Posted on 01/22/2007 8:42:13 AM PST by Reagan Man
The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide 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. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars.
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." 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. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of "raw judicial power" (to use Justice White's biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.
Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life-- the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life. Wesaw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of "Baby Doe" in Bloomington because the child had Down's Syndrome.
Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous mission of mercy, has said that "the greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children."
Over the first two years of my Administration I have closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse the tide of abortion-- efforts of Congressmen, Senators and citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the banner of "freedom of choice," have so far blocked every effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand.
Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed. But the great majority of the American people have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect them to--any more than the public voice arose against slavery--until the issue is clearly framed and presented.
What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives--the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great breakthroughs in treating the unborn--for genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than to cure?
The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law-- the same right we have.
What more dramatic confirmation could we have of the real issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The death of that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans because the child was undeniably a live human being--one lying helpless before the eyes of the doctors and the eyes of the nation. The real issue for the courts was not whether Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to protect the life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome, who would probably be mentally handicapped, but who needed a routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that, even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have a "non-existent" possibility for "a minimally adequate quality of life"--in other words, that retardation was the equivalent of a crime deserving the death penalty. The judge let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court sanctioned his decision.
Federal law does not allow federally-assisted hospitals to decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating, much less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I have directed the Departments of Justice and HHS to apply civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. All hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices which will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is prohibited by federal law. The basic issue is whether to value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic issue that underlies the question of abortion.
The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human life brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before. The many medical and scientific witnesses who testified disagreed on many things, but not on the scientific evidence that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, or is a member of the human species. They did disagree over the value question, whether to give value to a human life at its early and most vulnerable stages of existence.
Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value. Some have said that only those individuals with "consciousness of self" are human beings. One such writer has followed this deadly logic and concluded that "shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a human being."
A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that if a handicapped child "were not declared fully human until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice." In other words, "quality control" to see if newly born human beings are up to snuff.
Obviously, some influential people want to deny that every human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a member of the human race must have certain qualities before they accord him or her status as a "human being."
Events have borne out the editorial in a California medical journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade that the social acceptance of abortion is a "defiance of the long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status."
Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen needs to recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and protect the sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the "quality of life" ethic.
I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future. American was founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of mankind-- black people in America--could not be denied the inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day, Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration's purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble document, he said
This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
He warned also of the danger we would face if we closed our eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings:
I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?
When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life, liberty, and property to all human beings, he explained that all are "entitled to the protection of American law, because its divine spirit of equality declares that all men are created equal." He said the right guaranteed by the amendment would therefore apply to "any human being." Justice William Brennan, writing in another case decided only the year before Roe v. Wade, referred to our society as one that "strongly affirms the sanctity of life."
Another William Brennan--not the Justice--has reminded us of the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation rejects the sanctity of life ethic:
The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect.
As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue.
The Congress has before it several measures that would enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life, even the smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless. The Human Life Bill expressly recognizes the unborn as human beings and accordingly protects them as persons under our Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981 which contributed so much to our understanding of the real issue of abortion.
The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the 98th Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the United States is "to protect innocent life, both before and after birth." This bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits the federal government from performing abortions or assisting those who do so, except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the pressing issue of infanticide which, as we have seen, flows inevitably from permissive abortion as another step in the denial of the inviolability of innocent human life.
I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as the more difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give these initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different ways, attempts to reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-demand imposed by the Supreme Court ten years ago. Each of them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human life.
We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for hours?
Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a Sunday special supplement on "The Dreaded Complication." The "dreaded complication" referred to in the article--the complication feared by doctors who perform abortions--is the survival of the child despite all the painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any question that those who don't survive were living human beings before they were killed?
Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now. As my Administration acts to stop infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth.
A society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used to justify their extinction. This Administration has a Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps more than any other American for handicapped children, by pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the context of loving families. You will not find his former patients advocating the so-called "quality-of-life" ethic.
I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the sanctity of human life, "a child need not be perfect to have a worthwhile life."
Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each of these issues is a potential rallying point for the sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will see the importance of affirming this principle across the board.
Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the heart of the matter: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other." The sanctity of innocent human life is a principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity.
It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier "separate-but-equal" decision. I believe if the Supreme Court took another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the real issue between the sanctity of life ethic and the quality of life ethic, it would change its mind once again.
As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers. I recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria, who said, "In this society we save whales, we save timber wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted me to throw away my baby." She has been helped by Save-a-Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for unwed mothers to preserve the human life within them when they might otherwise be tempted to resort to abortion. I think also of House of His Creation in Catesville, Pennsylvania, where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young women in the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that the girls are not better off having abortions than saving their babies. I am also reminded of the remarkable Rossow family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have opened their hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster children.
The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by Congress at the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life. We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an unwanted child: "Please believe that you are not alone. There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand at your side, and help in any way we can." And we can echo the always-practical woman of faith, Mother Teresa, when she says, "If you don't want the little child, that unborn child, give him to me." We have so many families in America seeking to adopt childrenthat the slogan "every child a wanted child" is now the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate abortion.
I have often said we need to join in prayer to bring protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be possible to accomplish our work, the work of saving lives, "without being a soul of prayer." The famous British Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small group of influential friends, the "Clapham Sect," for decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire. Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly, because he believed in the sanctity of human life. He saw the fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed slavery just before his death.
Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm Muggeridge says:however low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened."
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.
Good for you! LOL For someone who gets a thrill trashing a thread about Reagan`s pro-life legacy, on the anniversay of Roe v Wade, you sure sound like a pathetic desperate housewife.... par for the course.
Remember though, California was NOT as liberal in the 60s as it is now.
You sound green with envy dear. Try to control your anger at women who are more fortunate than you.
The side of Reagan that wasn't terribly conservative at all, but that the freepers who re-write history would like us to forget:
The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it's hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden.
The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, "there is no justification" for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period.
In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan's administration were aghast. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, "the conservative president's support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance." When Reagan's conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, "Walter Mondale would have been proud."
So would Russell Long. In 1975, the Democratic senator from Louisiana had passed into law the earned income tax credit (EITC), essentially a wage subsidy for the working poor. Long's measure was tiny to begin with and had dwindled to insignificance by the time Reagan agreed to expand it in 1986 as part of the tax reform act. Despite years of opposing social insurance programs, Reagan's support of the EITC gave rise to what has become one of the most effective antipoverty measures the federal government has ever devised--by the late 1990s, the EITC was lifting 4.3 million people out of poverty every year. Reagan's decision to expand it was "the most important anti-poverty measure enacted over the past decade," wrote The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt. The exemption of millions of low-wage earners from income taxes through the EITC and other reforms in 1986 added a significant measure of progressivity to the tax code. As evidence of its popularity with liberals, Clinton dramatically expanded the EITC in 1993.
Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.
The budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What's more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1636001/posts
I am not sure how we can say that definitively. I believe Romney has dated his "epiphany" on life as a meeting he had in 2004 with a embryonic stem cell researcher. He explained that his study of stem cell research led him to evolve into a firm opponent of abortion and certain forms of stem cell research.
November 9, 2004, stands out as the seminal date for Mitt Romney's metamorphosis from social moderate to self-styled, pro-life, conservative presidential candidate.
On that day, Romney and two aides met with Harvard University stem cell researcher Douglas A. Melton. In Romney's retelling, Melton coolly explained how his work relied on cloning human embryos.
" I sat down with a researcher. And he said, 'Look, you don't have to think about this stem cell research as a moral issue, because we kill the embryos after 14 days,' " Romney recalled on " The Charlie Rose Show " last June, characterizing the meeting as a watershed moment for him. "That struck me as he said that."
Romney said his opposition was not based on a religious belief, but on his feeling that a human cell dividing, as it does in a growing embryo, is alive.
"We're going to need more people to have a change of heart as I have and to look at it very, very carefully and recognize that in civilized society, we recognize that there is a need to respect the fragility and the dignity of human life," he said.
Subsequent to that meeting, Romney vetoed bills on embryonic stem cell research. We seem to give credence to Reagan's epiphany, but not to Romney's.
Not envious or angry. You have a golf course and a pool to make your life joyful. Why bitch so much. LOL
Who is, as you so quaintly put it, "bitching" so much? Why, that's you.
I don't hate any of the candidates. In fact, I like 3-4 of them.
And, just a hint, when a guy uses "bitch" like that, it's pretty clear he has issues with women.
Ronald Reagan, father of the pro-life movement.
BY FRED BARNES Thursday, November 6, 2003
When President Bush signed a ban on partial-birth abortion yesterday, it marked the first congressional rollback of Roe v. Wade since the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion was handed down in 1973. And it marked the success of an idea as well. The idea, of course, is that abortion is inhuman and should be limited as sharply as possible and ultimately outlawed altogether.
However, it takes more than an idea to enact a law. Yesterday's rollback--indeed the rise of the pro-life movement across the country-- would not have occurred except for one thing. That was the embrace by conservatives of the antiabortion cause and the belated conversion of one conservative in particular, Ronald Reagan. Once this happened, opposition to abortion became a top priority of conservatism's chief political vehicle, the Republican Party. Now, says Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, "it's the issue that won't go away."
Not in America anyway. Outside the United States, serious opposition to abortion is rare. Conservatives world-wide tend to agree on limited government, low taxes, respect for traditional values and strong law enforcement. But a commitment to protecting unborn children is unique to American conservatism.
Even here, full-throated conservative opposition to abortion is a relatively recent phenomenon. By the time Roe v. Wade was decided 30 years ago, 18 states had already liberalized their abortion laws. The opposition came mostly from the Catholic Church and assorted Protestant evangelicals, not from conservative leaders. There was no national campaign, as there is today, to rally the pro-life forces, stage marches, pressure politicians and gain favorable publicity.
The most telling example of conservative indifference to the abortion issue occurred in California. In 1967, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a bill that virtually decriminalized abortion. At the time, Mr. Reagan was troubled by the passionate lobbying against the bill by Cardinal Francis McIntyre. But on the advice of two of his most conservatives advisers, Ed Meese and Lyn Nofziger, Mr. Reagan signed anyway. He persuaded himself that the measure would have little impact. Instead, it prompted a surge in abortions.
Roe v. Wade changed the terms of the abortion debate, but not instantly. At first, conservatives were more upset by the decision's dubious legal reasoning and its creation of a new constitutional right unmentioned in the Constitution itself than by the actual impact. But it soon became clear that the supposedly complicated three-trimester scheme laid out in the ruling wasn't really so complicated. It meant abortion on demand, and the number of abortions soared into the millions.
Roe v. Wade had moved America into a dark new world. Defending the decision, radical feminists insisted that an unborn child was no more valuable as human life than a wart. A lucrative abortion industry grew up. The Democratic Party endorsed an unfettered right to an abortion in its 1980 platform.
Messrs. Reagan and Hyde were among the first Republicans to have strong misgivings. Within a year after signing the abortion bill, Mr. Reagan told political writer Lou Cannon that he'd never have done so if he'd been more experienced in office. It was "the only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation," Mr. Cannon writes in his new book, "Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power." By 1980, Mr. Reagan was campaigning for president in favor of banning abortion in all but rare cases.
Rep. Hyde, too, had been indifferent when initially confronted with the abortion issue. As an Illinois state representative in 1968, he was asked by a colleague to cosponsor a bill easing abortion restrictions. "I had never thought about the issue," Mr. Hyde says. The bill led him to study the matter and consult abortion opponents. He decided to oppose the bill, though not vocally. But when it came up for a vote, "I sat there and nobody rose to speak in opposition," Mr. Hyde says. "Almost by default, I spoke against it." The bill was defeated. Elected to the U.S. House in 1974, Mr. Hyde quickly concluded that the pro-life cause wasn't popular in Washington, including among Republicans. But Mr. Hyde agreed to speak against the appropriation of $50 million to pay for 300,000 Medicaid abortions. "By God, we had a vote and I won," he says. Thus was born the Hyde Amendment, which still bars the use of federal funds for abortion, and Mr. Hyde's role as the leading pro-life force in Congress.
In 1983, President Reagan collected his thoughts on abortion in an essay published in The Human Life Review and later in a book entitled "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation." Here's what he wrote: "I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives--the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. . . . Anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn."
Why did Mr. Reagan's take on abortion matter so much? Because he was not only president but also the undisputed leader of America's conservatives. He defined conservatism. Not every conservative agreed with him, but most did. And President Reagan, says Mr. Hyde, "gave the right to life position stature and legitimacy." In 1976, the Republican platform had a lukewarm plank on abortion that praised foes of Roe v. Wade. Without Mr. Reagan's having to ask, the 1980 platform backed a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Since then, the pro-life stance has scarcely been debated and never seriously challenged at Republican conventions.
When President Bush signed the partial-birth abortion ban, it was fitting that the event was held at the Ronald Reagan Building, a few blocks from the White House. Hundreds of conservatives were in the audience. No doubt they saw the small but important rollback of legalized abortion as a victory for conservatives. For sure, it wouldn't have happened without them.
Thank goodness President Bush signed actual legislation about partial birth abortion. Something no other president, including Reagan, bothered to do.
Can you possibly get more disingenious with your Reagan-bashing?
Was Reagan EVER presented a bill to ban partial birth abortion?
You. Obviously. You can't even stick to the topic of the thread. Instead, you're objective is to criticize Reagan. Okay. But you also need to face the facts. Old Dubya can't match Reagan on any issue. Period. Starting with uniting America. Reagan united America and has two landslides to prove it. Bush has divided America and ignored conservatives on countless issues over the last six years.
Reagan Landslide 1984
Reagan Landlside 1980
Um, not to upset your little agenda driven posts about what a God Reagan was, but what is it about amnesty, 4 tax increases, etc., etc., is conservative? You'll have to remind me.
*Reagan adopted the "Mexico City Policy" halting federal aid to private groups promoting abortions abroad
*Reagan supported legislation that would allow for a challenge of Roe vs. Wade, while promoting a Right to Life amendment to the US Constitution.
*The Reagan admin cut off funding to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities because the global agency violated U.S. law by participating in China's mandatory abortion program.
*The Reagan admin adopted regulations prohibiting federally funded "family planning clinics" from promoting abortion as birth control.
*Reagan himself introduced the issue of fetal pain into the public debate over abortion.
*The Reagan White House blocked use of federal money for research using the tissue of aborted babies. A forerunner to banning partial birth abortion.
*The Reagan admin helped win approval of the "Danforth Amendment," which said federally funded educational institutions could not be guilty of "sex discrimination" for refusing to pay for abortions.
*The Reagan admin was key in enactment of laws protecting the right to life of handicapped newborns.
*Reagan designated a National Sanctity of Human Life Day, to recognize the value of life at all stages.
*Reagan was the first Prez to address the annual WashDC March for Life. An annual event Reagan always spoke at.
Bush has followed the Reagan model on the abortion issue. Reagan did a fine job promoting pro-life causes.
Did Reagan ever ask for one from Congress? No.
So, then, if Bush continues to push for amnesty for illegals, will you criticize him for it as vigorously as you are criticizing Reagan here?
Oh, that's right. You'll just parse the meaning of the word "amnesty" to avoid having to do such.
Did Reagan have both houses controlled by the GOP? No.
So now you are criticizing Reagan for not signing a bill HE NEVER GOT and WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN.
Is there any bottom to your political depravity?
This is nuts. Bush has done a fine job in the pro-life department - he has built on Reagan's legacy and extended it.
But in order to prop up Romney, Peach seeks to undermine Reagan's legacy. Pathetic.
Oh, so now mentioning that Reagan was a Democrat, was pro choice and signed what at the time was the most liberal abortion policy in the country is bashing? Okay doke.
Political depravity? ROFL. I mean, on the FLOOR.
Just a little advice - step away from the bottle.
Like I told you last week. You keep trashing Reagan, I'll keep defending him. You have specifics? No. Until then ......
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