There is something really fishy about people who seem unable to talk about abortion without also talking about race. First, there’s the Mike Huckabee/Sam Brownback version of the disease: Folks who compare abortion to the Holocaust and slavery. The implication is clear: The lives of fully sentient human beings living outside the womb, those who were murdered in the Holocaust or enslaved and raped during slavery, have the same value as a fetus. Respectful!

Now The New York Times reports that on the day Roe v. Wade was decided, President Nixon expressed — on tape, of course — ambivalence. In some situations, abortion “breaks the family,” he said. But when it came to interracial couples, Nixon fully supported abortion — six years after the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he said, adding that rape was also such a situation.

Well. Being racist is about the worst reason ever to be pro-choice. And about the worst reason ever to be anti-choice. Just saying.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.