In 1987, near the end of the conservative presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan, Nellie Gray and Paul Brown, two prominent figures in the national pro-life movement, publicly excoriated Reagan for his lack of leadership on abortion. 1 Gray, the founder and president of March for Life (MfL), had spent years railing against the use of local funds to provide abortions for low-income women in Washington, DC. On 22 January 1987, when Reagan spoke via telephone to the 10,000 pro-lifers attending the snowy MfL rally in the nation’s capital, he again assured Gray that he shared her concerns. After another round of failed lobbying, she chastised the President in a letter circulated to pro-lifers nationwide:
Mr. Reagan, it is frustrating that your wrong actions for abortion continue to provoke to the point where I, a grassroots prolife volunteer, must remind you once more of your duty to stop contributing to killing preborn children in America. 2
Paul Brown, speaking for American Life League (ALL), was more scathing in his summary of the problem with the Reagan administration. Displeased by new Supreme Court nominee Anthony Kennedy’s unclear stance on Roe v. Wade and the constitutionality of abortion, Brown told the media, “Our problem is we don’t trust the White House in any way, shape or form.” 3 Although Brown and Gray were angry about specific issues, these outbursts were representative of the broader frustrations of the anti-abortion movement during the Reagan years. Right-to-lifers spent much of this period publicly and privately expressing their disenchantment with the President, his advisors, and Republicans in Congress.
This situation was in stark contrast to their high hopes at the beginning of the 1980s, when anti-abortion activists believed they were a significant political force. Reagan was a high-profile and vocal political ally, and the resurgence of conservatives within the Republican Party seemed to guarantee success in the battle to end legal abortion. Most pro-lifers expected Reagan’s powerful rhetoric on abortion would be accompanied with equally decisive action. Just a few months into Reagan’s presidency, anti-abortionists were forced to reconsider this relationship, and they spent the remainder of the Reagan years confronting the limits of their influence and grappling uncomfortably with questions of compromise, pragmatism, and coalition building. Right-to-lifers worked to obscure the extent of their discontent during the 1980s, producing hagiographic statements after Reagan’s death lauding him as a “pro-life hero.” 4 My research suggests such myth-making began during his presidency—a strategic choice made by some national leaders who wished to preserve their authority within the movement and at a federal level.
This book offers a political, ideological, and social history of the national American pro-life movement during the Reagan years, which, I argue, is a history of disappointment and factionalism. My research is driven by a desire to understand why most of the movement against abortion stayed loyal to the Republican Party in the 1980s. This premise might run counter to how some understand the period. Certainly, Reagan’s public persona and the rhetoric of right-to-life leaders frame the decade as a time of great power and influence for opponents of abortion. However, in the anti-abortion materials from this period, the unhappiness and dissatisfaction are a palpable and near-constant theme. I am interested in how this disjunction between external perceptions of power and internal feelings of impotence impacted pro-life political activity. Right-to-life experiences in the crucial eight years from 1981 to 1989 reshaped the priorities, strategies, and rhetoric of the movement. The turbulence of these years limited the types of ideas and approaches possible at a national level, while making much of the right-to-life movement beholden to partisan imperatives. Although sharp polarization over abortion began in the late 1970s, politicians and activists in the 1980s were the ones who solidified the place of the abortion wars in contemporary politics.
In writing this history, I have aspired to a degree of neutrality, attempting to eschew the binary way the abortion debate is often framed. To this end, I have relied heavily on the tools of the historian, foregrounding analysis based upon empirical evidence. Research in the archival papers of pro-life individuals and groups, as well as presidential papers, has allowed insights that go beyond the public face of both. 5 Newsletters, magazines, pamphlets, institutional minutes, memorandum, speeches, autobiographies, and private letters illuminate the complex dynamics among opponents of abortion and between the movement and the administration. I hope readers will approach this book willing to take seriously the hopes and disappointments it analyzes.
Early scholarship on the US pro-life movement assumed that anti-abortionists were inherently socially and religiously conservative. A subset of this work positioned the movement as a product of the backlash against second-wave feminism. 6 Over the past decade, this narrative has been increasingly contested. Sociologist Ziad Munson has illuminated the diverse motivations, behaviors, and beliefs of contemporary pro-life activists. Gender historian Karissa Haugeberg has revealed the place of grassroots women in the movement, challenging assumptions about gender and social conservatism and the place of harassment and violence in pro-life activism. Religious historian Daniel Williams and legal historian Mary Ziegler have offered nuanced insights into the early years of the movement and share two interrelated conclusions: the right-to-life cause initially had a distinctively liberal and progressive element, but for strategic rather than ideological reasons, the national movement moved to the right in the late 1970s. 7 Williams’ and Ziegler’s research has deepened understanding of abortion politics in the United States, but they are focused primarily on events before Reagan’s presidency. 8 Examining the period of conservative dominance reveals that this new political alliance required sacrifice from pro-lifers almost from the moment polling places closed on 4 November 1980. I view polarization and partisanship as an ongoing process, seeking to understand the consolidation and maturation of the movement against abortion. In so doing, I shine a light upon the competition and diversity within the contemporary Right.
Chapters
The case studies in this book center on the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, teasing out how national anti-abortion leaders and groups engaged with federal politics during the 1980s. Chapter 2 is contextual, offering a history of movement formation, partisan realignments, and abortion politics, as well as exploring the relationship between pro-lifers and Reagan. Chapter 3 charts right-to-life protests over the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, arguing that within the first six months of Reagan’s presidency there were significant fissures between the movement and the administration. Anti-abortionists were deeply troubled by the realization that access did not translate into influence and shocked that abortion was not a litmus test for Reagan. Analyzing the passionate reaction to O’Connor, the chapter charts the fragility of the coalition that opposed her. Chapter 4 explores pro-life efforts to use the legislative branch to ban abortion. In 1981, faced with two imperfect Congressional approaches, right-to-lifers exploded with bitter internal fighting over movement resources and authority, reflecting complex schisms along religious, ideological, and strategic lines. As the movement feuded, the Reagan administration and Congressional Republicans tried to remain aloof. Chapters 3 and 4 are explorations of pro-life failure, demonstrating that the place of abortion opponents in the new conservatism was far more uncertain than we have remembered. However, rather than being a simple declension narrative, these early and deeply negative experiences were instrumental in pushing the national movement in new directions.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore how this early disillusionment shaped movement goals and attitudes toward lobbying and political action. Chapter 5 focuses on an unequivocal victory for the movement and Reagan’s most important anti-abortion action, the 1984 Mexico City Policy. Placing the policy in a broad context, the chapter looks at the work right-to-lifers undertook in their quest to defund international population non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Tellingly, key movement groups no longer trusted the White House to prosecute its own agenda. Chapter 6 looks at the events of 1987, the year Reagan was suddenly willing to take on the mantle of right-to-life leadership. Within six months, he demanded new regulations for domestic family planning grants, pushed for passage of the President’s Pro-Life Bill, and nominated arch conservative Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Although this pleased anti-abortionists and they lavished praise on the President, they were generally modest in their ambitions and judicious in how they expended energy. Despite the strong rhetoric from the White House, most of these initiatives functioned as gesture politics, and both the administration and the movement manipulated them for legacy building purposes.
Abortion is often treated as an inherently polarizing subject. Following James Davison Hunter’s “culture wars ” thesis, legal abortion is seen as a core issue about which morally traditional and progressive Americans do battle because of their diametrically opposed values. 9 I seek to disrupt this notion, viewing the culture wars of the 1980s as a product of the choices made and the strategies adopted. These case studies provide insights into moments that were important in the development of federal abortion politics, but they also speak to some of the broader challenges faced by conservative social movements during this period. The rest of this Introduction will outline three core questions that link the case studies and raise insights into activism, group identity, religion, and politics. As contemporary commentators talk of the revival of the culture wars, historicizing and problematizing this period reveal the way social movements and partisan politics can exacerbate controversy and division.
A United Movement?
Analyzing the national right-to-life movement’s engagement with the Reagan administration necessitates studying the impact of these years on opponents of abortion. Sometimes, right-to-lifers were unified in their response...