THE TELEGRAPH: President Richard Nixon believed it was 'necessary' to abort mixed-race babies, newly released tapes have revealed.
Commenting privately on the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe vs Wade, which decriminalised abortion in the US, the then-president said he worried that access to a legal abortion could lead to "permissiveness" because "it breaks the family" but thought them justified in certain cases.
"There are times when an abortion is necessary," he told his aide Chuck Colson. "I know that. When you have a black and a white." Mr Colson offered that rape might also make an abortion legitimate, prompting Mr Nixon to respond: "Or a rape."
The comments were revealed in more than 150 hours of tape and 30,000 pages of documents made public this week by the Nixon Presidential Library, part of the United State National Archives.
They were recorded by secret microphones in the Oval Office from January and February 1973 and provide fresh insights into Mr Nixon's tumultuous presidency, which ended with his resignation in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.
Mr Nixon was widely believed at the time to be privately opposed to abortion rights, though he declined to take a public stance on the issue.
The tapes capture mundane conversations about daily life in the White House but also offer new insight into changes in US society. >>> Toby Harnden in Washington | Wednesday, June 24, 2009
