‘She Absolutely Did Not Say That’--Aide : First Lady’s Right-to-Life Quote Denied

WASHINGTON — Nancy Reagan’s spokeswoman today emphatically denied the First Lady said, “I don’t give a damn about the right-to-lifers,” as she is quoted in Donald T. Regan’s new book.

The former White House chief of staff, in his book “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington,” wrote that Mrs. Reagan ordered the deletion of an anti-abortion section in President Reagan’s State of the Union address last year.

Regan quoted the First Lady as saying: “I don’t give a damn about the right-to-lifers.”

Elaine Crispen, the First Lady’s press secretary, said, “She absolutely did not say that.”

Crispen said she did not want to get into the position of responding to various aspects of Regan’s book, who targeted the First Lady as strongly influential in determining the timing of presidential events on the basis of astrology. (Stories, Page 7.)

But Crispen also vehemently denied that Mrs. Reagan was the instigator for urging CIA Director William J. Casey to resign while he was dying from brain cancer in a Washington hospital at Christmastime.

Crispen said the First Lady has not talked to her astrologist, San Francisco socialite Joan Quigley, for a couple of months. But added that she will continue to consult her “on a need basis.”

The First Lady is also worried about the effect the revelations of astral guidance will have on Reagan’s image in the world, Crispen said.

She said Mrs. Reagan has “gotten a lot of calls from spouses of world leaders” who tell her, “This too shall pass.”

The First Lady’s memoirs are due to be published about the middle of 1989, several months after the Reagans leave the White House. She has voluminous journals on her White House years and is working with an editor.

“She’s too classy a lady to write a ‘kiss and tell’ book,” said Crispen. But she added, “I think she’ll set the record straight.”