ABORTION AND THE CONSCIENCE OF THE NATION

The recent celebration of his 90th birthday is an excellent reason to once again give thanks for the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan was our first unashamedly pro-life President.

Those fresh to our Movement may be completely unaware of a book he wrote while President: Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. When he composed the book (1983), it was the first ever written by a sitting President. Mr. Reagan took a lot of heat for this but--like a true pro-lifer would--wore the criticism as a badge of honor.

I highly recommend this slim but powerful work. Luckily for us, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation has been reissued by New Regency Publishing, complete with an introduction by NRLC President Wanda Franz, Ph.D., and forewords by the Honorable William P. Clark and Brian Johnston, NRLC western regional director.

In her introduction, Dr. Franz reminded us that "The Reagan Legacy included a wide range of pro-life actions--actions that defied the pro-abortion culture and often had to be passed over the objections of a hostile leadership in Congress."

Mr. Johnston observes in his foreword that President Reagan was a protector of the fundamental rights common to a civilized society, adding that Reagan's assertion of "the preeminence of the right to life will, I believe, eventually gain him history's enduring recognition as a great statesman."

The Honorable William Clark served as Governor Reagan's chief of staff and later as a justice of the California Supreme Court. Under President Reagan, Judge Clark served as Deputy Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and Secretary of the Interior.

In other words, he knew Mr. Reagan, a very private man, very well. Judge Clark writes in his foreword,

"[M]any people in both political parties have attempted to walk away from the predominant human rights issue of [President Reagan's] agenda, as they did from the similar issue of slavery a century and a half ago. Some contend that the life issue, like slavery, has been settled by the Court, or, acknowledging that abortion is an evil, have rationalized that it is a necessary evil. But evil it is, and the President felt the overriding obligation of his office was to cure this terrible wrong."

President Reagan's genius was an uncanny capacity for cutting through superficialities to get to the core issues. Mr. Reagan demonstrated that the abortion fight is not over when life begins--that was old hat even then; everyone understood that human life begins at conception--but what value we place on that vulnerable life.

President Reagan understood fully that in the final analysis we either accept or ascribe. That is, as a nation we either accept that our equality before the law is an endowment to all of us from our Creator, or we hold that we can ascribe worth/value/protection of the law to whomever we please based on some arbitrary criteria we dream up.

Another way of saying this is that President Reagan believed fervently in the equality of life ethic while pro-abortionists subscribe to the quality of life ethic.

President Reagan bravely and tenaciously fought infanticide, which reared its ugly head in a public way with "Baby Doe." In that tragic case, a newborn child was starved to death because the little one was born with Down Syndrome. In my 24 years in the pro-life Movement, sitting helplessly by as that little child died a ghastly death was the most wrenching experience I've ever gone through.

The President sprang to action and an all-out war was fought over whether facilities receiving federal dollars could discriminate against babies born with disabilities. President Reagan understood what was really at issue:

"The basic issue is whether to value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic issue that underlies the question of abortion."

Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation is a wonderful read and a great present. Please read the form found at the bottom of this page and get your copy today! You'll be glad you did.

There is another book worth purchasing as well. For the last month or so, considerable attention has been paid to a new volume comprised largely of radio essays written by former President Ronald Reagan during the mid-seventies while he was preparing to run for President. Judging by the excerpts I've read, this interest, and more, is very much warranted.

What the reader discovers very early in Reagan: In His Own Words is that the media-generated myths about the intellectual acumen of our 40th President illustrated the very shallowness they falsely attributed to President Reagan. Far from fitting the stereotypical portrait of an out-of-his-depth actor who functioned as little more than a ventriloquist's dummy, the book reveals that Mr. Reagan was an avid reader and a gifted writer whose restless mind produced a torrent of words.

According to New York Times columnist William Safire, the 544- page book is based on a recently discovered "trove of 670 of his radio speeches." This intellectual storehouse is filled with batches and batches of short commentaries written by Reagan during the years 1975-1979 in his own hand, complete with the careful editing with which Reagan polished his work.

Safire writes in the New York Times Magazine that Reagan: In His Own Words constitutes "definite proof that Ronald Reagan was far more than a Great Communicator of other people's ideas. He was very much the author of his own ideas, with a single vision that he pursued relentlessly at home and abroad." Reagan's was a first- rate mind, nourished by a steady diet of reading and reflection. The title again, Reagan:In His OwnWords.

dave andrusko [ dha1245@juno.com ]