Today is the 49th—and possibly last?—anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and that got me a little curious about how Roe was treated at the time it was handed down.
First I looked at the New York Times for January 23, 1973. On their front page they ran a straight news piece about the decision plus a short reax piece. The Times reported that reaction was "predictable," quoting a couple of Catholic cardinals who were shocked and a mainstream Protestant official who thought it was just fine. The word evangelical was never mentioned.
In the following week, the decision wasn't revisited on the front page. The only follow-up was a pair of short Sunday op-ed pieces, and over the course of the next few months there was almost nothing aside from some routine blurbs on inside pages. In other words, Roe was important but not all that important.
Time reported the ruling in their Law section and quoted the usual Catholics and right-to-lifers in opposition. They added that a Methodist bishop warned "more mildly" that it might be a step backward if the ruling led to more promiscuity. Again, the word evangelical was never mentioned.
Over the course of the decade abortion became a major cultural flashpoint, but it was eight years before Time gave it the cover treatment. They finally did in 1981 and Walter Isaacson wrote this:
Isaacson reports that although the Catholic church remained active in opposition to Roe, the anti-abortion movement "quickly secularized." The biggest anti-abortion group included Protestants, Jews, Catholics, liberals, and conservatives.
In a 5,000-word piece written in 1981 there's still no mention of evangelicals. The word is used only once, in an aside about an anti-abortion PAC that is "allied" with evangelical Christian groups. Anti-abortion sentiment is attributed mainly to the "New Right," and to Paul Weyrich in particular.
This isn't a deep dive or anything, but it was still kind of interesting. Mainly I was surprised at how little evangelicals were treated as major players in the anti-abortion movement, even in 1981 after they had become famous as one of the linchpins of Ronald Reagan's presidential victory. I'm not sure if that's because they weren't major players or because the press remained blind to their influence. Isaacson has gone on to bigger and better things, but I wonder how he sees his piece with the benefit of hindsight?
Evangelicals make a lot of noise, but five conservative Catholics on the Supreme Court (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett) are going to kill Roe.
Evangelicals are using the Hell-bound Papists to overturn Roe the same way the Federalist Society used heathen Donald Trump.
Pretty sure Timmy D -- Cardinal Dolan if you're nasty -- will be part of Pizzagate: Redux once the Supremes do their business on abortion & the Popeworshippers aren't needed anymore.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the Catholic hierarchy (their own troops being reluctant) is using Hell-bound schismatic evangelicals to elect pro-life politicians who then put Catholics on the Court.
Those five are deep implants put in place over the years by the pro CCP globalist Vatican: the overturn of Roe will cause a massive backlash against the freedumb-loving Republican Party, thereby ushering in a reign of socialist terror terror by the Sorosian-Gatesian, anti-Second Amendment Globalist Democrat Party.
I for one am grateful for their work on behalf of Comrades Clinton, Xi and Bergoglio.
Evangelical theology doesn’t have enough of an intellectual foundation to land one of their own on SCOTUS. They have to borrow retrograde, hard-core Catholicism to try to claim respectability.
"The Times reported that reaction was "predictable," quoting a couple of Catholic cardinals who were shocked and a mainstream Protestant official who thought it was just fine."
Looks like the Catholic cardinals and their parishoners in the SCOTUS are going to have the last laugh. Pity.
If there is any particularly major conclusion to take away from this ongoing situation, it may be this: there is no last laugh.
It’s basically impossible to predict the backlash if the Supremes simply declare a right to abortion unconstitutional. I personally suspect that such a backlash will be immense and long lasting, and it will eventually remake our country from the federal level to state legislatures and finally down to cities, schools, and households.
And then, very likely, the backlash to that backlash will get underway ….
They aren't going to do that. It will just go back to the states.
There is no “just” in a situation like this. We’ve had a federally established right to an abortion for 50 years, and people do not like it when deeply entrenched rights are yanked away. The revocation of such rights in the USA would be one of the major national and international headline stories of the decade. It may in fact be tantamount to a major slide into a deeper level of our unannounced, or cold, civil war. And people will not simply shrug their shoulders and “just” take it to the states. The Left will quite possibly realign around a win-the-supreme-court strategy, much as the right did, that will last for generations.
If that were true, wouldn't there already be a backlash in Texas? I hadn't noticed.
Texas hasn't had a statewide election since.
Don’t feed the troll. It isn’t arguing in good faith - it simply wants to stir shit up.
I will be surprised if they outright overturn R v. W. They'll just find a way to gut it to the extent that states that want to more or less ban all abortion will be able to do so and keep the backlash to a minimum.
Roe was a surprise when Republican judges pushed it through. Most thought it would be killed quickly. Much like Indian anger over the term Redskins, it took time for the anger to build.
I am a court neutrality proponent like all traditional Democrats. It will be up to people to take their beliefs to the state.
That is predictably ignorant and racist from you.
And disrespectful to non-religionists and native Americans.
It's just a hapless semi-literate, racist and anti-semitic troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
The anger from evangelicals had nothing to do with abortion. The Southern Baptists were supportive of abortion rights when Roe was decided.
Jerry Falwell used abortion as a proxy to elect conservatives so they could preserve what has always been most important to white Southerners: white supremacy.
Falwell and the Southern Baptists were incensed that the IRS had stripped segregation academies of their tax-exempt status. They could hardly run against Jimmy Carter on Bull Conner’s tired old platform, so they invented a new one.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
This. The widespread availability of ultrasound didn’t help, although having had many myself, I always thought I was looking at a toothless Gollum from LOTR right up until the last month. Gross sentimentality is the flip side of RW cruelty, IME.
Essential reading on Evangelicals & abortion is this old post from liberal Evangelical blogger Fred Clark: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
The change of tune on abortion in the Evangelical world was swift, and complete -- read the piece.
Again, nothing more than a con so they could push prosperity, pro Wall Street globalism. What Liberals don't understand is that the "flock" view it as a human rights issue. Brainwashed??? So be it. But no difference than black activists giving excuses to black working class on their cultural rot.
No surprise in 1973 southern states had the most abortion exceptions. It simply was seen differently.
Thanks for the reference-- very telling.
The shift from evangelicals' relative ambivalence toward abortion to making opposition to it an absolute litmus test of "true" religious belief is definitely one of the most puzzling aspects of all this. In addition to the article's reference to Exodus 21:22-24, in which the death of a fetus resulting from a fight was to be settled with just a cash penalty (instead of "eye for an eye" punishment), one only has to look at Numbers 5:11-31, the "ordeal of the bitter water," to find a biblical passage even more in conflict with their stance. In it a suspected unfaithful wife is given nothing less than an abortifacient as a test of her faithfulness! If faithful nothing would happen to her after drinking it, but if unfaithful the text couldn't be clearer: "May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries."
Evangelicals aren’t known for their logic or consistency in their principles. Everything is situational for them, even morality.
Same can be said for liberals. Just a few years ago almost every prominent Democrat was against gay marriage.
Those aren't even remotely equivalent though. The shift in public opinion about homosexuality (also among Republicans) has been consistent with the gradual expansion of civil rights since the founding of the republic, when full rights were only granted to white, landowning males. By contrast, the shift in the GOP stance in regards to abortion represents a return to more restrictive rights for women.
Traditional rabbinical opinion actually required a pregnancy to be terminated in cases where the fetus had become a danger to the life or health of the mother.
You're assuming that US "evangelicals" actually read the Bible. Like the Amendment II fanatics, they only know about the parts they like.
See also his "Hey, remember when evangelicals were pro-choice because of the Bible? What a difference 30 years makes" (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/10/30/hey-remember-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice-because-of-the-bible-what-a-difference-30-years-makes/)
The anti-Roe political movement has been one of the great manufactured causes in our national history. A rough short history might begin with the Carter administration's moves to revoke tax-exempt status from the largely anti-integrationist white religious schools that sprang up, largely in the South, after the Brown decision. Most Protestant churches at the time were either pro-abortion rights or indifferent. They also had a very loud and sometimes violent history of rabid anti-Catholicism (some of the more extreme ones today are still that way-- Hagee, for instance).
Abortion was deliberately developed, by Weyrich and others, as the political cause that allowed Protestant sectarians to accept Catholics as Americans, and to ally with them in a right-wing religious-political movement built largely around that single rallying cry. Up until that time I believe most Protestant opinion looked at Catholic pressure on abortion rights as an attempt to impose the Pope's will on America, a flat violation of church-state separation.
This worked well enough that I can remember vividly an occasion when Dukakis was campaigning in Columbus, where I was in 1988-- he was loudly heckled by people in the crowd shouting "what about the unborn, Mike" to everything he attempted to say. Abortion had become a major political cudgel to be used against Democrats and liberal Republicans (there used to be quite a few of them back in the day) who supported legal abortion access.
I don't remember whether "evangelical" was the media term of art back in 1988, but I do think it was at least sometimes used to describe the self-styled "Moral Majority" that petered out as a major pressure group during the W Bush years. But by the Clinton period I think it was widely used politically, and would guess that the press adopted that usage from anti-Clinton publicists who were trying to draw a clear line between themselves as church-going, God-fearing, overwhelmingly white, core southern, anti-Clintonites on the one hand, and the Bill Clinton who was so obviously and demonstrably a son and scion of the same stock. In
other words, it was a political movement in the guise of a religious one, at least in inspiration and purpose. It's likely, in my view, that this is a major subtext of the Clinton impeachment.
Basically, abortion wasn't a major cultural or political issue at the time of Roe, and to the extent that it was, it was a narrow sectarian interest pursued by the Catholic hierarchy and some lay groups. Much more attention was paid, I believe, to the women harmed, maimed, and killed by illegal abortionists.
Right, but what happens when chunks of Evangelicals tell Democrats they will support climate/environmental legislation if you support court neutrality on abortion.....something tells me flyover Democrats would eat it up. Prosperity gospel has taken a hit. Some Evies want back in the party. But abortion is their no deal requirements. It's like Mlb owners vs players negotiating. Somebody is gonna get mad. Northeast liberals, looking at you.
...no.
Northeast liberals? We should give up blacks and indians to get whites? We should give up women to get evangelicals?
What is left of the party at that point.
Please don't feed the semi-literate, racist and anti-semitic troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention.
I don't recall the troll having claimed to be a "traditional Democrat" previously, but it would appear to be true only if he's referring to the former southern wing of the Democratic Party, now purporting to be Republicans but just latter-day know-nothings.
Nigh. This was a Democratic tradition since The Wilson Bryan merger. JFK killed began the change. It was the parties most successful period.
Thanks for the historical run-down! It's a sad commentary that by trying to throw women back into the dark alleys of illegal abortions, the right wing and Republican Party prospered. The kind of people who would knowingly do this are folks who should never have political power. And yet...
I suspect that were a particular pundit to have discussed them at the time, he would have said something to the effect of “They are just a small group and aren’t worth worrying about.”
The SBC integrated seminaries in 1951, but didn't renounce its past position on slavery until 1995.
Bob Jones University vs. the US was decided in 1983. From Wikipedia:
"Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the religion clauses of the First Amendment did not prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from revoking the tax exempt status of a religious university whose practices are contrary to a compelling government public policy, such as eradicating racial discrimination. "
There was a PBS show dealing with this a while ago. Basically, Evangelicals didn't care about abortion, that was a Catholic thing, but were vested in keeping races separate. The lost the moral high ground on that issue with the Bob Jones ruling, then floundered a bit before picking up the anti-abortion cause. It's just a tool--same for the Catholic Church. Anyone who challenges them is a "baby killer".
here's a Political article:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
ok--so my timing is a bit off...
Overlapping, but essentially correct.
There is the Evangelical and then there is the fiery televangelist Evangelical. The 80s is the rise of the bullshitting, fiery, hypocritical televangelist Evangelical, amirite?
Billy Graham to ....
various flame outs--affairs, crying on national TV, more affairs, bankruptcies, etc...
Religion helped lead the fight against slavery--though also in support of slavery. It really shined when it helped immigrant groups organize and find their voice here. Though some of that led to bigotry against other groups.
The "moral majority" corrupted religion as some leaders became addicted to secular power. That's a bit different than the run of the mill fleecing the flock and the attempts to set up hereditary fiefdoms.
Trump supporters exhibit greater cognitive rigidity and less interpersonal warmth than supporters of liberal candidates, study finds,
https://www.psypost.org/2022/01/trump-supporters-exhibit-greater-cognitive-rigidity-and-less-interpersonal-warmth-than-supporters-of-liberal-candidates-study-finds-62400
The real change, I think, came with the Tea Party when the Republican base showed it no longer accepted to be treated as vote-giving fools while the institutionalists and the rich ran the show. Abortion was just a vote-getter for the GOP; it never intended to do anything about it. At a certain point people caught on.
Evangelists just want to counter Democrats while also flexing their muscle within the GOP. Aside from a few who shed tears for fetuses, it just became a wedge issue to people who love wedges.
Re: shedding tears.
Oh, they ALL "shed tears". Of course, most of them are crocodile.
(With apologies to mother crocs.)
People supporting access to abortion were ineffective at challenging the notion that abortion was the result of irresponsible unprotected sex. The Christians were always going to hate that… Sex outside of marriage being a sin and all.
The “safe, legal, and rare” movement never really caught on.
“Clinton used this language in her 2008 presidential campaign; Bill Clinton, meanwhile, had introduced it into Democratic politics back in 1992. The language was likely meant to appeal to people who supported the right to an abortion in principle but still felt morally conflicted about the procedure…”
With abortion we have a morally dubious practice (if you cared about such things) which was used by some in ways that mocked people who had those concerns.
The Republican Party is full of corrupt an morally reprehensible creeps, but people still vote for them. This issue probably helps raise money and win elections so even though it strains credulity to think republican politicians have a moral sense, hey are happy to exploit it.
And that’s that. Roe is dead. Another culture war battle moves to the next phase.
Most abortions are to women, in marriages, with children.
Yes, we've been ineffective at stopping you from lying.
So… yeah. Abortion supporters haven’t been able to effectively challenge the notion that abortion was the result of irresponsible unprotected sex.
And you still didn’t. Because you are wrong.
Most women getting abortions (83%) are unmarried; 67% have never married, and 16% are separated, divorced, or widowed4. Married women are significantly less likely than unmarried women to resolve unintended pregnancies through abortion.
https://prochoice.org/wp-content/uploads/women_who_have_abortions.pdf
I don’t expect you to apologize because you are a horrible person.
Ah, there it is. Women should not be permitted to get abortions because they'll be tempted to practice "irresponsible unprotected sex."
Yeah, that's for MEN ONLY! We hear ya. Some things never change.
Just before I read your comment, I was looking at the Guttmacher Institute site about abortion numbers. I couldn't find any numbers for women in marriages, but 59% had already given birth at least once. The one thing that really stuck out was that 75% were poor or low income.
The other thing I found interesting is that 51% were using contraception in the month they became pregnant, Most commonly condoms or the pill.
Not much mention, either, of the role of the AMA in getting abortion rights front and center in the public discussions as a health emergency for young women, nor much mention of the lack of leadership of the AMA now, although the AMA website stakes out a pro-abortion-rights position. There was one article, I think. The AMA has much to answer for. See https://www.history.com/news/the-criminalization-of-abortion-began-as-a-business-tactic
The big change among evangelicals was in the early 1980s. That's when you had reactionaries take over the Southern Baptists in essentially a coup, and force out all the liberal and moderate pastors (including all women pastors).
I was a teenager back then, so I wasn't paying much attention. But didn't the media kind of loosely use the term "southern Baptists" as a general term to describe a larger group that included the unaffiliated "evangelical" churches that now are much more prominent?
Listen to the podcast Straight White American Jesus for answers. Spoiler: Evangelicals (such as they were then) didn't care about abortion until political/religious leaders made it an issue to rally the troops.
https://religiondispatches.org/unintended-consequences-overturning-roe-v-wade-may-endanger-this-cherished-evangelical-practice/
"As the Supreme Court considers Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that could overturn the foundational 1973 reproductive rights decision Roe v. Wade, there is significant discussion about what the end of Roe means for people who can get pregnant. But Roe v. Wade concerns far more than reproductive rights. As a crucial case in American jurisprudence that establishes constitutional privacy rights for Americans, there are many other rights hanging on this ruling that Dobbs could throw into jeopardy. These include rights deeply cherished by the very evangelicals who are pushing so hard to end Roe, like the right to give your child a religious education or the right to homeschool your children."
The evangelicals tried to paint abortion as birth control for the poor and the example of the wanton sexuality of the times
The problem was it came home to roost with Falwell, Reagan, and the money grabbers like Osteen and Creflo Dollar.
And of course there's Bristol (I lead the abstinence only crowd) Palin who got knocked up out of wedlock AGAIN
Apparently sin has no shame
By 1981 it became apparent that the question of abortion divided the Democratic Party and tore its traditional religious voters such Catholics and white Southern Baptists away from it. Republicans were divided in question too but not to the point where it created a while new constituency for the party to exploit, especially with single-issue voters on this topic. Bottom line is a generation of GOP jurists (particularly John Roberts) have preserved Roe for this various. If it is overturned it's because they no longer feel they need it.