Barry Goldwater helped his daughter get an Illegal Abortion
Who knew…
Fifteen years ago, Lee Edwards, who had worked on Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, interviewed Goldwater’s daughter Joanne for a biography of the senator. Based on the interview, he reported that in 1955, when Joanne, “not yet twenty and still in school, became pregnant with the child of her intended husband and told her father that she did not want to have the child, Goldwater said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’ He arranged for Joanne to fly back to Washington and have a then-illegal abortion.”
Two years ago, Zeitgeist Films released Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater, a documentary produced and narrated by C.C. Goldwater, the senator’s granddaughter. In it, Joanne Goldwater tells the story:
I was getting engaged. … It was actually in the Christmas of 1955. And in January, I—I found out that I was pregnant. And I had planned—I had planned this engagement party and a wedding. And—we had—we had planned to have children. We both were still in school. I was getting my degree. And I—I wasn’t ready to have a child. And I got an abortion. … And this was when it was just totally forbidden and very, very dangerous. And young girls were dying by trying it themselves. My father, being conservative, he felt that the government should not decide what women do with their bodies or anything else, you know. The government should stay out of all that. My mother started Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the ’30s. And that’s why I felt that it was easy to go to them and tell them. And they were very, very supportive.
This is a revelation to you? You didn’t know he was pro-choice? Did you know he was anti-censorship? Or his comment about Jerry Falwell: “Every Christian in the US ought to line up and kick him in the ass”?
Imagine that, a conservative who believes the government shouldn’t intrude in the family and individual rights.
Oh how far republicans have gone by sacrificing their beliefs for votes from “moral” people.
Dana,
No I didn’t know which was why I shared it with the group my man…
I knew Goldwater was pro-choice. I know history looks at Goldwater more kindly than his contemporaries did, but we have to remember that he wanted to use nuclear weapons.
Interesting. Thats the first I’ve heard of a hard-core conservative opposing abortion restriction.
Ryan,
I think Goldwater belongs more in the libertarian wing of the Republican party. The Republicans have run for 30 yrs. as libertarians (smaller government, lower taxes, get government off our backs). They certainly have not governed that way!
Goldwater conservatives in the 60’s were not the mindless theocrat repubs of today.
He also wrote “you don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” He was for gays in the military.
I’m starting to like the AuH20 dude more and more.
How come us Dem’s new about Barry’s feelings more that the Repuks. Pro choice, Pro gay