Defenders of the Unborn

Abstract

Abstract This book traces the history of the campaign against abortion in the United States from the 1930s through the 1970s and argues that the pro-life movement (or anti-abortion movement) originated as a human rights campaign grounded in the principles of New Deal liberalism. The book explains how a campaign for the “right to life” for the unborn that began as a Catholic movement used the language of universal human rights to expand its appeal to Protestants and a few Orthodox Jews in the early 1970s and argues that the movement’s liberal ideology contributed to its political success. The book traces the development of the movement’s legal arguments, political strategy, and public outreach techniques, and analyzes the reasons for the movement’s popularity among socially conservative—but economically liberal—women. Many pro-lifers of the early 1970s wanted to ally their movement with political liberalism, but the increasing influence of the feminist movement in the Democratic Party during the 1970s, along with the pro-life movement’s defeat in Roe v. Wade (1973), disrupted that nascent alliance. In the conflict between competing rights-based claims, most political liberals chose to endorse women’s reproductive rights rather than the right to life for the unborn. In order to secure a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution, pro-lifers began supporting conservative Republican candidates (such as Ronald Reagan) who opposed Roe v. Wade, but because of the pro-life movement’s liberal origins, the alliance between the pro-life cause and conservative Republicans was never a fully comfortable one.