First Presidents’ Day Post ‘Dobbs’ Prompts Reflections on Presidential Pro-Life Positions

For some, Presidents’ Day brings to mind Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but for American Life League president Judie Brown, talk of presidents brings memories of her and her late husband Paul’s friendship with the fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s life-affirming views, according to Brown, paint a stark contrast with America’s current leader—a man who professes to be Catholic in a way that even the first Catholic president would likely not condone.

Brown recalls how much she valued their time with the man she has labelled America’s most pro-life president.

President Ronald Reagan, Brown reports, was genuinely pro-life.

“President Reagan rued the day that, when as governor, he signed the 1968 abortion law in California, and he  said so many times,” shares Brown, “not necessarily for publicity but because he had genuinely changed his mind. Having spoken with him about this, I believe he was sincere.”

Brown also points to Reagan’s 1983 essay “Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation”—the only presidential pro-life work on record. In the piece, Reagan defended the life of the preborn, predicted that the nation’s opinion on abortion would eventually change, and expressed his desire to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

“We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life,” wrote Reagan.

Reagan was not the first modern president to be pro-life. President John F. Kennedy, a devout Catholic, was quietly, but certainly, pro-life.

Ira Stoll, author of the 2013 biography JFK Conservative, records Kennedy as saying, “Now, on the question of limiting population: as you know the Japanese have been doing it very vigorously, through abortion, which I think would be repugnant to all Americans.”

During John F. Kennedy’s lifetime, abortion was not the hot-button issue it is today, therefore his public statements do not address it. However, Brown notes that JFK left a major pro-life legacy in his appointment of Supreme Court justice Byron White, who wrote the scathing dissent to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that decriminalized abortion in America.

White’s words support the 2022 decision of the nation’s high court in overturning Roe, which he labeled an “improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review.” He wrote about the great moral wrong that was being imposed on the United States through the Roe decision because, “The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life . . . that she carries.”

Though Justice White had to grapple with the evil of abortion, Brown points out that Kennedy did not have to contend with the politics of it.

“Though he was a scoundrel,” Brown states, “President Kennedy chose to be quietly pro-life.”

Sixty years after America welcomed Kennedy as its first Catholic president, President Joe Biden took office, also professing the Catholic faith, but openly refusing to uphold the Church’s pro-life teaching.

Throughout his presidency, Biden has continued to promote abortion, and following the 2022 Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade, excoriated the Court for doing so. He labels the Supreme Court’s action as “extreme ideology” and a “tragic error” and repeatedly and publicly vows to restore Roe.

“President Biden has been a traitorous Catholic from his first days in elected office,” declares Brown. “I believe his religious convictions are as shallow as his politics.”

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life education organization in the United States. She served three five-year terms (1996-2011) as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome and has written 12 books, including The Broken Path: How Catholic Bishops Got Lost in the Weeds of American Politics (2011) and Saving Those Damned Catholics: A Defense of Catholic Teaching (2007). Judie’s editorials have been featured in many top media outlets, including The Washington Post and USA Today, and she has appeared on hundreds of broadcasts, including 20/20, 60 Minutes, Mother Angelica Live, The O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Today, Oprah, Larry King Live, and EWTN.