The Pro-life Movement- The radical change to the Republican Party
The Pro-Life movement started back in the 1930s. Those who began speaking against abortion and created the first right-to-life organizations in the mid-1960s were Catholic. The Pro-life movement evolved over the years from Catholic doctors, bishops, and lawyers, and (for the most part) were Democrats. Now, the Pro-Life movement is a combination of Conservative Catholics and Protestants that (for the most part)are Republicans. What happened?
In the 1930s, the pro-life movement encompassed more than stopping abortion, and the pro-choice movement was not about abortion on demand.
According to Daniel K. Williams, in Defenders of the Unborn, The pro-life movement thought of itself from the very beginning, not as a movement primarily devoted to opposing abortion- though that is what it essentially became- but as a movement to defend the legal protection of all human life from the moment of conception. Pro-lifers saw themselves as defenders of the "inalienable and legally enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. They argued that this right to life began at the moment of conception. Their opponents accused them of campaigning against abortion primarily because of their religious views or discomfort with women's rights, but pro-lifers rejected those accusations. They defended the value of all human life, as outlined in the nation's founding documents. Thus, in their view, the term "Prolife" was the most accurate descriptor of their political project.
In the early years, before the 1960s, The pro-choice movement was about preventing the birth of unwanted children (particularly if they were likely to be born with severe deformities), reducing population growth, and giving doctors greater legal protections in making choices that they thought would be in the best interests of their patients. In its early years, the campaign for legalizing abortion was a medical or population control movement, not a women's rights cause." [1]
"Before Roe, the Catholic Church combined birth control and abortion. Catholics lumped birth control, sterilization, and abortion together as disobeying God's commandment to fill the earth, and they felt all three procedures were an attack on human life. Protestants took a different view. They believed birth control was an acceptable social norm and helped families benefit economically and socially. On the issue of abortion, they thought it was the taking of human life and should only be done in extreme circumstances. In fact, according to Williams, " No Protestant denomination passed an official resolution on abortion till the 1960s. During their silence, the pro-choice movement grew and expanded. (Williams Page 28)
The Catholics were alone in their fight till Roe V. Wade. Most pro-life Catholics were Democrats because they believed in many of that party's social policies, including individual rights, minority rights, ministry to the poor and afflicted, workers' rights, and a living wage. To the Catholics, this was all-inclusive to human life and rights.
The Catholic bishops had tight control over their Catholic legislators up until the pro-choice movement expanded from a population control movement and eugenics to a women's right to choose over her body. In the past, bishops and priests could sway their parishioners on how to vote. But as the pro-choice movement became a women's rights movement, the Catholic hierarchy lost power in the legislature. One famous Catholic family, the Kennedys, eventually turned on their pro-life stance. Ted Kennedy was an advocate for the pro-life movement until the 1970s. He remained steadfast in his personal view against abortion, but he refused to support pro-life bills in congress. Many Catholic legislators turned on the pro-life movement when they saw that the Catholic leadership had lost its influence on their churches.
The Catholic Church could not turn to the Republicans at that time either. The Republican party was the party of Protestants and businesses, and they had no interest in getting involved in the pro-life movement. President Ford was not against abortion; his wife, Betty, was a strong supporter and declared that Roe was a great decision. Ford's Vice President was Nelson Rockefeller. In 1966, he was New York's governor and called for "abortion reform.
In March 1970, President Richard Nixon signed a bill to create a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, something he had promised to do a year earlier. The chairman of the Commission was New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, about whom Nixon observed: "Perhaps no person in the world has been more closely or longer identified with this problem." The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Ford Foundation, had funded many of the studies. Rockefeller's grandmother Abby Rockefeller was one of Margaret Sanger's best friends and her largest donor. One Rockefeller-funded initiative was the development of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, through which abortion laws were loosened, state by state, based on sex studies by the Kinsey Institute.[2] As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed an abortion liberalization bill in 1967, and the strongest influence on him, Nancy Reagan, was actively hostile to pro-life. "I don't give a damn about the right-to-lifers," Nancy retorted as she edited pro-life language out of her husband's state of the Union speech one year. [3]
Population control and eugenics were a vast topic; much of it was funded and driven by wealthy Republicans who controlled the Republican Party at the time. The Republican party supported and endorsed abortion fully.
How did the pro-life movement get on the Republican platform? Historically, the Democratic Party has been the Catholic Party and the Republican Party the Protestant Party.
According to George McKenna, "The Democratic Party and the Catholic Church have always been on the same wavelength as regards social and economic rights, particularly the rights of the poor, weak, and vulnerable members of society. The great majority of Catholic clergy were Democrats. Born in working-class homes, they attended Catholic schools and were usually the first generation to get a higher education—mainly in Catholic colleges and seminaries. Even the least reflective among them could see that the social teaching they absorbed in those colleges was strikingly similar to the domestic platform of the Democratic Party."[4]
Young people became activists when the Civil Rights Movement began, along with the Vietnam War. This movement included Catholics with Secular Humanists. The anti-war movement brought liberalism to the forefront knocking out the traditional Catholic Democrat in government. By 1975 the Democratic Party became the party not only of social welfare and business regulation but of many causes: environmentalism, consumer protection, affirmative action, gun control, arms control, multilateralism, rapprochement with the Soviets, and the Equal Rights Amendment. The Catholic bishops were not interested in all of these issues. Their Democrat legislators turned away from bishops and endorsed a more liberal platform. Catholics were torn because they believed in human and worker's rights, not big business. The Catholic Church was divided into parts (the young liberals of the 60s and the traditionalists of the 40s and 50s). This division weakened the Church and caused its voice in pro-life causes to diminish.
Eventually, the Republican party found that supporting life would benefit the party. Ronald Reagan led that cause and pulled Conservative Democrats from the party to vote for him. In the Republican Party, there is still division on how much attention should be given to the abortion issue. Republicans still divide between the fiscal moderates and the social conservatives.
The Roe V. Wade decision brought the Protestants a huge wake-up call. Conservative Protestants and Catholics joined together, and the Conservative Christians rose to fight for the rights of the unborn. Institutional religion and churches split on abortion, and the institutional Church did little to organize or speak up against it. The topic of abortion was and still is one of the most polarizing subjects that many ministers behind the pulpit choose to avoid discussing.
It was the pro-life organizations outside the Catholic and Protestant churches that did all the heavy lifting. Pro-life organizations entered the front lines of the battle. These organizations were from Catholic and Protestant people.
Here are some of the heavy hitters:
Founded in 1968, National Right to Life is the nation's oldest and largest pro-life organization. National Right to Life is the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters. Through education and legislation, National Right to Life is working to restore legal protection to the most defenseless members of our society who are threatened by abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.
The Christian Coalition is committed to representing the pro-family agenda and educating Americans on our society's critical issues. Whether it is the fight to end Partial Birth Abortion or efforts to improve education, or lower the family's tax burden,
Priests for life is a particular effort to galvanize the clergy to preach, teach, and mobilize their people more effectively to end abortion and euthanasia.
Students for life has grown up to become one of the leading pro-life advocacy organizations in the world.
Roe was overturned by the committed Christians that refused to accept the doctrine of death. Christians joined together to fight for human life. The pro-life movement is a civil rights and human rights movement that will continue till our Lord returns.
[1] The Framing of a Right to Choose: Roe v Wade and the Changing Debate on abortion Law," Law and History Review 27 (2009 ): 281-330
[2] https://humanlifereview.com/the-long-road-of-eugenics-from-rockefeller-to-roe-v-wade/
[3] https://humanlifereview.com/how-paul-weyrich-shaped-the-gop-agenda-part-ii/
[4] https://humanlifereview.com/criss-cross-democrats-republicans-and-abortion-2/