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PAGE TITLE: The National Review
ARTICLE
TITLE:
Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation -
Ronald Reagan’s pro-life tract.
Ronald Reagan’s pro-life tract.
AUTHOR: Unknown
DATE: Thursday 10 June
2004
June 10, 2004,
10:30 a.m.
Abortion and the
Conscience of the Nation
Ronald Reagan’s
pro-life tract.
EDITOR'S NOTE: While president, Ronald Reagan
penned this article for The Human Life Review, unsolicited. It ran in
the Review's Spring 1983, issue and is reprinted here with permission.
The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision
in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our
nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy
was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a
single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it
to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision
are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had
their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the
number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars.
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right
granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to
agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution
intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade
decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that
the opinion "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an
obligation to try to be." Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution
even hint at a "right" so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the
time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of "raw judicial power" (to use
Justice White's biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe
v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by
no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a
continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.
Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it
concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: ". . . any
man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
We cannot diminish the value of one category of
human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life. We
saw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the
starvation death of "Baby Doe" in Bloomington because the child had
Down's Syndrome.
Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of
life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after
being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and
Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest
moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works
in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous
mission of mercy, has said that "the greatest misery of our time is the
generalized abortion of children."
Over the first two years of my Administration I
have closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse the tide of
abortion — efforts of Congressmen, Senators and citizens responding to an
urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I have also seen the massive efforts of those
who, under the banner of "freedom of choice," have so far blocked
every effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand.
Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must
not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a
Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred
Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a
decade. At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the
moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers
and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed.
They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the
truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for
the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our
people to remain forever suppressed. But the great majority of the American
people have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect them to — any
more than the public voice arose against slavery — until the issue is clearly
framed and presented.
What, then, is the real issue? I have often said
that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives — the life of
the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant
woman a mother? I have also said that anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we
are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of
the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never
bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to
insist on protecting the unborn.
The case against abortion does not rest here,
however, for medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of these
moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn child as a patient.
Medical pioneers have made great breakthroughs in treating the unborn — for
genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other
medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving account of the little
boy who underwent brain surgery six times during the nine weeks before he was
born? Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can
feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than
to cure?
The real question today is not when human life
begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who
reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have
been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being.
The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has
a God-given right to be protected by the law — the same right we have.
What more dramatic confirmation could we have of
the real issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The death of
that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans because the child was
undeniably a live human being — one lying helpless before the eyes of the
doctors and the eyes of the nation. The real issue for the courts was not
whether Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to protect the
life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome, who would probably be mentally
handicapped, but who needed a routine surgical procedure to unblock his
esophagus and allow him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that,
even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have a
"non-existent" possibility for "a minimally adequate quality of
life" — in other words, that retardation was the equivalent of a crime
deserving the death penalty. The judge let Baby Doe starve and die, and the
Indiana Supreme Court sanctioned his decision.
Federal law does not allow federally-assisted
hospitals to decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating, much
less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I have directed the
Departments of Justice and HHS to apply civil rights regulations to protect
handicapped newborns. All hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices
which will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is prohibited
by federal law. 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.
The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human
life brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before. The many
medical and scientific witnesses who testified disagreed on many things, but
not on the scientific evidence that the unborn child is alive, is a
distinct individual, or is a member of the human species. They did disagree
over the value question, whether to give value to a human life at its
early and most vulnerable stages of existence.
Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do
not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have
value. Some have said that only those individuals with "consciousness of
self" are human beings. One such writer has followed this deadly logic and
concluded that "shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a
human being."
A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that
if a handicapped child "were not declared fully human until three days
after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice." In other
words, "quality control" to see if newly born human beings are up to
snuff.
Obviously, some influential people want to deny
that every human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a member of
the human race must have certain qualities before they accord him or her status
as a "human being."
Events have borne out the editorial in a California
medical journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade
that the social acceptance of abortion is a "defiance of the long-held
Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of
its stage, condition, or status."
Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen
needs to recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and protect the
sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a social ethic where some human lives
are valued and others are not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity
of life ethic and the "quality of life" ethic.
I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation
has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it
will give in the future. American was founded by men and women who shared a
vision of the value of each and every individual. They stated this vision
clearly from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using words
that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite:
We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one
category of mankind — black people in America — could not be denied the
inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The great champion of
the sanctity of all human life in that day, Abraham Lincoln, gave us his
assessment of the Declaration's purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble
document, he said:
This
was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was
their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to
His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family
of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and
likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on. . . They grasped not only
the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their
children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in
other ages.
He warned also of the danger we would face if we
closed our eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings:
I
should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which
declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it
where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another
say it does not mean some other man?
When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted
the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life, liberty, and property
to all human beings, he explained that all are "entitled to the protection
of American law, because its divine spirit of equality declares that all men
are created equal." He said the right guaranteed by the amendment would
therefore apply to "any human being." Justice William Brennan,
writing in another case decided only the year before Roe v. Wade,
referred to our society as one that "strongly affirms the sanctity of
life."
Another William Brennan — not the Justice — has
reminded us of the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation rejects
the sanctity of life ethic:
The
cultural environment for a human holocaust is present whenever any society can
be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of
value and respect.
As a nation today, we have not rejected the
sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to
express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced
that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not
for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's
opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional
American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged
this issue.
The Congress has before it several measures that
would enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life, even the
smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless. The Human Life Bill
expressly recognizes the unborn as human beings and accordingly protects them
as persons under our Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse
Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981 which contributed
so much to our understanding of the real issue of abortion.
The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the
98th Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the United States
is "to protect innocent life, both before and after birth." This
bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits
the federal government from performing abortions or assisting those who do so,
except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the pressing issue of
infanticide which, as we have seen, flows inevitably from permissive abortion
as another step in the denial of the inviolability of innocent human life.
I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as
the more difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give these
initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different ways, attempts to
reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-demand imposed by the Supreme Court
ten years ago. Each of them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human
life.
We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the
horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch
within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware
that abortion techniques are allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the
skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for
hours?
Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia
Inquirer ran a Sunday special supplement on "The Dreaded
Complication." The "dreaded complication" referred to in the
article — the complication feared by doctors who perform abortions — is the survival
of the child despite all the painful attacks during the abortion procedure.
Some unborn children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme
Court has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of abortion
deserve our attention and protection? Is there any question that those who don't
survive were living human beings before they were killed?
Late-term abortions, especially when the baby
survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once
again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now.
As my Administration acts to stop infanticide, we will be fully aware of the
real issue that underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth.
Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to
the rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked that physical
or mental handicaps of newborns are still used to justify their extinction.
This Administration has a Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done
perhaps more than any other American for handicapped children, by pioneering
surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out on the value of their lives,
and by working with them in the context of loving families. You will not find
his former patients advocating the so-called "quality-of-life" ethic.
I know that when the true issue of infanticide is
placed before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, we will
have no trouble deciding that a mentally or physically handicapped baby has the
same intrinsic worth and right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey
Supreme Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the sanctity of
human life, "a child need not be perfect to have a worthwhile life."
Whether we are talking about pain suffered by
unborn children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, we
inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each of these issues is a
potential rallying point for the sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation
rally around any one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will
see the importance of affirming this principle across the board.
Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right
to the heart of the matter: "Either life is always and in all
circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that
it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other." The sanctity
of innocent human life is a principle that Congress should proclaim at every
opportunity.
It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may
overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board
of Education the court reversed its own earlier
"separate-but-equal" decision. I believe if the Supreme Court took
another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the real issue
between the sanctity of life ethic and the quality of life ethic, it would
change its mind once again.
As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade,
we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is
not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life people have already
taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed
mothers. I recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria, who
said, "In this society we save whales, we save timber wolves and bald
eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted me to throw away my baby."
She has been helped by Save-a-Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for
unwed mothers to preserve the human life within them when they might otherwise
be tempted to resort to abortion. I think also of House of His Creation in
Catesville, Pennsylvania, where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young
women in the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that the girls
are not better off having abortions than saving their babies. I am also
reminded of the remarkable Rossow family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have
opened their hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster
children.
The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by
Congress at the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new
opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life. We should not rest
until our entire society echoes the tone of John Powell in the dedication of
his book, Abortion: The Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying
an unwanted child: "Please believe that you are not alone. There are many
of us that truly love you, who want to stand at your side, and help in any way
we can." And we can echo the always-practical woman of faith, Mother
Teresa, when she says, "If you don't want the little child, that unborn
child, give him to me." We have so many families in America seeking to
adopt children that the slogan "every child a wanted child" is now
the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate abortion.
I have often said we need to join in prayer to
bring protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to uphold the
sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be possible to accomplish our
work, the work of saving lives, "without being a soul of prayer." The
famous British Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small
group of influential friends, the "Clapham Sect," for decades
to see an end to slavery in the British empire. Wilberforce led that struggle
in Parliament, unflaggingly, because he believed in the sanctity of human life.
He saw the fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed slavery
just before his death.
Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We
will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value
in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm Muggeridge says:. . . however
low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare
presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened."
Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not
survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to
be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free
nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned
to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation
of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving
that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings,
the right without which no other rights have any meaning.
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