and <\/em>a complete lie.<\/p>\nAnother point that the lefties will make is that Reagan signed the bill legalizing abortion in California.<\/p>\n
Now, it’s a fact that I don’t follow pro-life issues as closely as some do. \u00a0I remember Reagan using his bully pulpit to attack abortion, but I don’t remember the details.\u00a0I’m pro-life, to be sure, but it’s not my most important issue. I leave that beat to others.<\/p>\n
Two of those others are Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, whose National Review piece three years ago adds the context the leftybloggers weren’t told by their superiors to include<\/del> don’t:<\/p>\n[Honest] discussions of Reagan\u2019s record on the abortion issue admit that as California governor he signed into law a liberalization of abortion that led to an explosion of abortions in the nation\u2019s largest state. Reagan critics and supporters alike recognize this fact \u2014 one that is particularly tough to swallow for staunch pro-lifers. The full story, however, is more complicated \u2014 and worth setting straight now, 35 years after Roe v. Wade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As with all “Reagan was a moderate!” memes, the story the lefties give you is a grain of truth amid a wad of inconvenient, omitted context, in other words.<\/p>\n
June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor…How did this happen?<\/p>\n
When the issue surfaced in the first months of his governorship, Reagan was unsure how to react. Surprising as it may seem today, in 1967 abortion was not the great public issue that it is today. Reagan later admitted that abortion had been \u201ca subject I\u2019d never given much thought to.\u201d Moreover, his aides were divided on the question.<\/p>\n
Reagan began to vigorously study the issue and the Therapeutic Abortion Act. He asked his longtime adviser and Cabinet secretary Bill Clark \u2014 a devout Catholic who had contemplated the priesthood \u2014 for counsel. \u201cBill, I\u2019ve got to know more \u2014 theologically, philosophically, medically,\u201d Reagan confided. Clark loaded up the governor with a box of reading materials, which he took home and read in semi-seclusion. Edmund Morris later said that, by the time the Therapeutic Abortion Act reached his desk, \u201cReagan was quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas.\u201d Years later, Reagan remarked that he did \u201cmore studying and soul searching\u201d on the issue than any other as governor.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, he signed the bill. Reagan and his staff calculated that if he vetoed the bill, his veto would be overridden by the state legislature. Therefore, he decided to do what he could to make the bill less harmful, arguing for the insertion of certain language that eliminated its worst features and allowed for abortion only in rare cases \u2014 such as rape or incest, or where pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In other words, Reagan seized the second-worst outcome available to him; he negotiated to try to make the bill less onerous.<\/p>\n
And the results? \u00a0Today they’d call it a “teaching moment”:<\/p>\n
The Therapeutic Abortion Act became law. And as would happen with nearly every abortion law in the years ahead, the mental-health provision was abused by patient and doctor alike….Reagan was shocked at the unintended consequences of his action. Morris said Reagan was left with an \u201cundefinable sense of guilt\u201d after watching abortions skyrocket. Cannon claims this was \u201cthe only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.\u201d Clark called the incident \u201cperhaps Reagan\u2019s greatest disappointment in public life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And Reagan learned from the mistake and the \u00a0– spending the rest of his political career as one of the voices of the pro-life movement.<\/p>\n
As we noted on the “Reagan Raised Taxes” issue, it’s not that Reagan was a moderate; it’s that he made the mistake of trusting Democrats on the tax issue, and ignoring the very real \u00a0political and social motivations behind the infanticide movement.<\/p>\n
We all know better than that.<\/p>\n
Your lefty friends, cow-orkers and neighbors likely do not. \u00a0So set them straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately, there’s been a flurry of lefties claiming that today’s GOP wouldn’t vote for Ronald Reagan because “he was too moderate”. Is it true? I said it was lefties, didn’t I? \u00a0Of course not. Last week, we dispensed with the idea that “Reagan raised taxes“, showing it was both a gross oversimplification and a complete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21377"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21393,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21377\/revisions\/21393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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