{"id":26988,"date":"2013-02-06T14:07:21","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T19:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=26988"},"modified":"2013-02-07T08:48:25","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T13:48:25","slug":"happy-birthday-to-pro-life-hero-ronald-reagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/happy-birthday-to-pro-life-hero-ronald-reagan\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday to pro-life hero Ronald Reagan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"reagan_toast_sq\"<\/a>On this day in 1911, one of America\u2019s greatest pro-life leaders was born. President Ronald Reagan would be 102 today, so there is no better opportunity to reflect on his contributions to the human rights struggle of our lifetime.<\/p>\n

Regan didn\u2019t begin his career as a champion of the unborn. By his own admission<\/a>, abortion \u201cwas a subject [he\u2019d] never given much thought to and one upon which [he] didn\u2019t really have an opinion\u201d prior to his tenure as governor of California. But when the Therapeutic Abortion Act to legalize abortion on demand reached his desk in 1967, Reagan committed to \u201cmore studying and soul searching\u201d on the issue than any other, voraciously consuming theological, medical, and philosophical material on it.<\/p>\n

Reagan initially concluded<\/a> that the only \u201ckind of abortion bill [he] could sign was one that recognized an abortion is the taking of a human life\u201d and that therefore tolerated it only as an act of self-defense in cases where the mother\u2019s life or health were threatened, or when she was raped. Determining with his staff<\/a> that the bill as presented to him would have been enacted over his veto anyway, Reagan decided to sign a modified version that limited abortion to those cases.<\/p>\n

But as Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner recall<\/a>, the results were very different: \u201cthe mental health-provision was abused by patient and doctor alike,\u201d leading to a California abortion spike from 518 legal abortions to an annual average of 100,000 by the end of Reagan\u2019s governorship. \u201cEven the bill\u2019s Democratic sponsor confessed to being surprised that physicians so liberally interpreted the law.\u201d Its effect on Reagan was similarly profound:<\/p>\n

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>\n

For Reagan, one good thing did come out of this disappointment. As Georgetown\u2019s Matt Sitman notes, \u201cIt is impossible to understand his later staunchly pro-life positions without grasping the lessons he learned from this early political battle.\u201d Reagan, says Sitman, survived the ordeal with a \u201cprofoundly intellectual understanding of the abortion issue\u2026. It was in 1967 that his ideas concerning the beginning of human life were fully formed.\u201d He now had a cogent understanding, politically and morally, of abortion and its implications.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consequently, the Ronald Reagan who assumed the presidency was a full-fledged crusader for life, defending the unborn in every political avenue he could<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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