Allowed abortion as CA Gov.; didn’t push pro-life as Pres. Reagan was not as obsessive about anti-abortion legislation as he often seemed. Early in his California governorship he had signed a permissive abortion bill that has resulted in more than a million abortions. Afterward, he inaccurately blamed this outcome on doctors, saying that they had deliberately misinterpreted the law.
When Reagan ran for president, he won backing from pro-life forces by advocating a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother. Reagan’s stand was partly a product of political calculation, as was his tactic after he was elected of addressing the annual pro-life rally held in Washington by telephone so that he would not be seen with the leaders of the movement on the evening news.
While I do not doubt Reagan’s sincerity in advocating an anti-abortion amendment, he invested few political resources toward obtaining this goal.
No damn way I'm voting for Reagan. I mean what is he some kind of flip flopper?
Pence 08...
Wrong, that article is pure bs about reagan. Reagan signed a law that almost ALL of us would sign. This is pure bs passed around by romney supporters. The law reagan signed, is the law most of us advocate. It allows abortion in the case of rape, incest, and "health" of the mother. Problem is back then nobody realized that the "health" loophole would be exploited as it had been. That is why today most abortion laws specificy exactly what this health exception means. Reagan admitted shortly after he realized what happened that it was a mistake and the law wasn't being used as he intended. He didnt, say in 1975, go oh crap, i want to be president, i'm pro life now.
"Our nation-wide policy of abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people, nor enacted by our legislators--not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. [It was] an act of raw judicial power"...
"Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a "right" so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born."
"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life--the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life."
"Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning."
- President Ronald Reagan : "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", 1983