New Tapes Reveal, Nixon: Anti-Choice, With a Disturbing Exception

Just-released tapes from President Nixon's time in the White House reveal that he feared legal abortion would lead to "permissiveness" but that he felt that it was justified in some cases -- in the case of rape, but also when you have "a black and a white," the New York Times reports.

Just-released tapes from President Nixon’s time in the White House reveal that he feared legal abortion would lead to "permissiveness" but that he felt that it was justified in some cases — in the case of rape, but also when you have "a black and a white," the New York Times reports. The tape, made on January 23, 1973, the day Roe was decided, sheds new light on Nixon’s personal view on abortion, as he made no public statement that day.

"There is something really fishy about people who seem unable to talk about abortion without also talking about race," says Dana Goldstein on TAPPED. "…[W]hen it came to interracial
couples, Nixon fully supported abortion — six years after the Supreme
Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia."