Talk Elections

Pro life presidents
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H.W Bush
George W. Bush

Pro Life Vice Presidents
Hubert Humphrey
Dan Quayle
Dick Cheney

Pro Choice Presidents
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama

Pro Choice Vice Presidents
Nelson Rockefeller
Walter Mondale
Al Gore
Joseph Biden

Anti Birth Control Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt


Notes: Nixon and Ford were leaning pro life when they we're presidents, then later became pro choice. Teddy Roosevelt argued with Margaret Sanger through letters, he is the precursor to the current pro life GOP, haha! Also , does anyone know whether Spiro Agnew was pro life or pro choice? I know he wrote at least one book after being vice president, anyone ever read it?

Jimmy Carter only became pro-life--in a bit of a looser definition of the term--in his post-presidency.

Ford also became pro choice later in life. Nixon seems pro life in his memoir, but in his later books he is clearly pro choice.

I thought that Bush Sr. was pro-choice?

Edit: Nevermind, he was pro-choice and then became pro-life.

Reagan was initially pro-choice too, signing a law liberalizing abortion as governor before becoming pro-life. Did Humphrey ever say anything definite regarding abortion?

Well there's this:
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Thank you for posting that. It seems Senator Humphrey was even more of a massive FF then I thought before.

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Really really sorry I am bumping this, but what does that say? Can't quite read it haha!

Tape 407, Conversation No. 407-18, 32:08
http://nixon.archives.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape407/407-018.mp3

He was certainly a lot more pro-life than a lot in his party were comfortable with. He opposed funding for abortion and spoke out against the abortion rights plank in the 1980s platform.  In 1976 both he and Ford were trying to straddle the issue, though in Carter's case his heart seemed to be much more toward the anti-abortion side.

People forget that abortion didn't used to be such a rigid left vs right issue. Ted Kennedy was also pro-life very early on in his career at the same time Barry Goldwater was pro-choice. I'm decidedly pro-choice but I can totally understand how being pro-life could in a different political paradigm be compatible with a social justice oriented worldview.

Indeed. Kennedy was "pro-life" until after Roe was decided.

Wow. Now I really wish HHH was elected.

The ideological polarization of both parties is really a shame.

Sargent Shriver (and Thomas Eagleton) were also anti abortion.

Agreed with your last part, though probably for "opposite" ideological reasons.

IIRC, Jimmy Carter was "Personally opposed to abortion" but he took a pro-choice stance in terms of the legal realm. Walter Mondale on the other hand was staunchly pro-choice.

Taking modern biases out of it, I'm surprised the two parties reacted like they did to this issue ... As another poster already said, I could easily see a scenario where conservatives got behind a "keep the government out of our bodies" POV and liberals got behind a "save the poor fetus who needs our help" POV.

The outsized presence of wealthy white Protestants in the movements for birth control of the late 19th/early 20th centuries has some implications that are...um, concerning?

Yes.

Up to that point a lot of movements that were supported by wealthy white Protestants were done so with the intent of curtailing the population of "undesirables".  The Puritans in particular had views about the Irish that could very easily be compared to Nazi rhetoric about the Jews (one particular source has the author referring to the Irish as "St. Patrick's Vermin").  The Know Nothing Party, which was actually quite vicious in it's racism, would leave a long and lasting legacy with many Irish Catholics, who saw former members of said party leave in droves to the Republican Party.  Later on of course many people involved in the Eugenics movement had some very Himmleresque views about "people  of poor character" which generally referred to Southern and Eastern European ethnic communities whose cultures they considered to be savage and uncouth.  Jewish immigrants especially were seen in an extremely negative light, with scientific racists charging that many Jews had "negro blood and mannerisms" (Jews dominated the early professional basketball scene that would later be dominated by black players).

So yes, it's quite easy to see how many ethnic whites, even the pretty liberal ones, would be skeptical of the abortion rights movement.  It would probably be only later when many liberal Catholics thought through the implications of not having the option to a safe and legal abortion that they started drifting more and more toward the pro-choice side.  Of course I would also claim that many liberal Catholics, particularly Ted Kennedy, were probably waiting to switch sides once the force of law was on their side.

An interesting subject to be sure.

Something that has never really occurred to me, but just clicks when I think of all of the hold-out Democratic politicians "coming out" for marriage equality in that orchestrated manner in 2013.

I think you probably nailed that one - at least as an explanation for why Ted Kennedy used to be 'pro-life.'

It's interesting.

People like Kennedy for example probably were never really opposed to it, instead they just went with the party's shifting views on the issue.

The same can be said for someone like Bush Sr, who's late in career change from pro-choice to pro-life would most likely have been more out appeasing the party base than any actual change in private beliefs.

And, interweaving this with SSM again, he notably has attended a lesbian wedding ceremony while his politically active sons remain opposed to it.

The real question and the one that we'll unfortunately never know is if John and Bobby would have had the same "evolution" as Teddy or is it possible they influence Teddy to stay pro-life.

Was Bobby also pro-life though? I remember reading somewhere Bobby was pro-choice.

Looks like a lot of people are cowards on the "a" word.

Sorry to bump the thread, but I think I finally found Spiro Agnew's position on abortion: He signed a liberalized abortion bill as governor of Maryland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/09/19/nixon-vice-president-spiro-t-agnew-dies/6616ed01-311a-4b13-8051-dd0ce3782552/?utm_term=.6496e1d66634 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/09/19/nixon-vice-president-spiro-t-agnew-dies/6616ed01-311a-4b13-8051-dd0ce3782552/?utm_term=.6496e1d66634)

Also, candidate Alf Landon disliked Reagan bringing up abortion in politics, so it's clear he was pro choice.

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-09-07/news/mn-4187_1_great-day (http://articles.latimes.com/1987-09-07/news/mn-4187_1_great-day)

I tried to find information on John Bricker's position, since he lived until the '80s, but I couldn't find any.