions, not because of a morality in a book, but because we've scientifically looked into this and decided this is the moral sort of framework. There's two different questions at stake here. The first is, at what point, uh, does a fertilized egg become, uh, a person. There is, there is no scientific consensus on this. There's no scientific definition of what that could possibly be. You're slipping though from, from, from human to a person. You're trying to define the human not as, not as a physically objectively existing thing, but as a social being which of course no one in a womb can be. So presumably you're not a person until the moment you're born by that definition, but you're still a human. Well... This kind of sophistry is what you get when people want to justify a claim for their own convenience and abortion is conducted almost invariably for the convenience of others. Let's allow Adam to finish there, yeah. As I said, there isn't a scientific consensus on it. The reason we have, uh, 24 weeks as the cutoff point, unless there are medical, um, reasons to extend beyond that, is because there's no scientific evidence that, uh, younger fetuses than, than 24 weeks have an increased survival rate. Listen to the word fetus. It, it's, it's a fetus. It's a nice Latin word. It's dehumanized already. It's not a, it's not a baby, it's a fetus. That's correct. It's not. It's dehumanized so you can kill it. It's not a baby. It's what, that's what killers always do. They dehumanize their victim. Before they kill it. A fetus is not a baby and there's, there's no possible way that you could, you could argue that a fetus is a baby. Right. Well, try me. It's extraordinary, isn't it? That the one thing, you can, you can show anything. You can show any, you can, you can, you can show anything on British television, any kind of disempowering, any, almost any kind of sexual activity. You can, you can play any, any, any word. They were using four letter words on the 10 o'clock news on the BBC last night, but the one thing you cannot show on television is film of an abortion and what it involves, because it shows quite plainly that what is being destroyed is a human person. Well, that's also not true, though that has been shown on TV, and I've worked with fetuses that have been aborted. Uh, I, I can't quote specific documentaries. But they, they do exist. I have seen it on TV. Also, I have worked with aborted fetuses. Not on mainstream tv, never. No, no, no, that, that's, that is incorrect. I don't have that reference to have. Well, if, if you're gonna maintain it's incorrect, you're going to have to tell me when it was. Well, I can't do it now, but maybe I'll email it. Then don't say it's incorrect. Um, I have worked with aborted fetuses. I have, um, during the course of my scientific studies. And I don't believe that the things that I have dealt with in the lab situation, which have come from abortions, are human beings. They look like them, they resemble them in, in, physically, but they are not human beings. Good ****. I mean, this is concentration camp language isn't it? The question is though, I suppose..."Did they look like human beings?" But they know they're not. They're Jews. But, I mean. I'm puzzled by that. It's amazing. Why is that? They're not human beings. No, they've, no, it's, it's, it's, it's the, it's the oldest thing in the book, isn't it? Before you kill, you dehumanize. You say, they're not, they're not really, no, no, no, I'm not, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't any kind of killing of a human being. It's something else. We declassify it. We give it another name. Give me strength. Okay. You want to believe that you believe it, but it's, it's, it's, it's the most perfect illustration of the position in which the person who acknowledges no absolute law gets himself into. He can argue himself within 10 minutes into the most appalling positions without even realizing that they're appalling. That interview was several years ago already, but Peter Hitchens has actively mentioned abortion in many contexts and always condemned it in incredibly firm language and always with great eloquence. I often think of one line that he wrote in one of his columns. He wrote, "those who wonder what they would have done had they lived at the time of some terrible injustice now know the answer. We do live in such a time. And we do nothing." Peter Hitchens' grief for his lost siblings was a visceral reminder that abortion is perhaps the most intimate form of violence. The victims of abortion are so much more than a political issue or discarded tissue. They were sons and daughters. They were brothers and sisters. And their absence forms yawning black holes large enough and deep enough to encompass entire unlived lives. Who were these branches hacked from the family tree? What would we have been if they had lived? How would they have changed us? What might they have looked like? What ancestral glimmers of parents and other family members might their eyes and voices and movements betray? The silent graves—grim dumpsters behind abortion clinics—offer only silence. But the pro life witness of both the atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and the Christian, Peter Hitchens, offer us some sense of what abortion has cost all of us. This episode took the place of our weekly Bridgehead Briefing. I am doing pro life outreach in Florida with our team this week. And so instead we prerecorded another video to ensure that you'd still have content. If you've been enjoying the content, please do give us a five star review or even a four star review if you didn't care for every single episode, but that'll help boost up our rankings and expose more people to the content that we're trying to produce. And as always, please do leave us a comment or give us feedback. We're always interested to hear what listeners have to say. Again, thanks so much for listening.