“He could have refused to sign that landmark pro-abortion bill.”
We HAD been discussing the period AFTER he signed the bill. Tough to go back in time and undo what is already done.
“He could have repudiated it while still in office especially after Roe was announced.”
He could have. That he didn’t doesn’t accrue to his credit.
I don’t know what politics were involved, although I can imagine that a governor just elected, who’d been mocked as being just an actor, not really up to the job intellectually, might not want to admit that he’d just been bamboozled by folks. Especially considering that another Republican politician had lost his national standing after admitting to being brainwashed (irony strikes again).
“I’m not trying to attack Reagan here. This is just his unvarnished public record.”
I understand. But part of the record is that the law as originally written included an exception for fetal deformity, and this was taken out to get Mr. Reagan’s signature.
And that’s real evidence that in 1967, Mr. Reagan was concerned that in liberalizing abortion laws to make room for the “hard cases,” one might go too far and make abortion too readily available. That makes clear that Mr. Reagan was NOT trying to move toward generally available legal abortion.
The law that Mr. Reagan signed, with a little bit of change taking into account what we know about the interpretation of “health” exceptions, is the legal regime that most PRO-LIFERS would endorse today - no abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and the life [then, health] of the mother.
Mr. Reagan, by his ACTIONS, was no more “pro-choice” then than Mr. Romney is now.
It’s fair to define Mr. Reagan’s position by his own public actions. But it’s unfair to define Mr. Reagan’s position by the actions of others, by the fact that OTHERS misused the law that Mr. Reagan signed.
“Before we start throwing candidates overboard by comparing them to Reagan, we should at least compare them to the real Reagan. Not the mythical Reagan.”
That’s fine. And what Mr. Reagan did was, in my view, an error - a serious one. Yet, the legislation that he signed pretty much reflects the views of most PRO-LIFERS today. It isn’t right, fair, honest, or accurate to say that Mr. Reagan was “pro-choice” as we now define the term.
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