Reproductive Choice - Actor Ben Stein Encourages Election of Republicans to End Abortion in the United States
October 2002
Political Action: Actor Ben Stein Encourages Election of Republicans to End Abortion in the United States
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"AP-RICHMOND, VA. -- Television comedy quiz show host Ben Stein urged abortion opponents to work to elect Republicans in a speech marking the 35th anniversary of an anti-abortion organization.

Electing Republicans would eventually make abortions illegal again in the United States, Stein said Friday night in Richmond at the Virginia Society for Human Life's anniversary dinner.

Stein was a speech writer and lawyer for Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Compares U.S. Position on Abortion with Earlier U.S. Position on Slavery

"There are about 1.3 million abortions in the nation annually, the author and former law professor said. "Good lord, abortion is by far the largest cause of death in the U.S., and every one is avoidable."

America regards abortion today, he said, much as it thought of slavery in the early 1800s, before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation ended the South's peculiar institution.

"It was not recognized that it is morally wrong for one man to own another," he said. "Then we realized that [black slaves were] human," and that slavery was "an outrage against humanity." (Peter Bacque, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 5, 2002)

Besides working to put conservatives in the White House to produce a Supreme Court willing to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, Stein also called for legislative, judicial and personal changes to end abortion in America.

"Mothers must be convinced that a baby is a human being and its life is worth saving," he said.

In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the right to an abortion in all 50 states, sparking a political debate that remains highly charged to this day." (Hampton Roads Daily Press, October 5, 2002)

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