New Tapes Reveal Nixon Supported Abortion: For Interracial Pregnancies

[Stump]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html?_r=1

[FSogol]

1. Stay classy Republicans. n/t

[MrsBrady]

11. wouldn't he just love Obama?

[Bette Noir]

19. Good thing Obama was already born at the time.

[sakabatou]

2. Yep. Nixon's still a douchebag.

[dogfacedboy]

32. Not thinking Nixon's a douchbag makes one a douchbag.

I believe one is an a-hole simply if they don't think Nixon was an a-hole.
I despise that pig even though it's dead. It should have been dead thirty years earlier.

[abq e streeter]

3. A racist republican? I'm, I'm......I'm just shocked

[totodeinhere]

40. You can say that, but remember that back in Nixon's day there were a lot of racist Democrats too.

In fact, there were probably more racist Democrats than Republicans. Ever hear of Jim Crow in the South? That was perpetuated by Democrats for decades.

By today's standards, Nixon's sentiments about abortion certainly could be construed as racism. But in the context of Nixon's' time, those sentiments probably weren't too far out of the mainstream. That is a very sad commentary on those times, but thank God things have changed.

[abq e streeter]

43. absolutely true, and I've made similar points here myself

specifically I remember one thread asking if anyone could think of a decent republican. I mentioned a whole slew of them from when I was young, and also how people like Trent Lott, just for one example among many, would have certainly been a Democrat for the 1st two thirds of the 20th century. Nixon of course was the beginning of the "southern strategy" where the repub party sold its soul for electoral power ( that is finally ,thank god, pinning them in a corner)by cynically recruiting all the racist southern democrats to become repubs now that the dems had shown themselves to be the "n----r lover" party . But history HAS shown that Nixon was a racist and anti-semite, mainstream at the time or not, and my comment about ,gee, how surprising, a republican racist, is really based on the republican party as we know it today that Nixon and his gang of criminals began, with longtime Democrat George Wallace as its role model. ( and at least Wallace had the decency in his last years, to genuinely and sincerely, in my view, renounce and apologize for the harm he'd done fomenting and politically benefitting from racism.)

[drm604]

4. Good ol' Tricky Dick.

Still managing to offend us all these years later.

[theothersnippywshrub]

5. How very republican. n/t

[Hepburn]

6. Or...gawd forbid....a Pubbie got knocked up by a Democrat....

...OMG, then for sure an abortion would be in order.

Geeeeeez, Nixon was a total asshole bigot! :puke:

[KamaAina]

7. We're all over it like, um, white on rice

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3935837&mesg_id=3935837

[Libertas1776]

8. Bush and Cheney may be

war criminals, but Nixon, for some reason still takes the title of supreme Dick. After all, where do ya think Cheney got his lessons on how to be a real dick? well, as an underling of the master of course. Dick Nixon, a dick for all ages. (P.S. Sorry, probably used the word dick too much, but there ain't no word that describes these people better.)

[girl gone mad]

9. Rove got his start..

running dirty tricks for tricky Dick, too.

[sofa king]

10. Aww. One more reason to hate the S.O.B.

I wish you an extra thousand degrees of suffering in Hell, Tricky Dick.

[sellitman]

12. He was a bad person.

He was a Republican.

[jasmeel]

13. This is why the anti choicers say abortion is racist.

[WestSeattle2]

14. That was typical for that era, both D's and R's, it didn't matter. n/t

[Bette Noir]

In the 50s, maybe. Not in the 70s.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

24. It was typical of his generation at that time...

My father was about 20 years younger than Nixon, and a loyal rethug. I can remember getting a lecture from him about how he'd feel sorry for any children we opted to have with a member of a different race.

He told us this because he remembered how cruel people could be to multiracial kids.

[shanti]

30. which is total bullshit

of course. people were just soooo cruel to my biracial son, so cruel that he was voted homecoming king at his hs.

btw, my own father told me the same thing ("don't ever bring a black man home"), this because i was a fan of wilt chamberlain, for god's sake! scare tactics, that's all they were. didn't work! ;)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

31. Maybe...or maybe not.

I can remember reading about interracial couples who suffered a lot of grief just because they fell in love. Miscegenation laws were passed and enforced...some states prosecuted it as a felony. Sometimes people who had been married had their marriages nullified by their state government.
It wasn't until the mid 1960s that these stupid laws began to crumble, enabling people to evolve.

Some interesting reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[EFerrari]

35. They ran Willie Mays out of San Francisco because he married a white woman.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

47. So not only were they dumb

they were stupid. :eyes:

[EFerrari]

48. He still played for the team but he couldn't live here. It was insane.

In those days, the Fillmore was where black people lived, there and Hunter's Point. There were very few Asian people outside of Chinatown and Latinos mostly lived in the Mission. I don't think I met a black person socially until I was 15. I didn't meet any Asians until one of my cousins decided to get married. Hard to believe, in retro. We mostly hung out with each other and were the person of color in our school class. :crazy:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

52. I hope I live to see the day when we find it hard to believe

that gay people were denied their civil rights in 2009.

[WestSeattle2]

51. Interracial marriage was accepted by young people

in the 1970's, but it continued to be "frowned upon" by most of society, including most black and white people, until well beyond the 1970's. Certainly the vast majority of American's of Nixon's age at that time, thought it was "unnatural", and the poor offspring of those unions were often shunned by both black and white society. There are large areas of the country where I would guess the majority of people still frown upon interracial marriage, and I'm sure there are tens of thousands of children who are of mixed race who can share first-hand accounts of being shunned, even today.

[caseymoz]

15. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Patrick Buchanan all were Nixon proteges.

What else does it say about these guys?

I think Nixon was a canker for the country.

[JayMusgrove]

41. I wonder what rationalization Pat B will be offering for his

mentor.

[glitch]

45. And Nixon was a Prescott Bush protege. nt

[AllyCat]

16. He's definitely a Republican, no?

How vile these people are/were.

[Gormy Cuss]

17. As horrid as that opinion sounds now, it was pretty common back then among the older generations.

I'm actually surprised that he thought it was allowable in any circumstance.

[kskiska]

21. Exactly. Up to Roe vs Wade abortion wasn't the hot button issue it is today.

It fomented in the 70s and really took off once Reagan was elected and all the wingnuts and religious whackos came out of the woodwork. It's hard to imagine, but Republicans weren't all that bad back then. Religion wasn't much of a factor.

[EndersDame]

34. Georege HW Bush was pro abortion for health issues

I don't have a link as I watched it in a documentary entitled "When Abortion Was Illegal"

[kskiska]

39. Poppy and Bar

were Planned Parenthood supporters.

From a Newsweek article:

(snip)

At the hospital, she (Barbara Bush) reads a story to some young patients and makes them laugh. But back in the van for the drive home to Kennebunkport, she says that the book she was given to read was without educational value and that the hospital administrators were obsequious--a quality she dislikes. "They thanked me three times, when once would have been fine." Then, softening abruptly, she thinks back to that morning's visit to the hospital's neonatal ICU, where she saw premature infants in incubators. "Where do you draw the line" in saving those who would not have survived in another time? "What kind of quality of life? It's the same thing with old age. Are we doing the right thing?" Then again she says of one severely impaired newborn, "But, they say she's brought great happiness..."

more…
http://www.newsweek.com/id/61923

[Blue_Tires]

38. +1

[muntrv]

18. Nixon spouts off klan talking points.

[Catherine Vincent]

20. Unbelievable!

I suppose that was the norm back then.

[starroute]

25. No, it was never the norm

There were a lot of people back then who would have been aghast at their own kid marrying interracially -- and I knew someone who hid from her parents the fact that she was dating interracially.

But there weren't a lot who would have proposed aborting someone else's interracial baby.

[progressoid]

49. I wish it was unbelievable.

It's quite believable. I've heard some pretty stunning things come out of R's mouths. I imagine even worse is said behind closed doors.

[Colobo]

22. The little respect I had for Dick is gone.

[Juan_de_la_Dem]

23. G Dub was right, it is all about the legacy. You live on Dick

[janx]

26. I can't hear what is being said in the audio.

Maybe I'll watch television in half an hour or so...?

[roamer65]

27. So...Tricky Dick is a lot like how Oliver Stone portrayed him in "Nixon".

Actually much worse...not surprised one bit.

[roamer65]

28. ...and I still think the missing 18 min pertains to what he knew on JFK's assassination.

Lying bastard.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

29. Wow! Tricky Dicky really was a nasty piece of work

Not that we didn't already know that but still....

[Number23]

33. Disgusting. Shameful. But not surprising in the least

[proteus_lives]

36. He was a bastard alright.

These tapes are not surprising.

[marshall]

37. Many early abortion and birth control rights advocates were rooted in eugenics

It was a sign of the times--even Margaret Sanger viewed Planned Parenthood as a way to control "those" populations.

[AngryAmish]

44. I was about to make this exact point

[dysfunctional press]

42. i wonder what obama's opinion of that is...?

someone should ask.

[rcrush]

46. Who told Nixon it was a good idea to record all his conversations?

I bet he's regretting that one in hell right now.

[eppur_se_muova]

50. Be sure to mention this to any anti-choice fundie acquaintances ...

and be sure to ask whether they agree with it.




Wear old clothes.