In Defenders of the Unborn, historian Daniel K. Williams asks: why did the pro-life movement
last so long, even as other social conservative movements faded away?
The answer
lies in the fact that pro-lifers see themselves as leading a human rights
campaign. This may be blindingly obvious to those inside the movement. But many
on the outside still see the fight against abortion as a crusade against sexual
immorality. Williams go through the history of the pro-life cause decade by
decade to show that it had its origins in liberal values of defending the weak and not conservative sexual morality.
He begins
the story of the contemporary pro-life movement in the 1930s. At that time, most
abortions were illegal except to save the life of the mother. The first
stirrings against pro-life laws were made by doctors concerned for women’s
health. They invoked medical necessity to justify more exceptions to the law. Because
it was argued in the context of medical necessity, abortion was treated as a public
health issue. There was never any intention of making it available on demand:
the humanity of the fetus was taken for granted. The opposition to abortion reform
was led almost entirely by Catholics, eighty per cent of whom were New Deal
Democrats, in contrast with today’s mostly Republican pro-life movement. The
debate was largely academic and conducted by doctors, theologians and
other thinkers. Mainstream Americans—read Protestants— if they had an
opinion—tended to favor some liberalization.
In 1959, the
American Law Institute passed a resolution calling for the liberalization of
abortion laws in cases of rape and medical necessity. It signalled that the
abortion debate would no longer be a merely academic discussion; it would now
be played out in state legislatures. The resolution would serve as a model for abortion
reform bills that were introduced throughout the nineteen sixties.
Doctors and
lawyers—again all Catholic— testified in state legislative hearings and became the
public face of the anti-abortion movement. Behind the scenes, bishops would lobby
lawmakers, backed up by Catholic voter power. The threat of losing the Catholic
vote was serious enough that it sabotaged attempts at liberalization in
California and Minnesota-- areas with significant Catholic presence.
Then in
1965, two events took place that seriously weakened the pro-life movement. The
first was the close of the Second Vatican Council. Although the Church had
never had any intention of enshrining the right to dissent, the media gave
Catholics the impression that they were no longer bound by Church teaching. In
turn, Catholics no longer felt compelled to vote according to Church doctrine. This seriously
undermined the bishops’ lobbying power. The second event was the Supreme Court’s
ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut, which effectively gave couples the right to
use contraception, making contraception seem mainstream and innocuous.
The decline of the Church’s moral authority
and lobbying power, combined with the acceptance of contraception emboldened
proponents of liberalization. They could credibly argue that Catholics were a
minority trying to impose their values on the general population. That same
year, reformers came within a hair of legalizing abortion in California. The bishops
knew that their strategy was not sustainable. The leaders of the anti-abortion
movement had to be found beyond the triad of bishops, lawyers and doctors.
The Right
to Life League of California was founded on December 8th ,1965 in
order to separate pro-life lobbying from the institutional Church. It was also
created to recruit non-Catholics to the movement. Given these
objectives, it’s not a little ironic that its founder was Cardinal James McIntyre
of Los Angeles and that its board was composed of the usual suspects of Catholic
lawyers and doctors. Nevertheless, Cardinal McIntyre swung quickly into action to
implement his new vision by writing to the bishops of California asking that
they instruct priests to recruit Protestants and Jews to the cause, especially
clergy. He also hired a public relations firm to help shore up their public image.
In time, the pro-life movement would diversify with more and more Protestants
heading up local organizations.
The Right
to Life League lost the fight to stop abortion liberalization in California,
but it gained momentum and clout. And thus it became the model for the National
Right to Life Committee, co-founded by Fr. James McHugh in 1968. Again, this
organization, founded by a priest, was supposed to be independent of the bishops.
It was intended to be an umbrella organization co-ordinating efforts to oppose
abortion, as activist efforts were often haphazard and piecemeal across the
country. McHugh wrote to the bishops and
asked them to organize their own Right to Life Committee where none existed.
The Catholic hierarchy lent institutional support, but eventually local
pro-life organizations successfully recruited Protestant leaders in the early
1970s.
Williams
emphasizes that that the fight to oppose abortion was driven by two important
liberal values: human rights and diversity. Diversity was expressed in the pro-life
movement in a number of ways in the early 1970s. When feminists had made abortion a "women's" issue in 1968, pro-life women such as
Elizabeth Goodwin, Randy Engel, Mary Winter and Ellen McCormack entered the
stage to combat the notion that being a woman meant being pro-choice. Evangelicals
were jolted into action with the passage of abortion on demand in New York in
1970. Carl F. Henry, the editor of Christianity Today, a leading Evangelical
magazine, wrote against abortion and surprisingly even encouraged Evangelicals
to join the new pro-life groups despite their Catholic origins. Progressives
who opposed the Vietnam War and capital punishment, such as Richard John
Neuhaus also joined the movement. Left-wingers were often the backbone of
crisis pregnancy centres, the most famous chain being Birthright, founded by
Canadian Louise Summerhill.
The
pro-life alliance with the Republican Party and the conservative movement can
be dated from 1975. The Democrats had
affirmed Roe v. Wade and slowly abandoned pro-life constituencies. The
Republican Party was generally lukewarm on abortion at this time. But GOP presidential
candidate Ronald Reagan expressed support for the Human Life Amendment, which
would offer constitutional protection to the unborn. As Democrats like Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson
and Al Gore betrayed the cause of the unborn, and others like Eunice Kennedy
and Sargent Shriver focused on social programs to prevent abortions, Ronald
Reagan and other like-minded Republicans seemed to be the only ones ready to act on
fetal rights.
The mass
entry of Evangelicals and the Moral Majority also changed the face of the
pro-life movement in the 1980s. Whereas Catholics tended to combat abortion in
isolation from other sins, the Moral Majority linked abortion to a host of
evils such as pre-marital sex, homosexuality, divorce, and pornography. In
time, opposition to abortion became linked to a conservative Christian moral
viewpoint, and liberal opposition to abortion was greatly marginalized.
Williams seems to attribute to the pro-life
movement its greatest victories while it was at the height of its liberalism
and bi-partisan support. Pro-lifers were able to re-criminalize abortion in New
York in 1972 – a feat which had been completely unthinkable. They had also been able to
stave off ballot measures in Michigan, and as well in North Dakota—a state
where less than 20 per cent of its population was Catholic. Meanwhile, Williams
depicts present-day pro-lifers as on the defensive. In a blogpost for The Anxious Bench., he wrote that the fact that Republicans are unwilling to
spend tax dollars on publicly funded healthcare makes them look hypocritical
when they claim to care about women’s health. But that loaded question of
women’s health is raised with the assumption that government-run programs are a
necessary good. He also doesn’t seem to notice that when Republicans oppose
social programs, they are being consistent. It is Democrats—who profess concern for the downtrodden—who
should be made to explain why they consistently oppose protection for the
unborn, no matter how common sense it is.
And the
fact remains, that while it is true that Catholics did advocate for a
comprehensive left-wing agenda in the sixties and early seventies, their advocacy didn't make fetal rights more popular. But siding with Republicans at least got
the Hyde Amendment and the Partial Birth Abortion ban. Rather than appeal to values that Democrats
value less than abortion – such as
social programs-- pro-lifers would do better to change their views on social programs.
Notwithstanding
my disagreement with some of the author’s assumptions, I think the book is a
must-read for all pro-lifers. To me, its value is not in its arguments, but in its narrative, introducing today’s pro-lifers to people and events that remain
largely unfamiliar. Knowledge of the past would offer insights into what has
worked and what has failed. We need these lessons so as to keep doing what
works and avoid the mistakes of the past.
Defenders of the Unborn is available on Amazon.ca for 9.99 in the Kindle version. An
excellent value. Go buy it!
