By John Jalsevac
November 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Throughout his presidency George W. Bush was pro-life, but a strange anecdote found in his about-to-be-released autobiography, Decision Points, has provided new insight into the genesis of his views on the issue.
In a recent interview with NBC's Matt Lauer about the forthcoming book, Bush explained that when he was a teenager his mother, Barbara Bush, suffered a difficult miscarriage.
Barbara obtained the miscarried fetus, and put it in a jar in order to bring it in to the hospital. However, first she showed her teenage son his deceased sibling.
“I never expected to see the remains of the foetus, which she had saved in a jar to bring to the hospital.” He added: “There was a human life, a little brother or sister.”
“There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life.”
According to the New York Post, however, Bush told Lauer that “the purpose of the story wasn't to try show the evolution of a pro-life point of view.”
“It was really to show how my mom and I developed a relationship.”
Ironically, Barbara herself appears not to have been quite as affected by the incident as her son: her views on abortion have been less clear.
In 1992, during her husband's presidential run, she famously argued that abortion should be left out of the Republican Party's platform: “The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, platforms and conventions.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Bush was coy about where her personal views fell on the issue. “I'm not being outspoken or pro or con abortion,” she said. “I'm saying abortion should not be in there, either pro or con.”