Clergy led the fight for abortion rights

[PennySycamore]

I just read this on Think Progress and it's fascinating:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/12 ... name--id~~

I'd read about the group of brave women who helped women in the Chicago area get safe, but still illegal abortions in the years before Roe v Wade, but I didn't know a thing about this. I stand in awe of these clergy.

[browncoatslytherin]

i'd never heard of this before. thanks for sharing! certainly interesting, growing up in a very religious and pro-life house that this kind of thing was never, ever discussed. well, i guess, not too surprising. just interesting that it was never acknowledged so that those leaders could be condemned (my parents loved bringing up leaders who they disagreed with on even miniscule issues and condemning them...kinda like, "oh, they're such a great leader, it's too bad they believe in this...").

[RachelB]

Thank you, PennySycamore! It's important history.

When my mom was in her first pastoral job, Roe vs. Wade was decided. And she started working as a clinic escort. I grew up going to Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights events.

[PennySycamore]

Thank you, PennySycamore! It's important history.

When my mom was in her first pastoral job, Roe vs. Wade was decided. And she started working as a clinic escort. I grew up going to Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights events.

[Jana814]

When my mom was in her first pastoral job, Roe vs. Wade was decided. And she started working as a clinic escort. I grew up going to Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights events.

[Cleopatra7]

While the Catholic church has at least been consistent in its anti-abortion activism, conservative Protestants actually didn't join team pro-life until the 1980s. When Roe v Wade first came out, only three religious groups opposed it: the Catholic church, the Mormon church, and the Orthodox Jewish Union. Of these, only the Catholic church had the will and the resources to mount a national campaign against abortion. Lester Maddox, the infamous arch-segregationist governor of Georgia, even asked a group of ministers if he could de-criminalize abortion in late 1960s Georgia and get away with it (the answer was yes). The Southern Baptist Convention actually supported Roe v Wade throughout most of the 1970s, as they and most other conservative Protestants thought that being anti-abortion was just another weird Catholic thing like Marian devotions. This link demonstrates how the SBC's views on abortion become more hardline over the years:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/baptist/sbcabres.html

(link not broken because it's an information site)

It wasn't until Francis Schaeffer made a concentrated effort to bring evangelicals into the anti-abortion movement that opinions began to change on this matter and abortion really became the culture war flashpoint that it is today.