As we celebrate Reagan’s 100th birthday, liberals are once again training their targets on attacking the second most popular president of the past fifty years. Liberals like to claim Reagan was “anti-woman” because he was “anti-choice,” but ThinkProgress unintentionally debunks that lie in their piece earlier this week reflecting on Reagan’s record.
In 2004, an editorial on the National Organization for Women’s website said:
The 40th president was indeed a clear-eyed visionary. He envisioned a world where women would never be granted equality in the U.S. Constitution, where abortion was illegal and equal employment laws a thing of the past.
N.O.W. also said:
So was Reagan really the anti-abortion, anti-choice zealot N.O.W. and liberal extremists make him out to be?
We have to look no further than leading liberal blog ThinkProgress to set the record straight. On February 5, ThinkProgress published the piece “10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan.” In that post, they noted:
Roger Fallihee at Salon also notes Reagan’s moderate mainstream position on abortion.
Not only did Reagan not attack womens’ access to abortion, he was also one of the most pro-“choice” presidents in the past century. Reagan supported letting people choose what they wanted to spend their own money on rather than having big government bureaocrats raise taxes and hamper individual choice. He was an early supporter of giving parents choice in where they wanted to send their children to school, though his school voucher proposals were defeated by an anti-choice Democrat congress. He was even in favor of letting workers choose how they wanted to handle his retirement, though the anti-choice congress also stood in the way of his proposed Social Security reforms.
In remembering Reagan’s life and his legacy as one of America’s best and most loved presidents, liberals should take some time to reflect and correct their misstatements about Reagan’s agenda on so many issues, including abortion.
