Hmm. I suppose so, but the way the quote reads it doesn't hint at a lot of nuance behind the comment, you know?
I understand what you're saying, but actually I was more deriving that from speculating about the broader social context informing the discussion, not assumptions about his unspoken thought process. It's 1973, 6 years since
Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage; just 10 months since the Pill was legalized for unmarried women; tensions between the youth counterculture and the socially conservative Old Guard (Nixon's base) are still running fairly high; and you have what for the times are these two moderately sexist, moderately racist older white men (both with daughters) trading reactions to
Roe v. Wade. (Nixon: "Abortions encourage permissiveness. A girl gets knocked up...she goes down to the doctor, wants to get an abortion for $5 or whatever." Colson laments that yes, abortions encourage "permissiveness" and "promiscuousness"; Nixon assents, "It breaks the family.") This is a paternalistic criticism of abortion, based on notions of women's character and proper role within the family, rather than 'do fetuses have rights.' Then you have this dutiful recognition that, naturally, the sensible man realizes there are times when it's "necessary"...like when it's "a black and a white," for example. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine that one possible mutually understood (racist, sexist) subtext here might've been
: You know how it is, the circles kids fall in with these days; your girl could really get herself in a lot of trouble, and having certain...backups around means you can rescue her from a world of shame for everyone.
I'm not saying I'm convinced of that by any means. But honestly it does seem to me
as plausible as the only other interpretation I can think of, which is that he literally and categorically meant 'Now of course,
any woman pregnant with a mixed-race baby should be getting an abortion.' Maybe. On the one hand Nixon was, so far as I know, consistent and sincere in considering legal segregation one of the greatest historical sins of America, and if he'd had issues with (for example)
Loving v. Virginia--which was obviously pathbreaking for interracial families--I've never heard of it; on the other hand, he certainly held some highly condescending and distrustful attitudes towards black people, so it's hard to know. I guess it comes down to, was he simply so racist as to find all thought of interracial children wholly disgusting? Or was this the 'middle path' Richard Nixon--who actually quite skillfully (in a political, not moral, sense) played the race policy agendas of the liberal Northern Dems and the George C. Wallace types off against each other while not being of either--displaying his 'pragmatic' understanding of, and comfort with, his own voter base's racist/sexist sensibilities without actually expecting that everyone should think this way?
Aaaaanyway, on a brief off-topic note, from the OP-linked article:
Mr Nixon agreed with [Rev. Billy Graham] that Jewish-American leaders who opposed efforts to spread Christianity were in danger of triggering an anti-Semitic backlash: "What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up. It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."
While I'm glad to live in a time when it would be truly jolting to think your President freely says such things in private (though Nixon was President when I was born), reading this in 2009, it just sounds so fantastically warped that I couldn't help but giggle.
