He was strongly pro-life when he signed the "liberal" California abortion statute, as well. I did some research and posted some of Gov. Reagan's quotes from 1967 news coverage here, after a freeper tried to tell me that the majority of GOPers were pro-choice in 1948 on the basis of that "government did not have the right to force a woman to give birth to an unwanted child" and a pro-choice position was consistent with "limited government." Here was part of that post:
In 1967, a democrat state lawmaker (Beilenson) pushed to liberalize the laws for just three reasons: to allow abortion in the case of rape, incest, or where the baby might be deformed. ...Governor Ronald Reagan's first response as "Here's an emotional problem that has so many facets of consideration. It is not only spiritual, but also legal... when does life begin? What right does the unborn life have? What legal right? I'm not prepared to answer now."
In subsequent statements, Reagan took great exception to the portion of the law addressing the possibilty of deformity. "I am satisfied in my own mind we can morally and logically justify liberalized abortions to protect the health of a mother. I cannot justify the taking of an unborn life simply on the supposition that the baby may be born less than a perfect human being... [this kind of thing] wouldn't be much different from what Hitler tried to do."
The deformity provision was dropped shortly thereafter. The final statute permitted abortions in the case of forcible rape, incest, statutory rape if the victim was under 15 years old or if there was a "substantial risk" that continued pregnancy would "gravely impair" the "physical or mental health" of the mother.
The issue then had little to do with "limited government," nor does it now (imo).
Ping to calcowgirl's 1797 for a fellow former Operation Rescuer ("Diamond") and another fellow Pro-Lifer ("The_Eaglet") regarding Ronald Reagan's true record on Abortion:
Perhaps it wasn't quite as bad as we thought, even in 1967... only the results were. ("Give 'em an inch... and they'll take a mile".)
I don’t know where you found those remarks by Ronald Reagan, calcowgirl, but I thank you for posting them.
Great find!
Thank you for an excellent post.
...after a freeper tried to tell me that the majority of GOPers were pro-choice in 1948 on the basis of that "government did not have the right to force a woman to give birth to an unwanted child"
The notion that this type of idiotic popular slogan was in vogue among the majority of the Republican party in 1948 in highly unlikely, to say the least. It is a wishful, anachronistic misprepresentation of history.
Cordially,