Abortion is one of the most divisive issues of our time. However, it might surprise you to learn that before the current “abortion wars,” many of the leading democrats such as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and even Bill Clinton were originally opposed to abortion; alternatively, many Republicans, including Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, initially supported abortion rights. So, one’s party affiliation as “Democrat” or “Republican” was not an adequate predictor of his or her stance on abortion. Gradually, over the past forty-five years or so, the debate over abortion has shifted and become so hopelessly polarized that it is now “America’s second civil war.”[1]
But the fact is, as Charles Camosy points out, the current “pro-choice” vs. “pro-life” rhetoric “[does] not capture US American’s complex views on abortion . . . [Such] labels conceal more than they reveal.”[2] To illustrate this point, a PRI poll found that 70 percent of Americans say the term “pro-choice” describes them somewhat or very well; but nearly 65 percent also say that “pro-life” describes them somewhat or very well.[3] For most American citizens, a key marker for abortions is twelve weeks, or the end of the first trimester. A 2018 Gallop poll found, for example, that 60 percent want abortion before week twelve to be “mostly legal.” But after week twelve, support for abortion plummets to 23 percent.[4]
Recent surveys therefore indicate that a clear majority of Americans want greater restrictions to be placed on abortions, especially in the “middle weeks” of pregnancy, though they do not want abortion to be made flatly illegal. Opinion polls should not, of course, determine the response of Christians to abortion. But understanding the larger cultural and historical context can be helpful in unpacking the moral complexity of this issue. Before assessing the morality of abortion, we must therefore look at some little-known facts about the origins of the pro-life movement. Putting the opposition to abortion within the larger historical context can give us some much need perspective on this contentious issue.
What a Difference a Decade Makes
In September 1972, several hundred pro-lifers—many of whom were college students or recent college graduates—gathered on the Washington Mall to protest abortion. They tore up copies of their birth certificates to promote their view that the law should recognize conception rather than birth as the beginning of human life; and they listened to a rock band sing about the value of unborn children. These protestors were not hardline conservatives, as one would suspect. Rather, many who participated in the event were Catholic liberals and all the speakers who denounced abortion were political liberals. It never occurred to leaders of the National Youth Pro-life Coalition (NYPLC) which organized this event that anyone would associate the pro-life cause with political conservatism. In fact, as I have indicated above, at this time in our nation’s history many leading advocates for abortion were Republicans while many Democrats (including the staunch liberal Edward “Ted” Kennedy) were defenders of the unborn’s “right to life.”
Less than a decade later (January 1981), a large group of pro-lifers again gathered on the Washington Mall to protest abortion. This time, however, many of the protestors were evangelical supporters of the recently elected president, Ronald Reagan, who made opposition to abortion a central part of Republican Party platform. And participants in the 1981 March for Life were entertained by an evangelical musician from Memphis, Tennessee who sang a medley of Christian hits and patriotic songs. How within less than a decade did a movement that was started by Catholic liberal Democrats become the linchpin of conservative evangelical Republican politics?[5]
The Liberal Catholic Origins of the Pro-Life Movement
Most historians of American postwar politics argues Daniel Williams in Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade, say little about the millions of Americans who opposed abortion before Roe v. Wade. To the extent that it is treated at all, the pro-life movement is usually depicted as a reaction against Roe v. Wade, the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, and the growth of federal power. However, before the controversial Supreme Court decision, there were many liberal Catholics as well as Protestants who grounded an opposition to abortion in the language of human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and the value of human life.
Williams writes: “The pro-life cause originated at a far earlier date than historians have previously thought, and its origins were not tied to a backlash against the women’s movement, but instead to a concern about the consequences of the nation’s disrespect for human life.”[6] Early Catholic opposition to abortion was integrally connected with a concern for other rights championed by proponents of New Deal liberalism such as the “right to a living wage” for the poor and racial minorities and the “right to assistance in the education and care of children.” But heading this list was the right that they considered foundational to all other rights—the right to life of the powerless and most vulnerable minority, the unborn, from the moment of conception.[7] Many Catholics viewed the fight against abortion as a fight to preserve respect for life in the face of a growing tendency to view life from the womb to the tomb in purely utilitarian terms. Some of the strongest supporters of the early pro-life movement were women’s libers who regarded abortion as the “ultimate exploitation of women.”[8]
Evangelical Views on Abortion Prior to Roe v Wade
The process by which the term “pro-life” came to be associated with political and religious conservatism is somewhat complicated. But this much is clear. Before Roe v Wade there was a diversity of views among evangelicals on the issue of abortion and there was not a clear consensus on when the developing embryo or fetus should be regarded as a person. Some Protestants (including a few evangelicals) believed that human personhood does not begin until birth. Some self-identified fundamentalists, on the other hand, believed that personhood begins at conception, and therefore regarded abortion as “murder.” But most Protestants, including a majority of evangelicals, steered a middle course between these two extremes—arguing that the unborn has great value as either a potential or actual human life and should therefore be protected except in those cases where the health and life of the mother are threatened.[9]
In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution on abortion which affirmed a “high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” but also resolved “to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such circumstances as rape, incest, clear evidence of fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”[10] That same year, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) issued a statement on abortion which strongly condemned abortion for “reasons of personal convenience” but recognized “the necessity for therapeutic abortions to safeguard the health or life of the mother” including those cases resulting from rape or incest.[11] Indeed, the vast majority evangelicals, including Billy Graham and noted evangelical theologians such as Norman Geisler and Carl F. H. Henry accepted rape as a legitimate reason for abortion.[12] (Geisler has since changed his position and now opposes abortion in all cases except when it is necessary to save the life of the mother.)
Evangelicals and Abortion After Roe v Wade
After the momentous 1973 decision in Roe v Wade which declared a women’s right to privacy and “reproductive freedom” Catholic pro-lifers began losing the support of political liberals. The rights of the unborn conflicted with another rights-based cause which attracted liberals—the woman’s right to equality and bodily autonomy which was emphasized by the feminist movement. As the pro-choice cause increasingly dominated the platform of the Democrats, opponents to abortion found more political support from Republican politicians and “pro-life” gradually became a conservative cause. But, as Williams points out, prior to the late 1970’s the pro-life movement was still overwhelmingly Catholic.[13]
According to historian Randall Balmer, the view that “politically conservative evangelical leaders were so morally outraged by the [Roe v Wade] ruling that they shed their apolitical stupor in order to mobilize politically in defense of the sanctity of life” is largely a myth.[14] Christianity Today and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) did speak for many conservatives in condemning the Supreme Court decision. But argues Balmer, the majority of evangelical leaders said virtually nothing about it. Some even applauded the ruling. W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press wrote, “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court decision.”[15] Russell Moore similarly maintains that ambiguity over when personhood begins allowed evangelicals to “yawn in the face of the culture of death.”[16] Even the Southern Baptist conservative patriarch W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, is quoted as saying: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”[17] Although Criswell came later to embrace the pro-life cause, his case illustrates the attitude among many conservative evangelicals at the time that abortion was largely a “Catholic issue.” For most politically active conservative evangelicals in the mid-1970s (including Jerry Falwell), sexual promiscuity, feminism, and gay rights posed a greater threat than abortion.[18]
By the late 1970s, however, many conservative evangelicals who had once viewed abortion as acceptable under some extreme circumstances such as rape and incest decided that human personhood begins at conception and therefore that abortion is murder except in those rare occasions where it is necessary to save the life of the mother. In 1980 the Southern Baptist Convention replaced its earlier more moderate statement with a staunchly pro-life resolution that allowed for abortion only when the mother’s life was endangered. Jerry Falwell listed abortion as the foremost political concern of the “Moral Majority,” and evangelicals found a political ally in the presidential candidate Ronald Reagan who likewise made abortion a central part of his “pro-family” platform—a platform which strongly opposed New Deal liberalism on issues of poverty and gender equality.[19] A 1980 Gallup Poll showed that evangelical Protestants—most of whom were political conservatives—were more likely than either Catholics or Mainline Protestants to oppose abortion.[20] In the early 1990s even many pro-life Catholics who had previously grounded their opposition to abortion in the ideology of the New Deal came to embrace the political narrative of conservative evangelicalism.[21] The pro-life movement—which was once rooted in the language of the human “right to life” in all areas—became a cause of the political right with its concern to protect the family and “traditional values.”
Conclusion
This brief historical survey raises a number of important questions. Are there things we can learn from the early pro-life movement? What does it mean to be completely and
consistently “pro-life?” In the present politically charged environment, how have both pro-choice and pro-life advocates over-simplified this complex issue? Is there basis for finding common ground? How can Christians use Scripture in an unbiased and responsible manner? What implications does a biblical approach to abortion have for our common life as Christians? These are questions that I will attempt to partly answer in subsequent essays.
[1] Camosy, Beyond the Culture Wars, 1. [2] Camosy, Resisting Throwaway Culture, 129-30. [3] Camosy, Beyond the Culture Wars, 29. [4] Camosy, Resisting Throwaway Culture, 129-30. [5] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 541-52. [6] Williams, Defenders of the Unborn, 4. [7] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 453-54. [8] Williams, “The Liberal Origins of the Pro-Life Movement,” 4. [9] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 461. [10] Greenhouse and Siegel, Before Roe v Wade, 72 [11] Ibid., 73. [12] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 461; Geisler, Ethics, 222. [13] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 458-59. [14] Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come, 12. [15] Ibid. [16] Moore, “The Gospel According to Jane Roe,” 42. [17] Ibid. [18] Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the American Pro-Life Movement,” 464. [19] Ibid., 463-65. [20] Ibid., 459. [21] Ibid., 467.
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