By the 1960s, almost one hundred years had passed since women had lost the right to legal abortion, and much had changed. Women had won the vote in 1920, and the development of antibiotics and the vacuum aspiration abortion technique made abortion medically safer. A landmark case, Griswold v. Connecticut, established for the first time that married coupled had a right to use contraception—and it established a right to privacy that would set the stage for a test case to decriminalize abortion. Significantly, whereas abortion had not been a common topic of conversation, there was a growing public consciousness of the dangerous choices faced by women who wished to terminate a pregnancy. Before 1973, it has been estimated that as many as 1.2 million illegal abortions happened each year, with thousands of women dying or getting injured in the process.
National women's and pro-choice organizations began forming in the late 1960s. The Alan Guttmacher Institute was formed to provide accurate statistics, research, and public policy information to activists and legislators across the country; Planned Parenthood Federation of America took a public stand supporting abortion rights in 1969, adding its network of birth-control clinics and advocates to the grassroots efforts; and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) was formed in 1969 to be an information clearinghouse for grassroots groups advocating the reform of state abortion laws.
Leading the opposition was the Catholic Church, which has largely been credited with running and/or bankrolling the early development of the anti-choice movement's political organizations, including the National Right to Life Committee. Other women-led organizations emerged, including Phyllis Schlafly's anti-feminist Eagle Forum, which focused on electoral politics and advocacy, and Feminists for Life, a "pro-woman, pro-life" educational organization.
Meanwhile, lawyers across the country searched for the right test cases to challenge abortion laws in their states. In Texas, two young female lawyers filed one such case on March 3, 1970. That case, Roe v. Wade, was decided on January 22, 1973. The immediate effect of Roe was far-reaching: Abortion laws in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia were declared invalid, and the backalley, illegal locations for abortion were replaced by a national network of clinics and hospitals providing safe, affordable, and accessible abortion. Within thirty days of the Roe decision, conservatives came together and established goals to take away the right to choose: 1) elect an anti-choice president, 2) stack the Supreme Court with anti-choice justices, and 3) pass a Human Life Amendment banning abortion.
The Catholic Church called for massive civil disobedience (launching its own thirteen-page Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities in 1975, a political agenda by another name). Energized anti-choice forces created new organizations to forge the way. The National Right to Life Committee spun off of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and became a significant nationwide political operation; the Christian Action Council was founded to create anti-choice educational materials and films; Concerned Women for America was formed to serve as a conservative alternative to the National Organization for Women; and the American Life League was started to fight for passage of the Human Life Amendment.
The conservative New Right movement, which opposed a range of social issues, identified abortion as the key to mobilizing its support and resources. Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, was the first leader to make opposition to abortion a litmus test for candidates. Richard Viguerie, the fund-raising and direct-mail pioneer, used the abortion issue to raise millions of dollars for conservative efforts. Kevin Phillips, who founded the Conservative Caucus, mobilized the conservative grassroots.
As abortion became a political issue, the National Right to Life Committee pioneered the use of fliers and ads featuring aborted fetuses. In one of the early candidate's uses of this tactic, 1974 Kansas Senate candidate Bob Dole gave the NRLC permission to distribute fliers depicting aborted fetuses in garbage cans and equating abortion with euthanasia by showing skulls and crossbones.
Abortion was a prominent presidential issue for the first time in 1976, when candidates were asked whether they would support a constitutional ban on abortion and the Republican Party passed a plank advocating banning abortion.
The 1980 elections were a tour de force for the anti-choice and New Right movements. Ronald Reagan was elected president. Vice President George Bush earned his spot on the ticket by switching to an anti-choice position. Republicans took control of the Senate with anti-choice ideologues. With only 52.4 percent of all eligible voters voting, roughly 25 percent of the country gave the New Right a "mandate."
Shortly after Roe v. Wade, anti-choice forces pushed for Congress to pass constitutional amendments that would overturn the decision. Over the next decade, variations of the Human Life Amendment, declaring the fetus a person at conception (and giving fetuses, but not women, equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment), were introduced and rejected. The anti-choice movement worked to restrict as many abortions as possible and succeeded in eliminating federal financing of the vast majority of abortions, affecting poor women; government employees; and women in the military, the Peace Corps, and in the District of Columbia. State referenda to ban Medicaid funding for abortions passed in Colorado and Michigan. Domestic and international family planning were assailed, research denied, and importation of the early abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) banned through a series of executive and legislative measures.
State legislation was pushed to created barriers to abortion and to launch court challenges, including restricting state funding, parental and spousal notification and consent laws, waiting periods, and so-called "informed consent" laws.
In the early and mid-1970s, anti-choice activists adopted tactics of "sidewalk counseling," that is, picketing and prayer at abortion clinics. By 1977, activists directly disrupted services and intimidated providers. In addition, their tactics included stalking clinic workers, bombing and arson attacks, blockades, picketing at clinic workers' homes, tracking and identifying clinic patients, making death threats, and even kidnapping. Joe Scheidler's Pro-Life Action League led the way with his book Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion. Later, he was joined by the violent direct-action groups, the Army of God and Operation Rescue.
In 1990, there were 100 violent attacks on clinics. By 1992, that number had risen to nearly 700, and the war on clinics escalated to include shootings, chemical bombs, and acid attacks.
"Wanted" signs advertising the names, addresses, and phone numbers of abortion providers—a virtual death warrant for physicians—were distributed throughout the United States. Drs. David Gunn and John Britton, two physicians featured on these signs, were murdered in Florida, as were clinic escort James Barrett and two clinic workers in Massachusetts, Leeann Nichols and Shannon Lowney. The Army of God published and distributed step-by-step instructions on how to assault clinics with bombs, chemical agents, and other violent means.
At a time when 84 percent of the counties in the United States did not have abortion providers, insurance rates for clinics skyrocketed, and they were forced to spend thousands of dollars hiring armed guards, constructing fences, installing video surveillance equipment, and purchasing bulletproof vests.
From 1973 on, pro-choice forces worked to deliver abortion and contraception services, pushed for federal funding of family planning, and fought the onslaught of anti-choice initiatives. Many new groups formed as the community previously scattered throughout fifty different states developed a national legislative, legal, and political base. Important new organizations included the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, Catholics for a Free Choice, Reproductive Freedom Project, and Voters for Choice.
In April 1989, the pro-choice majority marched on Washington. Between 500,000 and one million supporters filled the Mall in protest of anticipated cutbacks on the right to choose. In Congress, pro-choice lawmakers attempted to deny the courts and state legislatures the ability to whittle away reproductive rights by codifying the principles of Roe. These efforts failed, but Congress did pass laws protecting clinics and patients. Still, the Supreme Court continued to uphold anti-choice restrictions affecting abortion counseling as well as access to abortions for young women and poor women.
The Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe by the early 1990s, and anti-choice and pro-choice forces battled to elect lawmakers—from the White House to all fifty states—who pledged their support to their respective sides.
Polling, media, phone-bank, and voter outreach campaigns required substantial resources, and donors on both sides opened their wallets to help put the abortion issue front and center. In every state, candidates' media campaigns and persuasion mail included abortion positions, and organizations rallied to identify their supporters and deliver them to the polls. Anti-choice tacticians added to their arsenals fetus ads, misleading fliers, and push polls—contacting voters as "survey research organizations" and spreading lies and innuendo impugning the character and positions of pro-choice candidates.
A reinvigorated Religious Right—a collection of conservative national, state, and local fundamentalist churches, radio ministers, and televangelists—expanded its reach. The Christian Coalition, launched by Christian Broadcasting Network founder and 700 Club host Pat Robertson, was built out of the ashes of his 1988 presidential campaign. With millions of identified activists, 134,000 donors, a seed grant of $67,000 from the Republican National Committee, and the direction of Ralph Reed, a young Republican activist and organizer, the preeminent political organization in the Religious Right gained a foothold.
While pro-choice organizations focused on Congress, state legislative, and gubernatorial elections, the Christian Coalition focused its initial activities on school board and county commission elections. Increasing its membership through a network of conservative churches, the Coalition distributed voter guides and backed candidates running "Stealth Campaigns," in which candidates espoused "moderate" political leanings, did not reveal any affiliation with the Religious Right, showed no signs of major contributions from right-wing organizations, and did not have a record in campaigns or in elected office that could invite criticism. These candidates had church-based field operations and the ability to raise money late in the campaign.
In 1992, the Supreme Court declined to overturn Roe. That same summer, the Religious Right gripped the public's consciousness during the Republican National Convention. With one-third to two-fifths of the delegates identified with the Religious Right, rhetoric calling for the imposition of conservative Christian morality and vows to ban abortion dominated the party platform and convention speeches.
An anxious pro-choice community mobilized and provided the winning margin to elect pro-choice President Bill Clinton, the first president in U.S. history proudly and publicly to endorse freedom of choice for all women. Within days of taking office, and with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton eliminated a host of anti-choice policies, including: rules "gagging" health workers in federally supported domestic and international family planning programs from discussing abortion; a ban on fetal tissue research—research with potential for developing treatments for diseases like Parkinson's syndrome; and a ban against importation of RU-486. He also improved prospects for choice by appointing two pro-choice justices to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993, and Stephen Breyer in 1994.
At the same time, the Christian Coalition diligently continued to build its national operations. By 1994, and with the help of a complacent pro-choice majority that didn't believe the right to choose was in danger, the Christian Coalition played a major role in helping conservative Republicans take the House and Senate by distributing seventeen million Congressional Scorecards, placing three million get-out-the-vote phone calls, and distributing thirty-four million voter guides through a national network of conservative churches.
The 1994 elections were a disaster for the pro-choice movement and led to a conservative drive to roll back the right to choose, leaving it far more limited than most Americans know. Congress limited medical training, access for poor women, access for women in the military, forbade discussion of abortion on the Internet, and came within twenty votes of eliminating the national family planning and contraception program. Anti-choice leaders in Congress announced their intention to eliminate abortions procedure by procedure. They grossly distorted the facts involving a rarely used late-trimester procedure, and President Clinton vetoed their action to criminalize it.
The effort to outlaw late-term abortions was used prominently in the 1996 elections. Distortions of the procedure were used in ads, some including Catholic priests, in persuasion-mail fliers, and in candidate debates across the country. Despite these tactics, the Religious Right did not win the White House in 1996. Voters re-elected President Clinton, and more pro-choice representatives were elected to Congress.
Julie Burton
See also
Abortion;
National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL);
Voters for Choice.
