Ronald Reagan was not pro-abortion. Only pro abort Mitt and his fans have been spreading that nasty lie since Mitt first decided to run for office.
Romney is 65 years old. He’s only become more deceitful as he’s gotten older and it looks like he’s still got some people fooled.
I hate to say it but Reagan signed an abortion bill as governor of Cali. Look it up.
Reagan did sign the abortion bill in California when he was governor. He later said he regretted it.
In 1967 then-California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the “Therapeutic Abortion Act” into law. As a result the number of abortions performed in California jumped from 518 the year before that bill was signed, to more than 100,000 per year.
Now I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan. He's a personal hero of mine. But I began life as a liberal, much as did Reagan. Just like Reagan, I grew to question the lies being told by people who I had supported, asking myself “if they intend to do the right thing for America, why do they have to lie about it.” Eventually I began to see that the Democrats would say one thing and do the opposite, or predict one outcome and the results of what they did would always be the opposite.
After a while Ockham’s razor took control of my thinking...”they lie because they're liars, and they damage America because they intend to damage America.”
But the point here is that even into his 50s Ronald Reagan was making political decisions that many of us here on FR would have found “distasteful,” at best. And from my reading it appeared that his experience...and the “mistakes” Reagan made as Governor of California, shaped him into the much more conservative President we saw in the 1980s. I understand that Reagan said that signing that bill was the biggest political mistake of his life...but he did, in fact, sign it.
I'd like to think that Romney has also matured in his thinking through his experiences, and mistakes, as Governor.
I'm willing to see this as a “glass half full” situation in the hope that Romney, like myself and many other conservatives, has learned from experience and observation that his earlier, more liberal tendencies were based in ignorance and emotion, and that like most educated and experienced Americans he grows more conservative with time. Certainly, his recent statements indicate that he may have. And looking back on some of Reagan's decisions as Governor, I think that some conservative ideologues could have easily made the same philosophical attacks against Reagan as you make against Romney, today.
Our choices are rather limited now. So I'm going to support Romney (because there are no better or more conservative options who can win), and I hope everyone else will as well...even if some of his past deeds irritate us. Certainly, some of Reagan's early political statements and decisions would have angered us as well.