That was then, this is now: Walker suddenly a hard-liner on abortion as he vaults to front-runner

The London Daily Mail ^ | February 23, 2015 | David Martosko, US Political Editor

[2ndDivisionVet]

* In October the Wisconsin governor pledged to support legislation focused on 'safety' during abortions
* 'The bill leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor,' he said in a campaign ad
* This month he's telling potential donors that he supports a 'personhood' amendment, which insists that life begins at conception
* He boasted in January that he had 'defunded Planned Parenthood,' America's wealthiest and most politically savvy chain of abortion clinics
* Walker is busy beefing up his conservative bona fides in advance of a brusiing GOP presidential primary that may not favor blue-state moderates

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is learning that major leagues pitchers throw harder than in the minors, as journalists are piling on the newly minted Republican front-runner – first with gotcha questions and now with questions about an abortion flip-flop over a period of just four months.

The New York Times highlighted on Monday a campaign ad Walker made in October as he fought through a tough re-election contest.

'I'm pro-life,' he says in the video, but Walker also announced his support for 'legislation to increase safety, and to provide more information to a woman considering her options. The bill leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor.'(continued)

[EternalVigilance]

You’re welcome.

My wife dug it up for me. :-)

[SoConPubbie]

Reagan signed California’s “Therapeutic Abortion Act” as governor.

Yes he did, and as all great men of conscience do, once he realized the mistake he had made he was a vigilant and tireless warrior against abortion from that time forward.

The problem with Scott Walker is that he is now exhibiting a pattern (abortion, Illegal Immigration, Right-To-Work, etc.) of taking positions dependent on which direction his Political Winds are blowing.

s president, Ronald Reagan was an unflagging champion of unborn human life. “Today there is a wound in our national conscience,” Reagan told a joint session of Congress in his 1986 State of the Union. “America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn.”

But honest discussions of Reagan’s 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’s largest state. Reagan critics and supporters alike recognize this fact — one that is particularly tough to swallow for staunch pro-lifers. The full story, however, is more complicated — and worth setting straight now, 35 years after Roe v. Wade.

On June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor. From a total of 518 legal abortions in California in 1967, the number of abortions would soar to an annual average of 100,000 in the remaining years of Reagan’s two terms — more abortions than in any U.S. state prior to the advent of Roe v. Wade. Reagan’s signing of the abortion bill was an ironic beginning for a man often seen as the modern father of the pro-life movement. How did this happen?

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 “a subject I’d never given much thought to.” Moreover, his aides were divided on the question.

Reagan began to vigorously study the issue and the Therapeutic Abortion Act. He asked his longtime adviser and Cabinet secretary Bill Clark — a devout Catholic who had contemplated the priesthood — for counsel. “Bill, I’ve got to know more — theologically, philosophically, medically,” 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, “Reagan was quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas.” Years later, Reagan remarked that he did “more studying and soul searching” on the issue than any other as governor.

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 — such as rape or incest, or where pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother.

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 biographer Lou Cannon notes that even the bill’s Democratic sponsor confessed to being surprised that physicians so liberally interpreted the law.

Reagan was shocked at the unintended consequences of his action. Morris said Reagan was left with an “undefinable sense of guilt” after watching abortions skyrocket. Cannon claims this was “the only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.” Clark called the incident “perhaps Reagan’s greatest disappointment in public life.”

For Reagan, one good thing did come out of this disappointment. As Georgetown’s Matt Sitman notes, “It is impossible to understand his later staunchly pro-life positions without grasping the lessons he learned from this early political battle.” Reagan, says Sitman, survived the ordeal with a “profoundly intellectual understanding of the abortion issue…. It was in 1967 that his ideas concerning the beginning of human life were fully formed.” He now had a cogent understanding, politically and morally, of abortion and its implications.

Reagan would later denounce abortion so strongly and so frequently from the Oval Office that Bill Clark has compiled a 45-page document of Reagan’s quotes on abortion, collected from the official Presidential Papers. Reagan even authored a small book — Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, featuring contributions from Bill Clark, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Mother Teresa — that was published by the Human Life Foundation in 1984. White House moderates wanted Reagan to delay publication until after the 1984 election, fearing it would turn off pro-choice Republicans, but Reagan refused. He would not be burned again on abortion. No more compromises.

Ronald Reagan emerged from 1967 repentant, but ready for future battles. The damage was done; of course, the results were nothing compared to the travesty that a group of men in black robes in Washington were planning six years later.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”So winning is everything?”

Winning isn't everything but its something, something critical.

Losing on every single fight is pretty worthless in the real world on planet earth.

Barney Fife on Andy Griffith and Gilligan on Gilligan's island had great hearts, but they always f..ed up.

Saving SOME lives is way better than saving NO lives,
claiming that saving no lives by always losing is better than saving a bunch because its morally pure is a bit delusional, and easy to claim when its not your life.

Walker was only able do that by being successful.

Schindler's List (1993) is a great example.

[txhurl]

There is a decided difference between Walker supporters and Cruz supporters.

Cruz guys are ‘burn it all to the ground’ kind of people.

---

More like ‘fumigate it free of RATS’ so ‘it’ can be occupied immediately by people sworn to the Constitution.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”So why not go “all-in” and vote for Chris Christie then? He certainly didn't go “hardline” in defense of the 2nd Amendment in this ad, did he?”\

Except that's the exact OPPOSITE of your Walker example.

Your Christie example he supported banning guns.

Your Walker example he successfully got an antiabortion law passed. He didn't make it easier to get an abortion, he made it harder.

Your only claim is that he didn't demand more instead of successfully getting what he did,
Like :'If he couldn't get everything he should have walked away with nuthin "like some others always do. A bit lame.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Well, Christie didn't want to ban all guns in that instance, just "unpopular" ones that looked "scary" to Sally Minivan Soccer Mom and Mike the Mewling Metrosexual, which tells me my example is spot on.

[Hot Tabasco]

Just curious, what are the Democrat front runners' stance on abortion?

Okay, okay, who are the their front runners?????

Okay, okay, okay, just when has any Democrat politician been questioned about their stance on abortion?

[Jonty30]

What the staunch pro-lifers here, who require candidates to shout from the rooftops their opposition to abortion, do not understand is that candidates who shout their opposition tend to not win their elections. Consequence to their inability to win elections is their inability to stem the tide of the 1.8 million abortions each year.

It is the conservative candidates who don’t say much about abortion who have been winning their elections and have been instrumental in turning the tide.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Well, Christie didn't want to ban all guns in that instance, just “unpopular” ones that looked “scary” to Sally Minivan Soccer Mom and Mike the Mewling Metrosexual, which tells me my example is spot on”

Its the exact opposite because Walker was restricting abortion, not making it easier. It was an antiabortion law.

Unless you want MORE abortions. Then your logic makes sense.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”What the staunch pro-lifers here, who require candidates to shout from the rooftops their opposition to abortion, do not understand is that candidates who shout their opposition tend to not win their elections. Consequence to their inability to win elections is their inability to stem the tide of the 1.8 million abortions each year.”

I look at it from a view of who gets ‘results’

Talk radio hosts get paid to scream from the rooftops, but many or most times their suggestions (demand) backfire and make things worse.

The perfect candidate to some of them is the one who refuses to run at all, Sarah Palin in 2012. She was perfect. She was their perfect candidate..
No run...no results ... no compromise...pure.

[GOPsterinMA]

“Losing on every single fight is pretty worthless in the real world on planet earth.”

Amen.

[EternalVigilance]

Schindler's List (1993) is a great example.

"Pro-lifers" who are in power and who push these immoral, unconstitutional bills, that grant permission to abort babies, and that in effect end in "and then you can kill the baby," are not in the position of governmental power that Oskar Schindler was in. They are in the position of power and authority that the leaders of the Nazi party were in.

[EternalVigilance]

Losing on every single fight is pretty worthless in the real world on planet earth.

Winning every fight, and the whole world, while losing your own soul, is eternally worthless.

[SoConPubbie]

Its the exact opposite because Walker was restricting abortion, not making it easier. It was an antiabortion law.

Unless you want MORE abortions. Then your logic makes sense.

Sorry SickOfLibs, this conversation is not about that law, but about his comments, that can only be construed as Pro-Abortion.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Ever seen a guy, maybe not even in to football, go and buy a jacket, jersey and hat of the winning super bowl team?

[Jonty30]

I know you want a staunch pro-life candidate that is not hesitant to shout it from the rooftops his opposition to abortion, but the fact is you cannot win an election effectively that way. If you cannot win, you cant stop them.

[SoConPubbie]

I know you want a staunch pro-life candidate that is not hesitant to shout it from the rooftops his opposition to abortion, but the fact is you cannot win an election effectively that way. If you cannot win, you cant stop them.

B.S.!

Just another excuse by someone whose own principles seem to be more like mere suggestions vs. the foundation of their life.

[Jonty30]

Name one candidate across the entire country, openly pro-life and openly against abortion who has won an election where he could do something to stop abortion, aside from Reagan.

Just one.

[SoConPubbie]

Sam Brownback?

Mike Pence?

Bobby Jindal?

[Jonty30]

I don’t know, you tell me.

Like it or not, the country is not sufficiently united against abortion to nominate a Presidential candidate who is solidly against abortion. This is a battle that will be won, and it will be won, in slices. I don’t know if you haven’t noticed, but every gain this country has made in becoming more pro-life has ultimately, as far as I know anyway, been not opposed by the left. I’m not aware of any legislation that has been overturned by the left, despite their bluster.