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Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation by Ronald Reagan
This is a new edition of the dynamic book first published in 1983; the only book to be published by a U.S. President while he held office. With new photos and all new supporting materials, the original work by President Reagan shines with a timeless, poetic beauty. At a time when concerted efforts are being made to excise President Reagan's legacy from history, his prophetic view of the sanctity of human life, and his commitment to the "integrity of the human person" stands as a beacon of moral leadership.Contributions from Wanda Franz, Ph.D., President of the National Right to Life Committee; Brian P. Johnston, California Commissioner on Aging; and the Honorable William Clark, Chief of Staff to then-Governor Reagan, National Security Advisor to the President, Secretary of the Interior, and the man whom Edmund Morris, official Reagan biographer, called, "the most important member of both Reagan administrations, and the man spiritually closest to the President."
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Ronald Reagan
302 books274 followersRonald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party and became an important figure in the American conservative movement. His presidency is known as the Reagan era.
Born in Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and was hired the next year as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. In 1937, he moved to California where he became a well-known film actor. During his acting career, Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild twice, from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. In the 1950s, he hosted General Electric Theater and worked as a motivational speaker for General Electric. Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech during the 1964 presidential election launched his rise as a leading conservative figure. After being elected governor of California in 1966, he raised state taxes, turned the state budget deficit into a surplus and implemented harsh crackdowns on university protests. Following his loss to Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries, Reagan won the Republican Party's nomination and then a landslide victory over President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
In his first term as president, Reagan began implementing "Reaganomics", which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. On the world stage, he escalated the arms race, increased military spending, transitioned Cold War policy away from the policies of détente with the Soviet Union, and ordered the 1983 invasion of Grenada. He also survived an assassination attempt, fought public-sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic. In the 1984 presidential election, he defeated former vice president Walter Mondale in another landslide victory. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and engaging in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Reagan left the presidency in 1989 with the American economy having seen a significant reduction of inflation, the unemployment rate having fallen, and the U.S. having entered its then-longest peacetime expansion. At the same time, the national debt had nearly tripled since 1981 as a result of his cuts in taxes and increased military spending, despite cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Reagan's foreign policies also contributed to the end of the Cold War. Though he planned an active post-presidency, it was hindered, after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, and his physical and mental capacities gradually deteriorated, leading to his death in 2004. His tenure constituted a realignment toward conservative policies in the United States, and he is often considered an icon of American conservatism. Historical rankings of U.S. presidents have typically placed Reagan in the upper tier, and his post-presidential approval ratings by the general public are usually high.
Born in Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and was hired the next year as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. In 1937, he moved to California where he became a well-known film actor. During his acting career, Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild twice, from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. In the 1950s, he hosted General Electric Theater and worked as a motivational speaker for General Electric. Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech during the 1964 presidential election launched his rise as a leading conservative figure. After being elected governor of California in 1966, he raised state taxes, turned the state budget deficit into a surplus and implemented harsh crackdowns on university protests. Following his loss to Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries, Reagan won the Republican Party's nomination and then a landslide victory over President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
In his first term as president, Reagan began implementing "Reaganomics", which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. On the world stage, he escalated the arms race, increased military spending, transitioned Cold War policy away from the policies of détente with the Soviet Union, and ordered the 1983 invasion of Grenada. He also survived an assassination attempt, fought public-sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic. In the 1984 presidential election, he defeated former vice president Walter Mondale in another landslide victory. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and engaging in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Reagan left the presidency in 1989 with the American economy having seen a significant reduction of inflation, the unemployment rate having fallen, and the U.S. having entered its then-longest peacetime expansion. At the same time, the national debt had nearly tripled since 1981 as a result of his cuts in taxes and increased military spending, despite cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Reagan's foreign policies also contributed to the end of the Cold War. Though he planned an active post-presidency, it was hindered, after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, and his physical and mental capacities gradually deteriorated, leading to his death in 2004. His tenure constituted a realignment toward conservative policies in the United States, and he is often considered an icon of American conservatism. Historical rankings of U.S. presidents have typically placed Reagan in the upper tier, and his post-presidential approval ratings by the general public are usually high.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 7, 2023
I read this book because both my liberal and conservative friends use the same term to describe it: turning point. After SCOTUS came down with the reversal of Roe v Wade I found myself asking several questions about how we arrived here. No political commentary here; whatever side you take on this issue I think it is important to understand the process that takes place when movements ripple across our nation and crest in dissension. I predict this will not be the last controversial ruling SCOTUS will hand down.
July 5, 2008
Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation is an historically important document and one of the most passionate and well-argued pro-life essays ever written. The publication of such an essay by a President while in office (and in his first term, no less) was unheard of, but the knowledge that some 15 million unborn children had been aborted in the first ten years after abortion was legalized in this country compelled Ronald Reagan to do something to put an end to a practice doing irreparable harm to both families and the entire nation. The essay is a short but brilliant condemnation of abortion. The issue affects all of us, Reagan insists, because the diminishment of the life of the unborn diminishes the value of all human life. He exposes the ugly underside of the pro-abortion "quality of life" argument, likening it to slavery, drawing parallels between the Roe vs. Wade decision and the Dred Scot decision that divided Americans over a century earlier. The "quality of life" argument is an argument for quality control of the population, according to Reagan. It says that some human lives are worthless and thus deserving of death; as such, it is a dark echo of the Holocaust which has now inconceivably been endowed with the quality of "mercy." Legalized abortion, Reagan makes clear, put America at the top of a very slippery slope. Not only are unborn babies being killed because they are not wanted, many are killed because of defects - someone decides that such a child would be a burden on the parents and family or the child will not be able to live a "normal" life. Such babies are dubbed useless and without value by the abortionist proponents and are thus denied the human rights our Founding Fathers promised every American. Just as slaves were denied the value of their human lives in America's past, "useless" unborn babies are now being denied that same value of human life.
Such arbitrary evaluation of unborn lives must stop, Reagan says. Such thinking leads naturally to further crimes such as infanticide. Such a case the previous year served to compel Reagan to write this very essay. The courts of Indiana had allowed "Baby Doe" to starve to death after his birth because the child had Down's Syndrome. In essence, retardation had been equated to a crime, one which deserved the death penalty. No nation can survive and prosper when a group of individuals can look at a child and declare whether that child has any value as a human being. The core of Reagan's forceful argument is to be found here: America has two choices. It can be a nation wherein some human lives are declared to be of no value, or it can be a nation who protects and defends the sanctity of all life. We cannot survive as a free nation, Reagan declares, "when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide." That is the core of Reagan's eloquent and insightful essay.
I cannot speak to the accompanying articles in the new addition of this book, as they differ from those in my older edition. Reagan's essay, though, is one of the most powerful and logical anti-abortion arguments in the library of pro-life advocates. More timely than ever, this is an essay that all Americans should read and ponder over.
Such arbitrary evaluation of unborn lives must stop, Reagan says. Such thinking leads naturally to further crimes such as infanticide. Such a case the previous year served to compel Reagan to write this very essay. The courts of Indiana had allowed "Baby Doe" to starve to death after his birth because the child had Down's Syndrome. In essence, retardation had been equated to a crime, one which deserved the death penalty. No nation can survive and prosper when a group of individuals can look at a child and declare whether that child has any value as a human being. The core of Reagan's forceful argument is to be found here: America has two choices. It can be a nation wherein some human lives are declared to be of no value, or it can be a nation who protects and defends the sanctity of all life. We cannot survive as a free nation, Reagan declares, "when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide." That is the core of Reagan's eloquent and insightful essay.
I cannot speak to the accompanying articles in the new addition of this book, as they differ from those in my older edition. Reagan's essay, though, is one of the most powerful and logical anti-abortion arguments in the library of pro-life advocates. More timely than ever, this is an essay that all Americans should read and ponder over.
September 20, 2025
lmao loser
May 23, 2021
Although I grew up with Reagan as President and always appreciated his presidency politically, and although I knew that he was strongly pro-life as I grew up in the pro-life movement (thanks to my mom), I never knew that he had written on the subject until recently. After learning that, I promptly ordered a copy off Amazon and got a used, former library copy (complete with old-school library checkout card with the dates and names of the people that had checked it out, like how library books were when I was a kid). It's a good book, although I should note that Reagan didn't really write a book, per se; he wrote an essay that was then combined with 2 other essays to make this short book. This is only 95 small-format pages with plenty of white space and a good 7-page introduction, so it's a quick read cover to cover. But in spite of its small size, it's good content. I mentioned that two other essays helped fill out the book. They are "The Slide to Auschwitz" by former US Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, and "The Humane Holocaust" by Malcolm Muggeridge.
Ronald Reagan, C. Everett Koop, and Malcom Muggeridge - that's three big names stepping up to the plate to denounce abortion. Reagan, in his typical simple, common-sense eloquence, makes a cumulative case in the first 23 pages after the introduction. He draws on legal history of Supreme Court decisions, improvements in scientific knowledge that were laid out in Congressional testimony in 1981, moral intuitions (like that if you're uncertain if a person is alive or not, you don't try burying them, you err on the side of caution), and basic ethical concerns (devaluing life for one group opens the door for that to be applied to other groups). Koop brings good insight as a pediatric surgeon to the bioethics question of prenatal diagnosis of birth defects and the subsequent question of "quality of life" versus sanctity of life in his 32-page essay. He and Muggeridge both take sobering looks at the history of the debate and how it played out in Germany even before the infamous Nazi regime. Unfortunately, it's usually only the final act that catches our attention, but they explains how the foundation for the Nazi atrocities were only the end result of prior decisions in the realm of medical ethics. Is there "life unworthy of life"? Can we as all-too-fallible human beings, often with unquestioned biases that we only recognize in hindsight years later, ever hope to decide such a question correctly every time? No, and when we try, we slide into Auschwitz, as Koop puts it, or we condemn the Nazis at Nuremberg for their holocaust as we kill far more in our abortion holocaust than they ever could in all their evil machinations, as Muggeridge points out.
If you are already pro-life, this is definitely a good book to add to your library. There's some good quotes in there I haven't come across elsewhere. And if you're not pro-life, I'd encourage you to read it as well and work through the logic of each of these author's cases. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and you may very well find yourself helping to defend the lives of the most vulnerable among us and speaking out for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Ronald Reagan, C. Everett Koop, and Malcom Muggeridge - that's three big names stepping up to the plate to denounce abortion. Reagan, in his typical simple, common-sense eloquence, makes a cumulative case in the first 23 pages after the introduction. He draws on legal history of Supreme Court decisions, improvements in scientific knowledge that were laid out in Congressional testimony in 1981, moral intuitions (like that if you're uncertain if a person is alive or not, you don't try burying them, you err on the side of caution), and basic ethical concerns (devaluing life for one group opens the door for that to be applied to other groups). Koop brings good insight as a pediatric surgeon to the bioethics question of prenatal diagnosis of birth defects and the subsequent question of "quality of life" versus sanctity of life in his 32-page essay. He and Muggeridge both take sobering looks at the history of the debate and how it played out in Germany even before the infamous Nazi regime. Unfortunately, it's usually only the final act that catches our attention, but they explains how the foundation for the Nazi atrocities were only the end result of prior decisions in the realm of medical ethics. Is there "life unworthy of life"? Can we as all-too-fallible human beings, often with unquestioned biases that we only recognize in hindsight years later, ever hope to decide such a question correctly every time? No, and when we try, we slide into Auschwitz, as Koop puts it, or we condemn the Nazis at Nuremberg for their holocaust as we kill far more in our abortion holocaust than they ever could in all their evil machinations, as Muggeridge points out.
If you are already pro-life, this is definitely a good book to add to your library. There's some good quotes in there I haven't come across elsewhere. And if you're not pro-life, I'd encourage you to read it as well and work through the logic of each of these author's cases. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and you may very well find yourself helping to defend the lives of the most vulnerable among us and speaking out for those who cannot speak for themselves.
February 3, 2018
“In life-denying terms, as we have seen, compassion easily becomes a holocaust; garden suburbs and gulags derive from the same quest for quality of life, and the surgeon’s knife can equally be used to sustain and extinguish life.”
Food for thought? Yes.
Worth the read? Yes.
Good conservative read? Yes.
Food for thought? Yes.
Worth the read? Yes.
Good conservative read? Yes.
January 21, 2018
A poignant reminder of why we can never grow apathetic about the greatest moral crisis of our age.
January 21, 2023
I LOVED this one. And I love Ronald Reagan. So precise & beautifully heartbreaking. 🤍
March 24, 2021
When this book was written, it must have inspired real hope in the readers that were fighting against the holocaust of abortion in the United States. A sitting president wrote a book against the unjust murder of babies that befan after Roe v Wade. He is energetic and hopeful in this book, just as he was whenever you saw him giving a talk, interview or speech.
Reading it decades after the fact, it seems a sad naïveté. It felt the same as reading Jacques Maritain with all of his hope for the future of the UN, which he played such a grande role in forming. Or Pope St. John Paul II’s letter the nations of the Americas, with all of the great ideas and expectations of unity and goodness. Reading the hope and expectation of these three gentlemen concerning their fellow, our fellow human beings, and seeing the outcome, is disheartening in hindsight. “What if’s” are a fruitless game, so I leave off here, and say that I am certainly glad I read this and the other books I mentioned. And I am melancholy just in recalling them to write this review.
Reading it decades after the fact, it seems a sad naïveté. It felt the same as reading Jacques Maritain with all of his hope for the future of the UN, which he played such a grande role in forming. Or Pope St. John Paul II’s letter the nations of the Americas, with all of the great ideas and expectations of unity and goodness. Reading the hope and expectation of these three gentlemen concerning their fellow, our fellow human beings, and seeing the outcome, is disheartening in hindsight. “What if’s” are a fruitless game, so I leave off here, and say that I am certainly glad I read this and the other books I mentioned. And I am melancholy just in recalling them to write this review.
October 26, 2020
This book is really good. It talks about abortion and why it is so terrible. Ronald Reagan is very passionate in his essay, and I admire him for that. He compares abortion to slavery, how both dehumanize certain people. He makes some really good points on how terrible abortion is.
It was interesting reading this essay. Mr. Reagan was a very good writer.
It was interesting reading this essay. Mr. Reagan was a very good writer.
May 1, 2015
This book is an amazing work that is both succinct and elegant at the same time. Ronald Reagan lays everything on the line and makes it very hard to argue with his political and historical observations on the matter in hand.
September 30, 2021
Great... this is just great! We all know that Reagan was the last best president the US had, and you don't need to be American to know that, but we also know that being a Republican, he trigged plenty of controversy, specially with those who believe in liberal politics (in an American pattern, FYI).
Obviously, by being a Republican and writing this essay (not by himself all alone, it's important to cite) during his first presidency, this is an anti-abortion, pro-life and sometimes Christian essay on how abortion can be cruel and how we, the people, should defend unborn lives and life in general.
Reagan is clear when he says that by diminishing the life of the unborn, you diminish the value of all human life and he even compares abortion to slavery in the US and Nazism in Germany due to the fact that slaves and Jews were denied their own lives.
Reagan addresses moral intuitions (this includes religion) and ethical issues, but also he relies on American politics and scientific knowledge to condemn abortion.
Still, this is not an easy subject to discuss. I can say that I am pro-choice because if I defend individual liberties (including the right to bear arms), I would be the one-of-a-kind hypocrite if I were against abortion. However, I also can say that I am pro-life because, as he explained, there are plenty of people using the abortion excuse to get rid of defective children and using the "quality of life" speech but the truth is we really don't know if a so-called defective child will or will not have a good quality of life. And finally, the Catholic speech (I am Catholic, Reagan was Presbyterian at the time of his passing), if God sent us to this world, defective or not, we have a purpose.
I'm still in favor of abortion if the life of the woman is at a risk or if the child is fruit of a rape. God doesn't approve violence and raping is one of the worst, if not the worst, types of violence a woman can be submitted to. Not even my faith would make me disapprove abortion on these cases.
Anyway, this is a good conservative reading written by a good conservative president, although my way of conservatism is way more British and Canadian than American one, still this is a strong advocacy for anti-abortion in the United States and conservative people overall. Highly recommended.
August 8, 2020
Very good.
"Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value."
"Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."
"Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value."
"Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."
October 20, 2020
“But I cannot understand why the other people... don’t cry out. I am concerned about this, because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from the medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.” Can this happen here in the US? It already is.
April 7, 2020
Alot of good points, from all three contributors.
January 26, 2021
Short, simple and to the point. A collection of three essays (Regan's being the longest) are quite profound in their wisdom and history.
July 18, 2022
Pure gold. A must read by the great communicator.
Just as relevant today as ever.
Just as relevant today as ever.
August 9, 2022
I actually cried while reading this book. You can feel his regret and his passion and compassion for those being killed.
July 21, 2023
Excellent discussion on the importance of protecting life. Main take away, The real question is, what is the value of human life?
February 25, 2025
Powerful. President Reagan (as well as the other two writers) show the tragic results of a society devaluing children and allowing for the murder of the unborn. With a particular focus on the eugenicist ethos behind much abortion, the authors dismantle any idea of abortion being a noble or even acceptable action, and one of them points out what a complete betrayal it is for doctors who swore to uphold life to tear it apart instead. It is rare for a sitting president to write a lengthy essay like this. The fact that President Reagan found the time to pen "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" demonstrates how important of an issue this was to him and continues to be in our nation. Murder cannot be confined to the womb. It will spread if we continue to allow it. Let us not sear our conscience any further.
April 7, 2014
A brief look into a president's convictions and his fight to protect all innocent American lives. He was a Pro-life champion, and believed in the true meaning of those famous words in the Declaration of Independence that state: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". He felt that these words were never truer than when related to the basic human right to be born. I love how he writes about the "sanctity of human life" vs the so-called "quality of human life" arguments. This nation was founded on equality, and therefore that principle clearly validates the sanctity of all human life. Ronald Reagan was a true American. He fought for life. I only wish I had been old enough to vote for him.
August 19, 2022
A deeply unimpressive argument against abortion.
“The real question today is not when human life begins, but, ‘What is the value of human life?’” No, that is a crucial part of the debate and not addressing it is a serious flaw in Reagan’s argument.
Also, he says, “It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not,” but Reagan approved of the death penalty, which is literally deciding that a criminal is not worthy to live.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t touch at all on how pregnancy wrecks a woman’s body, and pretends that a baby just pops into existence without any issues.
This is obviously a brief review and I only include the two above quotations because they especially stuck out to me. Overall, Reagan’s essay is prettily written but uncompelling.
Note: I did not read the afterword.
“The real question today is not when human life begins, but, ‘What is the value of human life?’” No, that is a crucial part of the debate and not addressing it is a serious flaw in Reagan’s argument.
Also, he says, “It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not,” but Reagan approved of the death penalty, which is literally deciding that a criminal is not worthy to live.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t touch at all on how pregnancy wrecks a woman’s body, and pretends that a baby just pops into existence without any issues.
This is obviously a brief review and I only include the two above quotations because they especially stuck out to me. Overall, Reagan’s essay is prettily written but uncompelling.
Note: I did not read the afterword.
August 13, 2015
I found this beauty at a thrift store. Very refreshing and bold. Super interesting to see the main concepts vocabulary etc surrounding the topic in 1983. So neat to see a sitting President write an essay making a clear moral point without political watering down. Reagan's words are short clear and to the point. "The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life?" And "We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others." The book also has two great afterwords essays
March 27, 2009
"The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life?" Ronald Reagan
Well said, Mr. President, well said!
Well said, Mr. President, well said!
reference
May 31, 2009On its way...
Read
December 30, 2009uhhhh... so... ummm... abortion and auschwitz...hmmm...ummm...
February 8, 2012
A must-read for any Conservative.
July 6, 2012
Well written and thought provoking. Reagan and those who wrote the afterwords (back in 1984) seemed to believe that Roe v. Wade would be overturned long before now. Sad that it still stands.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews