LifeSiteNews.com – June 6, 2004 Ronald Reagan deserves to be remembered above all as a pro-life social conservative. He saw the world through Christian eyes. Thus for him the Cold War was a struggle between good and evil. It could be won, but only if we stuck to our principles. And history has borne him out. Every president since Nixon has made anti-abortion noises. But only Reagan openly advocated the overturning of Roe v. Wade on the grounds that that legal decision was an attack on the Christian foundations of American society.
In 1983, at the very beginning of his first term of office, he even wrote an article to that effect for the Human Life Review. In it, he claimed that abortion “concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us.” Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen, he warned “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”“Abraham Lincoln,” Reagan went on to point out, “recognized that we could not survive as a free nation when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves.” He concluded by asserting that his administration was “dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land,” there being “no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming “the transcendent right to life of all human beings.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if our own Paul Martin could bring himself to use such language in public? Canadians still wait for such a defence of life in any of their leaders, especially now in the midst of a federal election run.
Ronald Reagan embodied all that pro-life political activists hoped for in a leader. The staff of LifeSiteNews.com prays for the comfort of his family, and for his pro-life legacy to continue and prosper on both sides of the border. John Muggeridge is a journalist and retired college professor of English and history, living in Toronto, Ontario. John is also a member of the Editorial Board of LifeSiteNews.com See also NANCY: ‘I THINK THEY BROKE THE MOLD WHEN THEY MADE RONNIE’ https://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/25271.htm Pope John Paul II Pays Tribute to Reagan https://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-pope-reagan,0,294816.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines Pro-Family Leaders Mourn Death of President Reagan https://www.family.org/cforum/extras/a0032372.cfm Conservatives Bless Reagan’s Memory As They Mourn His Passing https://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/6/afa/72004a.asp How Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II won the Cold War https://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005181