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Richard Nixon's Views on Abortion
According to newly released White House tapes, he was generally opposed to the procedure but was willing to make exceptions for rape or ... miscegenation.
Elsewhere in Reason: Nixon's views on Archie Bunker.
Mad Max|6.23.09 @ 11:39PM|#
'"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that.
When you have a black and a white," [Nixon] told an aide, before
adding, "Or a rape."'
Steven Levitt has demonstrated, in *Freakonomics,* that if it
hadn't been for legalized abortion, even more biracial children
would have been born, grown up to be liberals, and gotten
themselves elected President.
Elemenope|6.23.09 @ 11:46PM|#
Nixon was kind of an asshole.
Also, I hear that if you stand in the sun too long, you'll get
cancer.
Mike|6.23.09 @ 11:58PM|#
Just when I thought my opinion of this guy couldn't get any lower... About the only good that came from him was the fact that the Libertarian party started to some extent because of outrage against his policies.
Pro-lifer!|6.24.09 @ 12:09AM|#
If you are for abortion rights, it is not really logically
consistent to get on Nixon's case about this.
You should be happy because he wanted give mixed-race couples the
right to abort their babies. This is a right he didn't want to give
other couples. He was doing them a favor!
JB|6.24.09 @ 12:27AM|#
Abortion...it's for the children. But especially them black and women children.
replica watches|6.24.09 @ 5:18AM|#
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Abdul|6.24.09 @ 6:34AM|#
I bet G. Gordon Liddy really regrets breaking into the Watergate hotel now that he knows this.
MJ|6.24.09 @ 7:33AM|#
How is this relevant?
Who looks to Nixon as a sage on any policy, especially domestic?
The left hates him and the only liked him for being
anti-communist.
Xeones|6.24.09 @ 8:30AM|#
I agree with Alphabet Dude. However, he's still not as bad as that motherfucker Woodrow Wilson.
|6.24.09 @ 8:48AM|#
Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon was just a run of loathsome Presidents. Nixon never really disapoints in his kookiness and generally being a louse.
Barry Loberfeld|6.24.09 @ 8:55AM|#
From Abortion: Not for
Women Only:
How do we account for the chasm between the moral authority
"feminism" commands and the actual amorality feminists demonstrate?
Even more jarring is the disconnect between feminist rhetoric and
gender reality. For decades now, feminists have held up as the
primary example of sexual inequality the alleged "attack" on
women's reproductive rights by "men." You would think that in 1973
the (all-male) Court nullified paternity laws but left maternity
("abortion") laws standing. You'd never guess that we live in a
country where a woman has an inalienable right to her own body, but
a man has an inalienable responsibility to the fertilized egg (one
to be shared, in due course, by the taxpayers). But just who is
attacking whom? Let's not indulge even for a moment the calumny
that all men oppose legalized abortion (because they want to keep
women "barefoot and pregnant"). Rather, we'll ask: What difference
would it make -- to feminists -- if it could be shown that all men
support legalized abortion? The answer is quite
clear:
* Catharine MacKinnon: "So long as women do not control access to
our sexuality, abortion facilitates women's heterosexual
availability. In other words, under conditions of gender
inequality, sexual liberation in this sense does not free women; it
frees male sexual aggression. The availability of abortion removes
the one remaining legitimized reason that women have had for
refusing sex besides the headache."
* Judy Shea: Hugh "Hefner's misogynistic playboy philosophy
inevitably leads to the destructive, dewomanizing practice of
abortion. A[t] its core the playboy ethic is anti-woman and
anti-child. The reality of the possibility of pregnancy and
childbirth interferes with the Hefner dream of multiple partners
and everlasting orgies."
* Dorchen Leidholdt: "Sexually liberal men support abortion for
women not because they want women to be able to control their
bodies but because they know that unrestricted abortions heighten
women's availability to men for sex."
* Susan Maronek: "Abortion, in the final analysis, works to the
advantage of the exploitative male, not for the female.... Abortion
is a male sexual fantasy come true."
* Sonia Johnson: Men "knew precisely what to do when women began
refusing to honor the old contract, and I am absolutely convinced
that their move was conscious, plotted, and deliberate.... So the
men let us have legalized abortion, and almost instantly the energy
drained from the [feminist] movement, like air from a punctured
balloon.... [Roe v. Wade] keeps us colonized, our
bodies state property and our destinies in their hands...."
Feminist "thealogy" out-Calvins Calvin by damning men if they don't
support reproductive rights for women -- and if they do. Indeed, it
out-Orwells Orwell, as this metaphysical conviction of "controlling
women's bodies" -- now with a smutty desire for sex without
childbirth as the motive (in contrast to women's noble support for
abortion) -- convicts those who, again, possess no such rights
themselves. Like all forms of bigotry, it exploits its hate objects
by scapegoating them for everything.
Bingo|6.24.09 @ 9:09AM|#
Just need some Andrea Dworkin "all sex is rape" logic to seal the argument that those frigid bitches make.
|6.24.09 @ 11:10AM|#
A little birdie told me that the portrait up in the main war room of the New Hampshire Republican Party's HQ is one of Tricky Dick. So some people still look up to him.
|6.24.09 @ 11:35AM|#
Sure, Nixon was an a-hole. But his view that there are reasons and justifications for abortion are consistent with the views of most Americans. Miscegenation is no longer seen as a valid reason, but rape is. If the pro-life people are correct, and abortion is murder, then how does rape justify murdering somebody other than the rapist?
..|6.24.09 @ 11:51AM|#
35-year-old opinions may seem shocking by today's standards...less so to Nixon's contemporaries. Smugness is a byproduct of hindsight.
Michael Ejercito|6.25.09 @ 2:25PM|#
If the pro-life people are correct, and abortion is murder, then how does rape justify murdering somebody other than the rapist?
The same way the invasion of Poland justified murdering people
other than Hitler, or the invasion of Finland justified murdering
people other than Stalin.
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