Catherine Cassidy

Evangelical Responses to Abortion Over Time

Catherine Cassidy

Presently, the correlation between anti-abortion activism and the evangelical South is clear. However, evangelical communities and pastors have not always been opposed to abortion, instead had made efforts to provide safe abortions when it was broadly more illegal. Evangelical interpretations of the Bible were lenient towards abortion, as evangelicals more follow the strict word of the Scripture. Around the 1970s, a major culture shift was engineered by a few evangelical preachers. These preachers developed the “Moral Majority,” an intersect of the Christian right and the Republican Party, which mobilized conservative Christians. The “Moral Majority” and the mobilization of right wing Christians was inspired by the passage of legislation that disallowed tax cuts for segregated schools, but their ire was directed towards pro-abortion legislation of Roe v Wade. From this began a long, tumultuous history of evangelicals against abortion, eventually leading to the Dobbs v Jackson court case, which overruled Roe.

A brief discussion of abortion in the US: Abortion had been criminalized in the US since the mid-19th century, all states having laws restricting access to abortion by the end of the century. Decisions regarding whether a pregnancy was dangerous enough to abort were in the hands of doctors, not the patient. Eventually, the practice of illegal abortions became regularized, with 18% of maternal deaths in 1930 being attributed to unsafe procedures. By the mid-20th century, there was push for abortion law reform, due to physician activism surrounding the issue, plus the fallout from thalidomide usage and subsequent birth defects. Eventually, the term “medically necessary” abortions began to be thrown around, which allowed physicians to provide an abortion if the mother was in a fatal condition (1).

Christianity Today, circa 1968, reported on an interdisciplinary symposium of evangelical pastors, scholars, and doctors, which affirmed the morality behind abortion. Convening from August 27th to the 31st, the attendees came to a consensus that ultimately excused the moral issue of abortion and provided Christian physicians with responses to clients seeking abortions. The symposium concluded that the Bible sets a norm of “productivity for all nature,” and that procreation is the product of marriage; however, they acknowledged that sex happens for more reasons than procreation, also for “companionship and fulfillment,” and an “expression of love” between partners outside of reproduction.

The symposium also spoke to use of contraceptives, which were on the market at the time of the meeting, but their purchase restricted to married women. The Bible implores Christians to maintain the sanctity of life, with a command that they multiply. However, factors like “disease, psychological debility, number of children already in the family, and financial capability” are acknowledged determinates on whether it is appropriate to prevent pregnancy. Through permitting the use of contraceptives depending on circumstance, the symposium individualized what the Bible standardized. 

Conclusions made about contraceptive usage and procreation come together to support a new, educated evangelical stance on abortion. The symposium acknowledged that the need for abortion is always circumstantial and depends heavily on the individual, following their logic from permitting contraceptive use. Secondly, the symposium acknowledged that “there are greater values sanctioned by Scripture,” prioritizing the mother’s health over the fetus, by listing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as viable reason for abortion (2). Outside of the symposium, but putting their words into practice, was the Southern Carolina Clergy Consultation for Problem Pregnancies (SCCCS). Jack Crandall and Alan Elmore, two preachers in South Carolina, started the SCCCS to create a “statewide organization of ministers” who supported abortion, and felt it was their “moral, pastoral, and religious obligation to provide” for women with problem pregnancies. The SCCCS, much like the symposium, placed emphasis on the ideas of providing informed choices and consul, leaving “the choice…up to the individual.”  Christian physicians in attendance stated that, if necessary, “maintain[ing a] full and secure family life,” by prioritizing the mother during pregnancy and birth, weighs more than “the preservation of fetal life or the integrity of the human body" (3) (4). 

At the time of the symposium, abortion was tentatively legal, but had been criminalized heavily and had a cultural stigma against it. Some doctors were given latitude to provide abortion services, and “medically necessary” abortions were seen as permittable. The issue of legality, and the ambiguous nature of terms like “medically necessary,” complicated physicians ability to perform abortions and scared them away from performing abortions. The symposium maintained that “Christian conscience informed by the Scripture” took precedence over legal codes, and that moral law outweighs human law. This decision, despite not actually shifting the letter of the law, gave Christian physicians the religious allowance to work around the law (2).

In the early 1970s, as the landscape of abortion in the South continued to complexify, with some willing preachers and physicians offering support networks and care, and legislation working to discourage care, two important supreme court rulings were passed. Green v Connally, decided June 1971, seemingly has nothing to do with abortion or abortion law in the United States. The case was concerning tax benefits and deductions being owed to religious, private schools in the South that were upholding segregation. After the IRS investigated a school in Mississippi in 1970, they realized that private, religious schools were operating “on a racially segregated basis as an alternative to white students seeking to avoid desegregated public schools.” The IRS issued two releases post-investigation, announcing that they “can no longer legally justify allowing tax-exempt status to private schools which practice racial discrimination, nor can it treat gifts to such schools as charitable deductions for income tax purposes.” The IRS’ release targeted white, religious, somewhat wealthy southerners, who wanted to maintain a Jim Crow-esque South. The ruling of Green v Connally restated what could be considered a “charitable trust,” which restricted rich, white, racist communities from further supporting segregated, private schools in their area (5). 

Around the same time as the Green v Connally decision, Roe v Wade was being argued in Texas, determining whether restricting access to abortion abridged a woman’s right to personal privacy, assured by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments (6). The issue of personal privacy in the face of then-current abortion laws stems from the fact that women had to disclose their martial status, details about their personal health, and prove that they would be in fatal danger if they kept the pregnancy. If a woman was not facing the threat of death due to pregnancy, like “Jane Roe,” and were unable to fund travel elsewhere, they would not receive a legal abortion. “John and Mary Doe,” whose case was included with Jane Roe’s appeal to the court, preached a similar story---that it was not life threatening, but inadvisable for the wife to be pregnant, and that the couple wanted to terminate the pregnancy because of that. All individuals involved in the appeal felt that their right to privacy had been infringed upon while seeking medical assistance (7). Roe v Wade concluded, with a 7-2 decision, to overrule state specific legislation and legally allow abortion. The “Due Process Clause” in the Fourteenth Amendment, “protects against state action the right to privacy,” and the court ruled that the right to choose to have an abortion is within that right to privacy. Additionally, the court ruled that “a state law that broadly prohibits abortion without respect to the stage of pregnancy” is a violation of the right to privacy, as that law refuses to acknowledge how protecting the sanctity of human life changes over the course of a pregnancy (6).

The Green v Connally decision frightened white supremacy and threatened white supremacists, especially those operating private, segregated, religious schools. Jerry Falwell, a man with his own private, segregated, religious academy in Virginia, was one of those who felt threatened. The Green v Connally loss led to widespread mobilization, lead partially by Falwell, to create a religious, right-wing aligned political group---known as the “Moral Majority.” However, despite their racist origins, segregation is not a viable issue to mobilize behind. Falwell, and other architects of the Moral Majority, understood that evangelicals were concerned with a host of issues, including what appeared to be a rising number of abortions in the few years following Roe v Wade (8). Individuals like Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Frank Schaeffer, all worked as conservative activists and created the “Moral Majority.” Anti-abortion politics have been a longstanding tradition of right-wing Catholics, therefore a respectable political issue to take up (9). 

The Moral Majority adopted the anti-abortion fight from Catholics and ran with it, with Falwell giving sermons on the issue and Schaeffer writing and producing a film called Whatever Happened to the Human Race. Both Falwell and Schaeffer used fear-mongering and decisive language to convince their audience that abortion was unethical and ultimately unconstitutional. Both men, in their favor of anti-abortion, shift the focus away from the health and safety of the mother, and instead prioritize the idea of killing children. Falwell’s first anti-abortion sermon, given on February 2, 1978, defined “abortion-on-demand” as murder and a threat for the “future of this nation.”

Frank Schaeffer’s 1979 film, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, uses similar techniques. The film asserted that opposition to abortion is “logical as well as morally based,” as it is “impossible to say when a developing embryo or fetus or unborn baby is or is not a person.” The film rhetorically asked whether pro-abortionists would kill a child a minute after birth, which entirely misunderstands the need for abortion and further villainize those who seek it. By humanizing a fetus, and dehumanizing the mother, Schaeffer removed the mother as a potential life at risk during a pregnancy.

Schaeffer employs graphic imagery of babies in boxes next to distressed bunnies, as well as images of embryos with data surrounding the embryo’s development in the womb. The techniques used by Schaeffer and Falwell were utilized by other evangelical preachers, as well as right-wing politicians. Abortion seems less sympathetic and reasonable, and much less a necessary medical procedure, if the health of the mother is entirely removed from the development of the fetus (11).

Since the passage of Roe v Wade, and the cementing of abortion as one of the main voting issues of the evangelical right, and right-wing voters generally, several legal measures have passed that have worked to curtail Roe. Moral Majority’s chosen President, Ronald Reagan, introduced the “Mexico City Policy,” also known as the “global gag rule” in 1984. The global gag rule restricts foreign US health aid by not allowing for information, including referrals, or advocacy to be shared concerning abortion access internationally. The global gag rule has been rescinded and reinstated, depending on the political stances of following presidents. Alongside that, Planned Parenthood of Southern Pennsylvania v Casey, in 1992, was a case reaffirming that the right to abortion is protected by the Constitution. Despite access to abortion being protected, Casey also created an “undue burden” framework, which limited the ability to “challenge laws that were less than absolute prohibition on abortion.” Undue burden has allowed for unnecessary restrictions to be placed in the way of receiving an abortion but has not entirely cut access to one.

Entering the new millennium, Roe and legal protections for the right to abortion continued to suffer under scrutiny and undue attacks. In 2007, the decision from Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America federally criminalized abortion, banning certain second-trimester abortions and moving patient’s health away from the spotlight. In instating the ban on some second-trimester abortions, the law did “not contain an exception for the patient’s health,” which had been a major argument in Roe v Wade. Pushes continued to be made to either further criminalize or make inaccessible abortions, most notably the Texas banning abortions at approximately 6 weeks in 2021, which was upheld in the decision of Dobbs v Jackson Health (1).

In some ways, the Moral Majority succeeded. Dobbs v Jackson Health was argued on December 1, 2021 and decided on June 24, 2022. The held decision is such: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” Placing the right to access a legal, safe abortion means a return to a pre-Roe landscape, where access to abortion is dictated by often unchangeable factors, like location, income, and ability to travel. Dobb’s decision was made based on the Court finding that “the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition,” and that the “critical moral question” surrounding protecting fetus’ lives overrides that of their potential parent’s life or livelihood. It’s argued that because the right to abortion is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, along with the right to privacy, then Roe’s ruling lacks constitutional basis. The argument for the right to privacy’s absence in the Constitution comes from it being an addendum of the 14th amendment, and in the argument against Roe, the right is redefined as a protection of personal liberties. Dobb’s argument against abortion is centered around the fact that “until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion.” However, Dobbs glosses over the fact that though there was no legal record supporting a demand for safe abortions, people have worked to provide those networks despite illegality, as seen with the 1968 evangelical symposium and networks of preachers in pre-Roe South. With abortion being widely criminalized and stigmatized until the mid-20th century, there was no space for people to make demands to legalize it. Lack of a judicial record, alongside statistics proving the fatal nature of illegal abortions and the known demand for illegal abortions, moreover, prove that access to safe legal abortions is a desired liberty or right in the eyes of the American people (12). 

1. “Planned Parenthood Action Fund. "Historical Abortion Law Timeline: 1850 - Present." Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Accessed May, 2023. https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/abortion-central-history-reproductive-health-care-america/historical-abortion-law-timeline-1850-today.” 

2. Ramm, Bernard. "The Christian View of Science and Scripture." Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 22, no. 2 (June 1970): 3-5. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1970/JASA6-70Christian.html. 

3. George, Marie-Amélie. "Our Moral Obligation: The Pastors that Counseled in Pre-Roe South Carolina." Nursing Clio, May 9, 2019. https://nursingclio.org/2019/05/09/our-moral-obligation-the-pastors-that-counseled-in-pre-roe-south-carolina/. 

4. "Guide to the Charlotte Observer Collection, 1886-1986." Winthrop University Digital Commons, accessed April, 2023. https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/226/. 

5. GREEN v. CONNALLY, United States District Court, District of Columbia. 330 F.Supp. 1150

6. "Roe v. Wade." Oyez. Accessed May, 2023. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18.

7. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

8. Abdelfatah, Rund and Ramtin Arablouei. "Tracing Evangelicals' History On The Abortion Issue." Throughline, episode 49, NPR, June 20, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734303135/throughline-traces-evangelicals-history-on-the-abortion-issue.

9. Diamond, Jeremy. "The Right to Life Movement's Complicated History with Race." Politico Magazine, May 10, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-history-right-white-evangelical-1970s-00031480.

10. Liberty University, "Commencement Program, 1995," Liberty University Commencement Programs, Liberty University Digital Collections, Accessed April, 2023, https://liberty.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17184coll9/id/8004.

11. Vision Video, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race," YouTube video, 3:59:35, Posted May 19, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py02pQTyeTE.

12. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 596 U.S. (2022), https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf. 

About the Author

Catherine Cassidy (she/her) grew up in New York City and has been interested in studying history and math since high school. She likes hockey and is a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers—as well as enjoying BU's games. Catherine’s interest in history concerns the Industrial Revolution and the history of unions in the United States.