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Commentary: Why abortion became an issue: In 1972, President Nixon needed it to be one.
palmbeachpost ^ | 01/25/2023 | Heather Cox Richardson

Posted on 01/27/2023 9:29:51 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27

Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that for the first trimester of a pregnancy, “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State.”

It went on: “With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the ‘compelling’ point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to [prohibit] abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother....”

Abortion had been a part of American life since its inception but states began to criminalize abortion in the 1870s. By 1960, an observer estimated, there were between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal U.S. abortions a year, endangering women, primarily poor ones who could not afford a workaround.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 1972; abortion; issue; nixon
Abortion is Nixon's fault now? Who knew?? (S)
1 posted on 01/27/2023 9:29:51 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The article is extremely tendentious, stating opinions as facts. It also clearly avoids the question of whether or not the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning in Roe v. Wade was correct. Even abortion advocates like Ruth Ginsburg conceded that the legal reasoning of Roe was flawed. The Supreme Court had no right to make the ruling that they did and the Roberts court rectified their error.


2 posted on 01/27/2023 9:39:34 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27
When it's a Friday and a slow news day, you can always beat up on President Nixon. Liberal readers love that nostalgic feeling.

Oh how much better we would be today if the 1960 election hadn't been stolen from Richard Nixon. That was the first really big steal.

3 posted on 01/27/2023 9:43:39 AM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

According to Dr Bernard Nathanson, abortionist and founder of NARAL, later anti-abortion activist, there were about 300 maternal deaths per year due to illegal abortion in the late 50s, early 60s, thanks to antibiotics. By 1970 the number was well under a hundred, due in part to legalized abortion in NY and CA.

To see thousands of maternal deaths, go back to 1940.

For 300 deaths, either illegal abortion was not very common, or not very dangerous, compared to childbirth in general back then.

Rough estimate, 100,000 abortions per year in 1960 seems more likely than 1,000,000.

NARAL lied both about the number of women killed by abortion, and the number of abortions performed.


4 posted on 01/27/2023 9:45:38 AM PST by heartwood (Someone has to play devil's advocate.)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie
Even the Drive By Media admits that election fraud gave JFK the 1960 election.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2016/10/17/speaking-fraud-andrea-mitchell-admits-1960-election-obviously

5 posted on 01/27/2023 9:49:39 AM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Can someone explain what the connection of Nixon was to the Roe versus Wade decision?

What was Nixon’s position on abortion? This article doesn’t say. We know that the abortion decision of January 1973 came after Nixon’s re-election in 1972. Was the anticipated decision on abortion a campaign issue in 1972?


6 posted on 01/27/2023 9:55:43 AM PST by Dilbert San Diego
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To: ChicagoConservative27
Abortion had been a part of American life since its inception but states began to criminalize abortion in the 1870s.

Revisionism is in style. I suppose the pilgrims sold baby body parts like today too? And committed infanticide!
7 posted on 01/27/2023 10:11:39 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: heartwood

NARAL lied both about the number of women killed by abortion, and the number of abortions performed.

A liberal woman I know simply will not believe that liberals use lies as their default position on anything.


8 posted on 01/27/2023 10:16:29 AM PST by robowombat ( )
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Nixon won re-election in 1972 with the largest Presidential victory over his opponent ever before, or since.

But anyone claiming “abortion” secured Nixon’s victory limits their analysis to one thing over a very many other valid reasons. McGovern was a peacenik Leftist that won the nomination by a party shaped by the Left after the Dims 1968 convention. The mood of the voters was not cheering the cultural revolution of the “sexual” revolution, the drugs, the hippies, the violent “peace” protestors and the Leftists in charge of student “demonstrations”. Nixon represented the center of the country, by a country mile, compared to McGovern. McGovern could not have won had the Roe decision never been made.


9 posted on 01/27/2023 10:46:48 AM PST by Wuli
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To: Wuli

Now, how interesting that Tucker Carlson just identified Nixon’s nosing around intelligence matters as one of the motivations for Watergate.

But the intelligence sector was firmly in charge of population planning, well before the time cited.

This was after Kissinger’s 1970 issuance of NSC Security Memorandum 200, by which the U.S. Government put itself in charge of regulating population issues worldwide.

Young people see through the poison-pill in stories like this. They see that vicious manipulators are putting real human beings’ lives in harm’s way for political purposes.

Kids aren’t stupid. They tell parents who have had abortions, “if you had decided I was inconvenient, you would have aborted me.”


10 posted on 01/27/2023 10:55:48 AM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: Wuli

This article ran in the Palm Beach toilet paper. It is possibly the most worthless leftist rag in the US and possessions.


11 posted on 01/27/2023 10:56:29 AM PST by robowombat ( )
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To: Dilbert San Diego; ChicagoConservative27

It was Nixon who commissioned Henry Kissinger to produce National Security Memorandum 200, which concluded that “abortion is vital” to world peace. Furthermore, it was Nixon who nominated Harry Blackmun to the SCOTUS.


12 posted on 01/27/2023 10:59:32 AM PST by Romulus
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Nixon. The gift that keeps on crapping on the nation. Just like Bush’s TSA.


13 posted on 01/27/2023 11:16:01 AM PST by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: Organic Panic

“Nixon. The gift that keeps on crapping on the nation. Just like Bush’s TSA.”

Has any president in our lifetime been 100% right on every issue and action? Humans have flaws; sadly humans run for President and are elected by other humans.


14 posted on 01/27/2023 11:20:01 AM PST by MayflowerMadam (Stupid is supposed to hurt.)
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To: CharlesOConnell

“1970 issuance of NSC Security Memorandum 200, by which the U.S. Government put itself in charge of regulating population issues worldwide”

That’s a half truth amounting to nonsense. NSC Memorandum 200 was at “best” a policy of INTENTION of U.S. PARTICIPATION in a U.N. originated, international and VOLUNTARY plan of action to monitor population trends and overcome poor economic results believed (at the time) to have “over population” as a cause. The memorandum did not put the CIA or any one U.S. agency “in charge” , domestically or globally.

Nothing actually became internally formal until the Gerald Ford admin, and in the end nothing actually came of it. From Carter to Reagan it became clear that economic development was the answer to poor economic performance, not “population control”.


15 posted on 01/27/2023 11:33:03 AM PST by Wuli
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To: CharlesOConnell

“1970 issuance of NSC Security Memorandum 200, by which the U.S. Government put itself in charge of regulating population issues worldwide”

That’s a half truth amounting to nonsense. NSC Memorandum 200 was at “best” a policy of INTENTION of U.S. PARTICIPATION in a U.N. originated, international and VOLUNTARY plan of action to monitor population trends and overcome poor economic results believed (at the time) to have “over population” as a cause. The memorandum did not put the CIA or any one U.S. agency “in charge” , domestically or globally.

Nothing actually became internally formal until the Gerald Ford admin, and in the end nothing actually came of it. From Carter to Reagan it became clear that economic development was the answer to poor economic performance, not “population control”.


16 posted on 01/27/2023 11:33:17 AM PST by Wuli
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

If Nixon had shaved on the afternoon of September 26, 1960, there would have been no Bay of Pigs, no Berlin Wall, no Cuban Missile Crisis and no Vietnam War, and the world in 2023 would be a far better place than it is today.


17 posted on 01/27/2023 12:11:25 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

The “journalist” is also a sloppy researcher. Justice Blackmun’s first name was Harry, not Lewis.


18 posted on 01/27/2023 12:12:31 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

“Tendentious” is one of my favorite words, and you aptly apply it here. The author just strings together the usual pro-abortion tropes.


19 posted on 01/27/2023 1:12:50 PM PST by j.havenfarm (22 years on Free Republic, 12/10/22! more then 6500 replies and still not shutting up!)
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To: Wuli
"Nixon won re-election in 1972 with the largest Presidential victory over his opponent ever before, or since."

1984 was bigger.


20 posted on 01/27/2023 1:18:07 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica (The historians must be stopped. They're destroying everything.)
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