PrintFebruary 6, 2011
Ronald Reagan vs. Barack Obama; a matter of life and death
Today we celebrate the Ronald Reagan Centennial. Revisionists on the left have been busy reinterpreting and recasting the life of President Reagan in an attempt to explain his continued popularity. Time magazine photo-shopped President Reagan with his hand on Barack Obama’s shoulder for last week’s cover in a curious attempt to link the two polar opposites.
The gulf that separates Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama cannot be bridged by media hype and superficial comparisons. Perhaps no issue defines the differences between President Reagan and Mr. Obama more closely than their views on abortion. Last month Barack Obama marked the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade by re-affirming his unyielding support of abortion. During his lack-luster career in the Illinois Senate, Mr. Obama revealed his extreme and radical pro-abortion agenda.
On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only Illinois senator who rose to speak against a bill that would have protected babies who survive late-term labor-induced abortions…Obama rose to object that if the bill passed, and a nine-month-old fetus survived a late-term labor-induced abortion was deemed to be a person who had the right to live, then the law would “forbid abortions to take place.” Obama further explained the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not allow somebody to kill a child, so if the law deemed a child who survived a late-term abortion had a right to live, “then this would be an anti-abortion statute.” [1]
In stark contrast to Mr. Obama’s radical views on abortion, Ronald Reagan as a Christian, believed in the sanctity of life and sought ways to educate and convince pro-abortion supporters to consider the rights of the unborn. In The Reagan Diaries the president relates that he had received a wire from a woman in Peoria, Il in response to his State of the Union speech. The woman was unhappy with his stance on abortion and felt that he wanted to take away her freedom of choice. Rather than write a response, President Reagan called her on the telephone and explained that “there were 2 people‘s rights involved in abortion-the mother‘s & the unborn child.” After what he termed “a nice visit,” the woman promised to give the matter further thought. Ronald Reagan noted that “I think I made a friend.” [2]
During his presidency Ronald Reagan was impressed with the new ultra-sound procedure and predicted that the new technology would have a powerful impact on the abortion issue. In a meeting with leaders from the Right to Life movement he viewed a short film which showed an ultra-sound of an actual abortion being performed. President Reagan related that the Doctor who had performed the abortion (and some 10,000 others) was so moved by the evidence that he joined the pro-life movement. He wrote in his diary “The movie (28 minutes long) was most impressive & how anyone could deny that the fetus is a living human being is beyond me.” [3]
Of course President Reagan never met Barack Obama. Standing in stark and bloody contrast to Ronald Reagan, Mr. Obama was never swayed by evidence which would assert that a fetus is “a living human being.”
More than once, Obama heard Illinois nurse Jill Stanek testify before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, relating the following story of an aborted Down syndrome baby who survived a late-term induced-labor abortion and was abandoned in the hospital’s Soiled Utility Room because the baby’s parents did not want to hold him. “I couldn’t bear the thought of this child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room,” Stanek testified before Obama’s committee in the Illinois Senate. “So I cradled him and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived.” Stanek reported Obama was “unfazed” by the testimony. [4]
Ronald Reagan embraced life and had a confident and simple way of expressing the importance of each life. On July 6, 1983 he wrote:
Nancy’s Birthday! Life would be miserable if there wasn’t a Nancy’s birthday. What if she’d never been born. I don’t want to think about that. [5]
On Ronald Reagan’s 100th Birthday if we pause to ask, what if he had never been born? The response would clearly be, “I don’t want to think about that.” The United States of America was truly blessed to have had President Ronald Reagan at the helm for eight wonderful years.
[1] Jerome Corsi, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (New York: Threshold Editions, 2008), p. 238.
[2] Douglas Brinkley Editor, The Reagan Diaries (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 217-8.
[3] Ibid., p. 296.
[4] Corsi, The Obama Nation, p. 238.
[5] Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries, p. 164.
February 6, 2010
