P residents and presidential candidates in the 1970s, whether Re-
publicans or Democrats, generally flip-flopped on the issue of
abortion, which increasingly divided the country. In contrast, Ronald
Reagan boldly spearheaded the cause of overturning Roe and cham-
pioned the forces that elevated abortion to the national political agenda.
In the second decade following Roe, the abortion controversy was thus
infused into presidential politics. Moreover, the Reagan administration
not only fundamentally changed the national debate over abortion but
set the stage for how the controversy will play out in the 1990s.

Unlike Reagan, conservative Republican President Richard M. Nixon as-
serted no presidential leadership in the emergent battle over abortion, or
even in opposing the Burger Court's ruling in Roe. To be sure, when Roe
came down, Nixon was in the middle of his own political troubles,
which would eventually drive him from the White House. In January
1973 the trial of the "Watergate" burglars was just beginning, and Con-
gress was moving toward holding hearings on the administration's ob-
struction of justice and cover-up of the break-in. Just six months earlier,
before the 1972 presidential election, five men had broken into and were
arrested in the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the

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