A Peek at the Good Old Days

I'm not old enough to have any distinct memories of Richard Nixon's presidency, but a sense of his infamous charm comes through in this newly-revealed colloquoy about abortion shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

Coming well after the GOP's embrace of racism but still a few years before its embrace of the Christianist obsession with abortion, it is blunt, tasteless, heartless, crude, vile, and utterly amoral.

Quaint.