COMPROMISE AND CONFLICT IN THE FIGHT TO END LEGALIZED ABORTION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1971-88

Prudence Flowers

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

April 2008

School of Historical Studies The University of Melbourne

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the growth of organized opposition to abortion in the United States, and charts the fortunes of the right-to-life movement at a national level during the 1970s and 1980. Anti-abortionists emerged as a social movement in response to changes in the law, and after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision they struggled to present themselves as a coherent lobby group. The 1970s were thus a time of fluidity and experimentation, as right-to-lifers contemplated different approaches and argued over how best to end legalized abortion. Activists engaged in legislative efforts, political lobbying, and education initiatives, all the while teasing out what exactly it meant to be opposed to abortion. The movement at this time rejected the ideas of absolutists and instead aimed to be as broadly representative of American society as possible. Rather than clearly aligning themselves with the Left or the Right side of politics, the movement pursued a politics of moderation. This status quo was challenged, however, by the resurgence of conservatism in the late 1970s. As the social conservatives of the so-called “New Right” began to intervene in the abortion debate, right-to-lifers found themselves having to respond to a worldview that spoke only in terms of absolutes. After Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency in 1980, anti-abortionists needed to negotiate a political landscape in which they ostensibly had access to power and yet were repeatedly disappointed by the action (or inaction) that came from the White House. This thesis contends that in the 1980s, the relationship between right-to-lifers, the “New Right,” and the Reagan administration was often marked by disappointment and compromise. As the decade drew on, right-to- life leaders increasingly tempered the types of demands they made of the White House and of Republicans in general, and this climate eventually meant that the kinds of activists that rose to prominence within the movement were conservative and the ideas they espoused absolutist.

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DECLARATION

This is to certify that

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) this thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.

Prudence Genevieve FLOWERS

18 April 2008

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to thank my principal supervisor Dr. Katherine Ellinghaus. Kat has supervised me since my Honours year, and she has always encouraged me, reassured me, and inspired me. I can’t imagine what these years would have been like without her, and I am truly lucky to have had such a wonderful academic advisor and mentor.

I must also thank my two associate supervisors, Professor Shurlee Swain and Dr. David Goodman. They have both provided me with invaluable feedback and advice about this thesis. Shurlee has helped with fresh ideas about right-to-life activism and the more general movement, and this has always helped me when I began to lose sight of the big picture. David, who volunteered to become my associate in 2006, showed an enthusiasm for this project at a time when I had lost all sense of what I was trying to say. His critiques of my work have sharpened my approach to the material (even if they also caused me to complain), and his comments have always encouraged me to strive for more. Both he and Kat have helped me gain a variety of academic experience, and I am grateful to both of them for their offers of tutoring work and then for subsequently employing me as a research assistant.

I am especially grateful to the organizations that provided me with funding for this project. Thanks must go to the Lillian Ernestine Lobb bequest, which helped fund my research trip to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and to the Library of Congress. The Gerald R. Ford Library also provided me with a grant that allowed me to spend as much time as I needed working in the records held in Ann Arbor. Finally, I must thank the University of Melbourne Scholarships office, which provided financial assistance for my work at the Andover-Harvard Divinity Library through the PORES and TRIPS programs.

Thanks must of course go to the librarians and archivists at the various institutions I visited. In particular, I am extremely grateful for the work of the librarians at the Gerald R. Ford Library who ensured that the many, many ACCL records that I requested had been processed and were ready for use before I arrived in the country. I would also like to thank the librarian at the Library of Congress who gave me a copy of the oral history project involving Justice Blackmun.

While I was in the United States, I also benefited from the suggestions of Professor Regina Morantz-Sanchez of the University of Michigan. She kindly offered me ideas and advice about my thesis that were much appreciated.

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The staff of the School of Historical Studies has provided me with immense practical assistance, and I am particularly grateful for the work of Erica Merhtens, Ron Baird, and Coralie Crocker. Ron in particular was both a friend and a font of information about the bureaucratic side of life as a postgraduate, and his support during my various stints of grant writing was invaluable.

Amongst my colleagues in the School of Historical Studies, I would like to thank Timothy Jones, Sianan Healy, and Jennine Carmichael. They ensured that my time as a graduate student was both entertaining and enriching, and they all showed me that it was possible to complete a thesis with style and panache. I am also grateful to all the postgraduate students who have provided either camaraderie or encouragement during these final months. Outside of the University, I would like to thank Timea, Byron, Lauren, Cal, Matt, Rosie, Pete, Danny, Jess, and Tom, all of whom helped me remember that life did not begin and end with the thesis. They have been both an enjoyable source of distraction as well as a strong support network.

Special mention must be made of the role my family has played in the years that I have been a graduate student. My mother, Barbara, has always inspired me, and her interest in my ideas and her belief in the merits of pursuing an academic life have always helped motivate me, especially during the long and lonely trips I took to the United States. Dulcie, Peter, and Jennifer have also provided me with love and laughter and have ensured that I have never taken myself too seriously.

Finally, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the understanding of my lovely partner Michael. He has been at all times a friend, an intellectual sparring partner, and a supporter of my work, and I dedicate this thesis to him. I only hope that I can provide the same level of encouragement for him as he works towards completion of his own PhD.

v CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

DECLARATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

ABBREVIATIONS ix

INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE FIGHTING THE “HURRICANE WINDS” OF ABORTION REFORM: AMERICANS UNITED FOR LIFE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF- DEFINITION 33

CHAPTER TWO ABORTION AND THE 1976 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: THE EARLY YEARS OF RIGHT-TO-LIFE POLTICAL ACTIVISM 57

CHAPTER THREE THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT AND THE DILEMMA OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION 81 CHAPTER FOUR THE “BABY KILLER” APPROACH: THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “NEW RIGHT” 105 CHAPTER FIVE “A MOVEMENT IN DISARRAY”: OPPONENTS OF ABORTION, THE “NEW RIGHT,” AND PRESIDENT REAGAN’S FIRST TERM IN OFFICE 129 CHAPTER SIX THE RIGHT-TO-LIFE MOVEMENT AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION: NEGOTIATING THE POLITICS OF ABORTION 160

CONCLUSION 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187

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ABBREVIATIONS

American Law Institute ALI American Life League ALL Americans United for Life AUL American Citizens Concerned for Life ACCL Association to Repeal Abortion Laws ARAL Christian Action Council CAC Clergy Consultation Service CCS Council for National Policy CNP Equal Rights Amendment ERA Human Life International HLI International Women’s Year IWY Life Amendment Political Action Committee LAPAC Leadership Conference on Civil Rights LCCR Massachusetts Citizens for Life MCL Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life MCCL National Conference of Catholic Bishops NCCB National Committee for a Human Life Amendment NCHLA National Organization for Women NOW National Pro-Life Political Action Committee NPLPAC National Right to Life Committee NRLC Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs OAPP People Expressing a Concern for Everyone PEACE Planned Parenthood Federation of America PPFA Society for a Christian Commonwealth SCC United States Catholic Conference USCC United States Coalition for Life USCL

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ix INTRODUCTION

Sorry to hear of the blundering decision rendered by you and your associates. Your thumbs down on the lives of the unborn is surely a disgrace to “all men are created equal” and brings back pagan days. God smite America. We deserve it. Reverend Joseph A. Malik to Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun, 28 February 1973.1

One month after the Supreme Court legalized abortion, Reverend Joseph A. Malik of Saint Mary’s Church in Warren, Ohio, sent the above words in a letter to Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun. In doing so, he was expressing not just his own personal opposition to the decision in Roe v. Wade, but was joining literally thousands of Americans who were similarly moved. A great deal of this mail was addressed to Blackmun because of his role in authoring the majority opinion, and although there were numerous letters of support and congratulation, these were vastly outnumbered by letters and telegrams that ranged from the distraught to the vitriolic. Indeed, so much mail was received in January and February of 1973 that Blackmun would later recall that he had seen:

Officers at their respective posts where usually they just stand and watch, buried, each of them, with mail. They had nine baskets in front of them, and they’d put letters in all those baskets and separate them.2

The Roe v. Wade decision prompted an unprecedented outburst from the American population. The “mail to the Court proved to be the greatest in its history on a specific case or pair of cases,” outnumbering even that received when the Supreme Court ruled against prayer in school.3 The legalization of abortion was a seismic event in contemporary American history. Although second-wave feminists and supporters of abortion law reform heralded it as a victory, it also resulted in the mobilization of tens of thousands of ordinary

1 Reverend Joseph A. Malik to Harry Blackmun, 28 February 1973, Papers of Harry A. Blackmun, Box 71, Feb 27–28, 1978, Folder 11, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter referred to as LC). 2 Blackmun estimated that during his time on the bench he received 75,000 to 80,000 letters concerning the abortion issue. “Transcript: The Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project,” interviewed by Harold Hongju Koh, 2 June 1995, 204–5, Manuscript Division, LC. 3 Ibid., 492.

1 citizens who shared the sentiments expressed by Malik, namely that abortion was the destruction of innocent human life. This thesis examines the development of organized opposition to abortion in the United States.4 It begins before the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade so as to provide context and offer insights into the nature of the movement prior to the legalization of abortion. It ends by exploring the relationship that right-to-life leaders had with President Ronald Reagan during his final term in office, and draws conclusions about the impact that conservatism and access to federal power had on the movement. By charting the history of the right-to-life movement from 1971–88 this thesis shows the evolution of anti-abortion ideas and activities and suggests that the national right-to-life movement did not necessarily identify with the Left or Right until the active intervention of conservatives. After the emergence of the so-called “New Right” and the election of Reagan to the Presidency, opposition to abortion was increasingly aligned with social conservatism. This thesis contends this close association was neither inevitable nor particularly beneficial to anti- abortionists as a national movement. While the “New Right” of the 1970s and 1980s articulated an absolutist worldview and increasingly relied on the politics of division, early

4 In this thesis, I have avoided the use of terms such as “pro-life” and “pro-choice” except where that language is found in quotes from activists or scholars. Instead, I use phrases such as “anti-abortion” or “right-to-life” interchangeably to refer to those opposed to legalized abortion, and the phrase “abortion rights” to refer to those who supported the availability of legal abortion. This is because descriptors such as “pro-life” and “pro- choice” are highly problematic and are routinely contested by both sides of the debate. While the terms I use are not ideal, they are less symbolically loaded and do not favour one side’s rhetoric over the other. Although this thesis only discusses the attitudes of right-to-lifers towards abortion, many of these activists also opposed euthanasia and infanticide and saw all three issues as connected in that they reflected that “human life no longer had an absolute value.” With regard to the political and philosophical tendencies within the anti-abortion movement, I use the terms tolerant, moderate, and absolutist to describe various ideological positions. A further discussion of how I am using these words can be found in chapter one, but in general, tolerant is used to describe those who acknowledged a range of exceptional circumstances in which abortion might be acceptable and who were generally the most accepting of divergent views within the movement. Moderate refers to those who emphasized the importance of coalition building and negotiation over ideological correctness, and who could thus generally work with those anti-abortionists who were more tolerant than they were. Absolutist is used to describe those who opposed abortion in all situations and who did not value such traits as the ability to compromise. Absolutists generally saw no value in building alliances with those who had different views. In chapter one, I also use terms such positive and negative to describe various forms of anti- abortion activism. While I am aware that these words might seem to imply a value judgment about the goals of the movement, they are intended to refer solely to the vision of society articulated by right-to-life organizations and not on the merits of certain approaches. Those ideas that I have dubbed positive reflected a belief that it would be possible to change American society through dialogue and education. Those attitudes that I have described as negative viewed themselves as being in a state of siege against the broader social values of the United States, and that the only way to end legalized abortion was to coerce and intimidate politicians and voters. For quote above regarding the value of life see Keith Cassidy, “The Right-to-Life Movement: Sources, Development, and Strategies,” in The Politics of Abortion and Birth Control in Historical Perspective, ed. Donald T. Critchlow (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 133.

2 national anti-abortion organizations emphasized moderation and coalition-building in their work. They struggled to represent a politically and socially diverse constituency. Rather than sharing overarching concerns and goals with the broader conservative movement, some right-to-lifers demonstrated a conception of activism and coalition building that relied on a politics of unity rather than on the polarizing ideas of the “New Right.” In examining the early history of the anti-abortion movement, this thesis is also attempting to problematize historical accounts of the ascendance of the Right and the Republican Party in the late twentieth century. By appealing to single-issue groups who were active on the social issues, the “New Right” supposedly politicized and mobilized a new electoral powerhouse. The anti-abortion movement has long been considered an integral part of this voting bloc, but my research suggests that conservative interventions into the abortion debate were a source of contention amongst activists. Not all opponents of abortion were comfortable with the ideology and worldview of the “New Right,” and the alliance between social conservatives and anti-abortionists during the Reagan years was difficult and often mutually unsatisfying. Far from achieving more political power after their union with the rightwing of the Republican Party, anti-abortionists instead found themselves limited in the goals and rhetoric they could use. By the end of the 1980s, the right-to-life cause was nearly always associated with social conservatism, and the space for divergent opinions and types of leadership within the movement was shrinking.

ABORTION IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States, abortion was not a criminal act until the latter stages of the nineteenth century. Although termination after quickening was prohibited, understandings of pregnancy and fetal life meant that acts that in modern eyes would be considered abortion were acceptable because the status of the fetus was itself still in doubt.5 This changed when the American Medical Association (AMA) began to lobby for the procedure to be made illegal, a move that, as James Mohr and Kristin Luker have suggested, stemmed as much from a

5 Quickening referred to the moment when a woman felt the fetus move inside her, an indicator that could occur anywhere from four to six months into the pregnancy.

3 desire to professionalize medicine as it did from a desire to protect fetal life.6 The AMA’s crusade was successful, and by the turn of the century the procedure was illegal unless it was a therapeutic abortion, in other words, if it was performed to save the life of the woman. Despite the newly criminal status of abortion, women did not stop wanting to terminate their pregnancies. Throughout the twentieth century, women continued to seek both legal and illegal abortions. According to their social circumstances, they could sometimes depend on individual physicians to assist them either by performing the procedure themselves or by referring them to someone who would. Indeed, Leslie Reagan suggests that during the Great Depression, abortion became not “extraordinary, but ordinary,” and that abortion-physicians used “standard medical procedures to perform safe abortions routinely and ran what may be called abortion clinics.”7 Abortions became much harder to obtain legally in the years after World War II, but this inadvertently had the effect of highlighting the inadequacy of the existing laws. Women continued to attempt to terminate their pregnancies, and many doctors became aware of situations where a patient that they felt met the criteria for a legal abortion was denied one because of strict interpretations of the law. Reagan also proposes that the increasing role of hospitals in the provision of medical care meant that from the 1930s onwards, physicians were routinely exposed to “women with septic infections, perforations of the uterus, hemorrhages, and

6 Interestingly, Kerry Jacoby describes the accounts offered by Mohr and Luker as “preservationist” and suggests that they are favoured primarily by “pro-choice forces and most academics.” Anti-abortionists subscribe to histories which she dubs “abolitionist,” and believe that “although abortion has been legal at times, it has never been viewed by civilized people as a positive good, until recently. Its continued practice through history is a sign not of the need for such a procedure, but of the fallenness of humankind and the relentlessness of human cruelty.” Furthermore, they believe that “public opinion—not the physicians’ need to solidify their professional position—caused the shift in abortion law that effectively criminalized the procedure nationwide by 1900.” Kerry Jacoby, Souls, Bodies Spirits: The Drive to Abolish Abortion Since 1973 (Westport: Connecticut: 1998), 2; James Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). Luker offers a feminist analysis of the American Medical Association’s campaign against abortion in Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 21–31. For general histories of abortion and birth control in the nineteenth century see Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Carol Flora Brooks, “The Early History of the Anti-Contraceptive Laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut.” American Quarterly 18, no. 1 (Spring 1966), 3–23; Clifford Browder, The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist (Connecticut: Archon Books, 1988); Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1976); Nathan Stormer, Articulating Life’s Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002). 7 For quote and for an extremely thorough account of the changing status of abortion and the effect that this had on individual women and physicians see Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was A Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 133. See also Angus McLaren, “Illegal Operations: Women, Doctors, and Abortion, 1886–1939.” Journal of Social History 26, no. 4 (Summer 1993), 797–816; Rickie Solinger, The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (New York: Free Press, 1994).

4 mutilation of intestines and other organs caused by self-induced or ineptly performed operations,” all of which made many doctors keen to assist women who sought to terminate their pregnancies.8 It was in this context that the reform movement arose. The first organized call to change the laws occurred in 1955 when the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) ran a conference that suggested that abortions should be granted for social and psychological reasons as well as medical ones.9 After the proceedings of this conference were published, the American Law Institute (ALI) used PPFA’s suggestions as the basis for its model statutes on abortion. The ALI statute broadened the definition of what constituted a therapeutic abortion, allowing for pregnancies to be terminated in cases of rape and incest, in cases where the life and health (including mental health) of the mother were at stake, and in cases where the fetus was defective.10 The influence of these statutes would prove to be immense, and when individual states began altering their laws on abortion, they generally referred to the guidelines proposed by the ALI. The reform movement grew in influence throughout the 1960s, and events in broader American society only added to its momentum. In 1962, Sherri Finkbine, a thirty- year old mother of four and Romper Room television host from Phoenix, Arizona, was forced to travel to Sweden to legally terminate a pregnancy that had been unwittingly affected by thalidomide.11 Her trip received national attention in the media and demonstrated to those

8 Ibid., 146–7. For a discussion of the therapeutic abortion committees that were introduced in hospitals see Rickie Solinger, “‘A Complete Disaster’: Abortion and the Politics of Hospital Abortion Committees, 1950– 1970.” Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (Summer 1993), 241–68. For more details about the role that doctors played in the movement to legalize abortion see Carol Joffe, Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 9 In addition to the Planned Parenthood conference, Joseph Fletcher, Harold Rosen, and Glanville Williams, prominent scholars in fields such as law and social ethics, also wrote influential tracts that proposed that the laws regarding abortion needed to be changed. Jacoby, Soul, Bodies, Spirits, 3. 10 These instances where abortion should be legally permitted subsequently came to be referred to by right-to- lifers as “exceptions.” They were referred to as this because they represented instances where anti-abortionists might have to make an exception to the blanket statement that abortion was immoral and impermissible As discussed in chapter one, debate over this concept was extremely divisive for the early right-to-life movement, and would later prove to be problematic when the movement tried to persuade Congress to amend the Constitution. 11 Interestingly, the Finkbine case was reported so widely that a Gallup Poll was conducted to ascertain public opinion about her decision. Fifty-two percent of respondents believed that she had done the right thing, thirty- two percent felt that she had done the wrong thing, and sixteen percent had no opinion. Survey #662–K, “Abortions,” 19 September 1962 in George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–71, Volume 3, 1959– 71 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1784. For examples of the extensive coverage given to thalidomide and the Finkbine case see “Abortion Suit is Filed,” New York Times, 26 July 1962, 25; “Arizona Weighs Plea,” New York Times, 27 July 1962, 12; “Phoenix Abortion Ruling Delayed,” New York Times, 28 July 1962, 15; “Mrs Finkbine Undergoes Abortion in Sweden,” New York Times, 19 August 1962, 69.

5 outside the medical and legal profession that there was no clear-cut understanding of when an abortion was medically justifiable. Rubella epidemics in 1964 and 1965 also contributed to the clash between those who believed that abortion should only be permitted to save the life of the mother and those who felt that there were other indicators that could be considered.12 In 1967, Colorado became the first state to alter its laws and by 1970, twelve states had successfully passed reform bills.13 What had once been a taboo subject was now debated in the press, the state house, and in public forums around the country. As the reform movement grew in strength, a second, and more radical abortion rights movement began to gain national attention. These activists sought the repeal of all abortion laws, essentially advocating “abortion on demand.” Groups such as the Society for Human Abortion, the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL), and the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) believed that the government should not interfere in the abortion decision, and that it was a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Organizations like ARAL and the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS) even put their beliefs into practice, assisting women throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s to obtain illegal abortions.14 At the same time as the repeal movement was emerging at a national level, second-wave feminists were also becoming increasingly prominent within the abortion debate, and these two groups often worked together prior to Roe v. Wade to draw attention to the status of the laws and to lobby for legislative change. The advent of second-wave feminism helped fundamentally change many of the debates that had surrounded abortion. In 1967, at its founding convention, the National Organization for Women (NOW) included a platform in its Bill of Rights which declared that women were entitled to control their own reproductive lives, thus tacitly endorsing the

12 For a discussion of the way that this epidemic was understood at the time see Harold M. Schmeck, “Toll of Rubella Epidemic Assessed,” New York Times, 14 November 1965, E7. 13 The other states were Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina and Virginia. See Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (New York: The Quadrangle, 1971), 284. 14 For further reading on the history of reform and repeal groups prior to Roe v. Wade see Tom Davis, Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and its Clergy Alliances (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 121–40; David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1994); Joffe, Doctors of Conscience; Laura Kaplan, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995); Laura Kaplan, “Beyond Safe and Legal: The Lessons of Jane,” in Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950–2000, ed. Rickie Solinger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 33–41; Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime; Leslie J. Reagan, “Crossing the Border for Abortions: California Activists, Mexican Clinics, and the Creation of a Feminist Health Agency in the 1960s.” Feminist Studies 26, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 323–48.

6 repeal of the existing laws on abortion. Some women left the group in opposition to this stance and subsequently founded the Women’s Equity Action League, but by the early 1970s, a belief in the need for access to contraception and abortion was a central tenet of second-wave feminism in the United States.15 As the Berkeley Women’s Liberation group explained, “by denying a woman ultimate ownership of her body, present abortion laws also deny her a final decision in determining the direction of her life.”16 Second-wave feminists argued that women had a fundamental right to a safe and legal abortion. This was a dramatic shift away from the ideas of most reform groups, which had tended to concentrate on expanding and protecting the authority of the doctor. Furthermore, women’s liberationists helped focus public attention on the status of abortion through both traditional legislative approaches and by employing more imaginative types of activism. Although the efforts of reform and repeal groups garnered a great deal of political and media attention, they were not, however, the only people active on the abortion issue prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, anti-abortion groups sprang up wherever reform or repeal legislation was proposed. Levels of organization and commitment varied dramatically, with the Catholic Church playing a central role in the right-to-life movement in some states and independent groups leading the charge in others.17 There were thus wildly different levels of effectiveness. In some states, right-to-life groups repeatedly defeated reform measures, and these victories led groups such as Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) and Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCL) to develop resources that would assist anti-abortionists in other regions to be equally successful. Indeed, in this time before Roe v. Wade, MCCL was “a national leader, [that sent] out teams to help organize neighboring states.”18 These attempts to share information and strategies resulted, in the early 1970s, in a

15 For discussion of the NOW convention and abortion see Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), 82–3. For accounts of Feminists for Life of America, a group that consists of women who oppose legalized abortion but who continue to identify as feminists, see the chapter entitled “‘Reclaiming Our Past’: Feminists for Life” in Richard L. Hughes, “Tangled Up in the Sixties: Progressive Activism and the Anti-Abortion Movement” (PhD, University of Kansas, 2002), 104–71. See also Linda C. McClain, “Equality, Oppression, and Abortion: Women who Oppose Abortion Rights in the Name of Feminism,” in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds—Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood, eds. Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 159–88. 16 Berkeley Women’s Liberation Newsletter (8 December 1969), 2, “Berkeley Women’s Liberation papers,” Herstory, Women’s History Research Centre (Berkeley: Bell and Howell, 1976) [microform]. 17 For a thorough discussion Catholic opposition to attempts to reform the abortion laws see John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003), 257–81. 18 Cassidy, “The Right to Life Movement,” 140.

7 focus on national organizations as a way of coordinating efforts and speaking as a united movement. Groups like the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the Value of Life Committee (VOLCOM), and the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition were founded as a means of bringing new recruits into the movement and alerting the general public to the threat posed by attempts to reform or repeal the abortion laws. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and Doe v. Bolton 410 U.S. 179 (1973) fundamentally changed this debate over abortion. Handed down on 22 January and decided with a 7–2 majority, these companion rulings drew on and advanced the idea of a “right to privacy” first outlined in Griswold v. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965), the ruling that overturned Connecticut’s ban on the distribution of contraceptives to married people. Although this right was not directly outlined in the founding documents, the Court found that various guarantees in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights formed a “penumbra” around which there could be an expectation of privacy from state intrusion. Roe v. Wade’s reliance on and extension of this relatively new “right” proved extremely controversial amongst conservatives, and eventually became a factor in the nomination of new justices to the Supreme Court. The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade argued that the privacy rights of both the individual woman and her physician outweighed the right of the state to prohibit abortion until the fetus reached viability. However, it also found that the State had an interest in regulating medical standards, “preserving … the health of the pregnant woman,” and “protecting potential life.” To balance these competing interests, the Court adopted a trimester framework that permitted varying levels of regulation depending on the stage of a woman’s pregnancy. Until the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision was effectively between a woman and her physician. Throughout the second trimester the State was permitted to limit the procedure “to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health.” It was only when the fetus reached viability that the State’s interest in “potential” life was considered compelling, and from this point on it was permitted to outlaw all abortions unless they were performed to save the life of the mother.19 This reliance on a trimester framework came under increasing scrutiny as medical

19 For quotes see N.E.H. Hull, Williamjames Hoffer, and Peter Hoffer, eds, The Abortion Rights Controversy in America: A Legal Reader (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 151–7.

8 advances meant that a fetus could be viable earlier in a pregnancy, and even drew criticism from some supporters of legalized abortion. The Roe v. Wade decision struck down a Texas statute that had been passed in the nineteenth century and that outlawed all abortions unless they were performed to save the life of the mother. The companion ruling in Doe v. Bolton overturned a reform measure that had been introduced in Georgia in 1969 and that allowed abortions in some of the situations that had been outlined in the ALI model statute.20 Together, these decisions overrode the laws in all but four states. The Court’s rulings were a surprise even for many supporters of liberalized abortion, but it shocked those who opposed the procedure. The scope of the ruling and the acceptance of what they saw as “abortion on demand” horrified right-to-lifers, as did the lack of community outrage. As one activist told Luker, “I thought the American public would stand up and scream bloody murder, and they didn’t.”21 Furthermore, they were outraged that the Court had rejected the defendants’ argument that the fetus was protected by the language of the Constitution, ruling instead that the “word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, [did] not include the unborn.”22 This denial of the personhood of the fetus led many right-to-lifers to compare the decision in Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford 60 U.S. 393 (1856).23 Prior to the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton rulings, anti-abortionists had generally assumed that they were fighting against reform of the laws rather than repeal. Few of them had considered a scenario where abortion would be completely legalized. The right-to-life movement gained many new recruits after the decisions were handed down, but it was also

20 For a detailed account of the events leading to the Supreme Court rulings and for analysis of the decisions see Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality; Mark Herring, The Pro-Life/Choice Debate (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), 85–96; N.E.H. Hull and Peter Hoffer, Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001). 21 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 126. 22 “Roe et al v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),” in Hull, Hoffer, and Hoffer, eds, The Abortion Rights Controversy in America, 155–6. 23 Dred Scott v. Sanford was the Supreme Court decision that ruled that people of African descent, irrespective of whether they were slaves, were not citizens of the United States. After Roe v. Wade, right-to-lifers often described their struggle as paralleling that waged by abolitionists in the nineteenth century. This description is problematic in that anti-abortionists are not simply referring to the historical similarities between the two movements. Rather, they are using such comparisons as a means of suggesting that the fight to end legalized abortion shares a similar moral urgency with the struggle to end slavery, which subsequently makes compromise and negotiation unthinkable. It also helps them to implicitly and sometimes explicitly present the debate over legalized abortion as a stark choice between good and evil. Similarly, right-to-lifers often draw historical analogies with both the Holocaust and King Herod’s slaughter of newborn babies in Jerusalem. For a discussion of these comparisons see Cuneo, “Life Battles: The Rise of Catholic Militancy within the American Pro-Life Movement,” in Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America, eds. Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 276–7.

9 confronted with the need to fundamentally alter its approach to politics, coalition-building, and lobbying. The mid to late 1970s were thus a moment in time when the anti-abortion movement was remarkably open to difference and change. Some activists continued to focus on initiatives at a state level, pouring their energies into regulating and limiting the practice of abortion within the framework established by the Supreme Court. Others created counseling services or supported groups such as Birthright that worked to provide pregnant women with alternatives to abortion. Still more right-to-lifers focused on politics in the 1970s, lobbying Congress on matters of interest and actively campaigning for candidates in both presidential and congressional campaigns. The most radical in the movement rejected these strategies and instead embraced the tactics of the early civil rights movement, first picketing abortion clinics and then engaging in sit-ins and other non-violent acts of civil disobedience.24 These many strands of activity became the basis of much of the work done during the period that Reagan was in office, although this early work tended to garner only a small amount of attention when compared to the coverage such acts received in the 1980s. This thesis argues that in the years immediately after Roe v. Wade, the national right-to-life movement embraced a range of tactics and articulated a conception of activism and political involvement that stands in marked contrast to the aggressive techniques of the social conservatives who came to prominence within the later movement, a distinction that has often been overlooked in the scholarship on this group.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT

The contentious nature of abortion in the United States has meant that much of the literature on the right-to-life movement has reflected the concerns and debates that were occurring in American society at the time that the author was writing. In the 1980s, accounts such as Connie Paige’s The Right to Lifers and Andrew Morton’s Enemies of Choice were informed by a desire to explain the sudden and dramatic emergence of abortion as a political

24 For accounts of the various forms that early anti-abortion activity took see Melissa Haussman, Abortion Politics in North America (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005), 52–7; Karen O’Connor, No Neutral Ground? Abortion Politics in an Age of Absolutes (Colorado: West View Press, 1996), 57–70; Connie Paige, The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They Get Their Money (New York: Summit Books, 1983); James Risen and Judy L. Thomas, Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 1–75; Laurence Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992).

10 issue at a federal level.25 Paige’s text is still one of the most comprehensive accounts of the anti-abortion movement during the 1970s, but a large portion of her book is devoted to examining and explaining the sudden prominence of the “New Right” within the abortion debate, and indeed in tone it at times resembles an exposé. Although Paige is charting the history of the right-to-life movement in general, many of her examples and case studies relate to the NRLC. This means that some observations that are specific to the NRLC are extrapolated as though they refer to the movement as a whole, particularly with regard to the attitude of right-to-lifers towards conservatism. Paige explores the relationship between the “New Right” and the anti-abortion movement in some detail, and while she charts the clashes that occurred, she generally attributes these to disagreements between the Catholic hierarchy and social conservatives. My findings suggest that this assessment overlooks the work and opinions of grassroots activists, and that the problems that arose between anti- abortionists and the “New Right” stemmed from disputes about the philosophy and tactics of the movement itself. It was a conflict that was felt and articulated by a variety of anti- abortionists, and extended well beyond those groups that were explicitly linked to the Catholic Church. In the early 1990s, as the nation was confronted with the possibility that the era of legalized abortion might come to an end depending on how the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey 505 U.S. 833 (1992), scholars began to explore the impact that the right-to-life movement had had at a federal level after more than a decade of rule by presidents who were unabashedly aligned with their cause. The most influential example of these texts is Michele McKeegan’s Abortion Politics, a work that explores how anti- abortionists gained and exercised power and the nature of their alliance with the Republican Party.26 McKeegan persuasively argues that under Reagan and George H.W. Bush,

25 Paige, The Right to Lifers. For examples of texts from this period that share this preoccupation with “explaining” the anti-abortion movement see Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood; Andrew Merton, Enemies of Choice: The Right-to-Life Movement and its Threat to Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981). For accounts which offer a similar approach to conservatism and the rise of the “New Right” see Pamela Johnston Conover and Virginia Gray, Feminism and the New Right: Conflict Over the American Family (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983); Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York: Anchor Books, 1983); Rebecca Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Antiabortion, Antifeminism, and the Rise of the New Right.” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (1981), 206–46; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman’s Choice, rev. ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 241–85. 26 Michele McKeegan, Abortion Politics: Mutiny in the Ranks of the Right (New York: The Free Press, 1992). For examples of other texts which analyze the way in which the anti-abortion movement has wielded influence despite failing to outlaw abortion see Barbara Craig and David O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics (New

11 opponents of abortion wielded a great deal of influence at a federal level, despite the fact that they had failed in their quest to enact a constitutional amendment that banned abortion. Rather than concentrating simply on legislation passed or bills ratified, she suggests that anti- abortionists focused their efforts on wielding power within the bureaucracy, and that this approach met with a great deal of success. Abortion Politics is an extremely detailed account of the history of the anti-abortion movement in the late 1970s and 1980s, and it is thus even more noteworthy that McKeegan begins her history by telling the story of the self- proclaimed “New Right” and the “Christian Right.” This conflation of opposition to abortion with social conservatism is a consistent problem within both academic and textbook accounts of the right-to-life movement. McKeegan briefly discusses some of the difficulties that existed within the Right’s “pro-family” coalition, but she generally attributes these problems to the tradition of political liberalism amongst Roman Catholics, thus mirroring the assessment made by Paige a decade earlier. Although this is a valuable text on the history of anti-abortionists in the 1980s, the general silence about the movement before the intrusion of the “New Right” contributes to the impression that the alliance between anti-abortionists and social conservatives was both inevitable and generally harmonious, and that the two groups shared a similar worldview. As the 1990s progressed, the right to abortion seemed finally to be safe. The Supreme Court had upheld the basic findings of Roe v. Wade, and the election of a Democratic president who supported legalized abortion meant that the federal influence of the right-to-life movement was temporarily stilled. It was during this period, however, that the abortion debate in the United States spilled into outright violence with the murder of David Gunn in 1993. James Risen and Judy L. Thomas’s Wrath of Angels, published in 1998, can be understood as an attempt to address the increasing militarism of opponents of abortion.27 This vividly written text, which offers a sympathetic account of the anti-abortion movement, charts the development of protest and non-violent direct action as both theoretical and practical issues. While it sheds new light on early right-to-life thinkers and actors, its focus on protest means that other forms of activism are downplayed. It does not

Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1993); William Saletan, Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 27 Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels. Although her work is informed by linguistic and textual analysis, Carol Mason also offers an impressive and comprehensive account of the role of violence within the movement, see Carol Mason, Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

12 shy away from depicting the violence of some anti-abortionists and the negative outcome of this approach, but in general, the aggressive rhetoric and tactics of leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Randall Terry are presented as being necessary for the development of the movement. This thesis argues against such conclusions, suggesting that prior to the intrusion of the “New Right” and the emergence of leaders such as Falwell and Terry, the anti- abortion movement attempted to negotiate a place in American society that did not rely on extremism. As the right-to-life movement has entered its third decade of action, contemporary scholarship has increasingly focused on understanding and reflecting on the movement’s role within American society. Sociologists such as Carol Maxwell and Dallas Blanchard have explored the values and belief systems that motivate people to action on abortion, and their research has helped scholars understand what draws people to these social movements and why these groups continue to thrive even as they endure setbacks.28 Similarly, Carol Mason has examined the language and rhetoric of anti-abortion literature and produced a fascinating exploration of the views about race that underpin the ideas of some of the more extreme opponents of legalized abortion.29 Amongst historians, Donald T. Critchlow has located the history of organized opposition to abortion within an account of the development of family planning at a federal level, and has offered important insights into the government’s regulation of and investment in matters relating to reproduction.30 Cynthia Gorney’s extremely detailed and nuanced exploration of abortion politics in Missouri offers an account of grassroots activists on both sides of the debate while situating this local struggle within a broad national framework.31 Although the scholarship of the past few decades has helped to create a thorough picture of right-to-lifers as individuals and as part of a movement, there is still a need for an exploration of the development of the national

28 Dallas A. Blanchard, The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Rise of the Religious Right: From Polite to Fiery Protest (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994); Dallas A. Blanchard, The Anti-Abortion Movement: References and Resources (New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1996); Carol J.C. Maxwell, Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning, Motivation, and Direct Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 29 Mason, Killing for Life. For an account which examines how racial concerns have motivated African American anti-abortion activists see the chapter entitled “Stop the Genocide! Save the Race: The Anti-Abortion Movement within the African American Community,” in Louis G. Prisock, “Uneasy Alliance: The Participation of African-American Activists in Conservative Social, Political, and Intellectual Movements,” (PhD, University of Massachusetts, 2007), 126-79. 30 Donald T. Critchlow, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 31 Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

13 movement in the 1970s and 1980s. It was during this time that the anti-abortion movement’s philosophies, tactics, and political associations were established, and when the abortion debate in the United States became increasingly polarized. This thesis is thus an attempt to explore this period, to provide a detailed account of both the right-to-life movement and the historical moment in which it developed, a moment defined by the ascendance of conservatism.

LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM

Organized opposition to abortion emerged at a time when the political Left and Right were increasingly polarized in American society. The changes in what these positions have meant has shaped both the way the movement developed and how it has been understood. When “liberal” or “Left” is used in this thesis, it refers to the “Left” in the post-New Deal Era and generally is used as shorthand for the political philosophy that promotes the importance of the State in contemporary affairs. Rather than relying on the free market to address society’s ills, the Left in the mid-twentieth century was defined by its support for the labor movement and its attempts to extend the reach of New Deal social welfare programs. In the 1960s, this agenda shifted somewhat as the young activists of the “New Left” focused much of their attention on the quality of the democratic conversation in the United States. Emphasizing participatory democracy, they were notably hostile to bureaucracy and to what they saw as “establishment liberalism.” Interestingly, E. J. Dionne has suggested that some of the rhetoric and ideas of the counterculture, and, to a lesser extent, the “New Left,” were easily incorporated into “New Right” arguments against big government.32 The emergence of social movements during the late 1960s and early 1970s that were dedicated to civil rights, women’s liberation, and gay rights also helped change the face of the contemporary Left. These groups and the criticisms that they offered of liberalism eventually forced the Left to accept the need to work for equality for previously marginalized groups. This is not to imply that the Left was quick to embrace the rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, for indeed, second-wave feminism emerged in part as a reaction against the attitudes and behaviour of the men of the “New Left.” Rather, it is to suggest that activists

32 E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 52–3.

14 that pursued equality came to be associated both politically and philosophically with the Democratic Party and the Left in general. As Van Gosse argues, social movements working for the rights of marginalized groups have become institutionalized and developed powerful lobbying groups, and in doing so, they have become the most prominent face of the contemporary Left in the United States.33 In pursuing equality for all, these activists often advocated the direct intervention of the federal government into realms that had previously been considered either part of the private sector or the domain of state governments. Interestingly, social conservatives have tended to focus their attacks on the gains made by women and homosexual activists. Unless otherwise specified, in this thesis “conservative” and “Right” are used to describe a worldview rooted in opposition to communism and which emphasized the importance of limited government. In the United States in the years after World War II, these beliefs often manifested themselves in terms of support for a strong defense force and hostility towards taxes, government regulation, and “liberal collectivism.” Under the broad heading of conservatism there existed competing strands of thought which at times pitted factions of the Right against one another. While there were remarkable variations in terms of the philosophical beliefs of conservatives, in this thesis I have chosen to focus on economic and social conservatives. Although it may seem crude to simply distinguish between those who prioritized economic matters and those who focused on the social, I have chosen to use these terms because they allow me to indicate in short hand the competing values and goals that the “New Right” claimed to represent.34 Economic conservatives were primarily concerned with the need for freedom from government control. Espousing a form of laissez-faire capitalism, these conservatives linked

33 Van Gosse argues that academics need to include organizations devoted to protecting rights (such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NOW, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and NARAL, to name but a few) into definitions of the contemporary Left if scholars are to fully understand the impact that liberalism has had on the United States in the years since Reagan was elected to the Presidency. Van Gosse, “Introduction 1: Postmodern America: A New Democratic Order in the Second Gilded Age,” in The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America, eds. Van Gosse and Richard Moser (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 25–6. 34 In the years after World War II, the conservative movement in the United States struggled over what exact ideas came under the banner of the Right, and at different times different debates raged. In the late 1940s and early 1950s traditionalists, libertarians, and individualists all attempted to negotiate their place within the conservative movement, with varying levels of success. By the time this thesis begins, these debates had largely died down, in part because strict libertarians were now a distinct minority. Similarly, although the emergence of “neoconservatives” helped change the intellectual landscape of the contemporary Right, the debates that their ideas provoked generally did not fall within the scope of this thesis.

15 individual freedom with economic freedom, and their opposition to an interventionist State stemmed from their belief that the market could resolve most issues. The staunch anti- communism of most economic conservatives was thus tied to their conviction that one could not have individual liberty without economic liberty. In the late twentieth century, economic conservatives worked to reduce welfare spending, cut taxes, limit the power of the unions, and deregulate industries. The one area in which they supported a strong role for the government was in defense, and here they completely reversed their message of fiscal frugality. Although economic conservatives often shared the concerns of social conservatives, their general attitude towards government was one of hostility and suspicion. The State was seen as part of the problem rather than as the solution. The key distinction between economic and social conservatives was that social conservatives were often spurred to action on matters that concerned traditional morality. In the 1970s and 1980s they tended to mobilize around issues relating to marriage, threats to the heterosexual family, and gender roles. A distinct faction of social conservatives were also inspired to act because of their concerns about the increasingly secular nature of American society, and these individuals are identified by scholars as constituting a “Christian Right.”35 While economic conservatives tended to uniformly condemn big government, social conservatives implicitly relied on a vision of the State that was active and which enforced values, and this was particularly evident during struggles against gay rights ordinances. The remedies that they sought, by necessity, came from the top down. Although many social conservatives used the language of local or state control, they were willing to appeal to the federal government for action to enforce their vision of society, demonstrated by their

35 For scholarly accounts of the history of the “Christian Right” see Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York: The Guilford Press, 1998); Sara Diamond, “The Personal is Political: The Role of Cultural Projects in the Mobilization of the Christian Right,” in Unraveling the Right: The New Conservatism in American Thought and Politics, ed. Amy Ansell (Boulder, Westview Press, 1998), 41–55; Martin Durham, The Christian Right, the Far Right, and the Boundaries of American Conservatism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Kenneth Heineman, God is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Michael Lienesch Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); William Martin, With God on our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1996); Duanne Murray Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous: The Christian Right Confronts the Republican Party (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996); Kenneth D. Wald and Allison Calhoun-Brown, Religion and Politics in the United States, 5th ed. (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 206-32; Clyde Wilcox, Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics, 2nd ed. (Colorado: Westview Press, 2000); Daniel Kenneth Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls: The Formation of a Southern Christian Right” (PhD, Brown University, 2005).

16 efforts against pornography in the 1950s.36 Social conservatives, also known as “moral traditionalists,” were a part of the conservative movement throughout the post-World War II period, but as the 1970s progressed these activists became an increasingly dominant part of the Right at a national level. The election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 was the culmination of a historical trend that developed in the United States in the early 1960s. While these years are often remembered as a time when liberalism was in the ascendance, recent historical scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that movement intellectuals and grassroots conservative activists were developing the strategies and tactics that would prove so useful in later years.37 Although it may have seemed as though liberalism was the politically dominant ideology, events in the 1960s and 1970s led eventually to the victory of the Right at a federal level and to a fundamental shift in the American political landscape. The strength of the Right in this period was first demonstrated when Barry Goldwater was selected as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. Goldwater’s bid for the presidency, although ultimately unsuccessful, was the culmination of a concerted effort on the part of both local activists and national right-wing figures. It was also a starting point for many who would go on to play important roles in the think tanks and lobby groups of the Reagan era. Conservatives learned from both Goldwater’s defeat and from the successes of the Left and adapted their tactics accordingly.

36 Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,” 240–1. 37 For examples of contemporary scholarship on the history of conservatism see John A. Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999); David Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); William Berman, America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mary C. Brennan, “Winning the War/Losing the Battle: The Goldwater Presidential Campaign and its Effects on the Evolution of Modern Conservatism,” in The Conservative Sixties, eds. David Farber and Jeff Roche (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 63–78; Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right- Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995); Lee Edwards, The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade America (New York: Free Press, 1999); Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Gregory L. Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Also see the forthcoming edited collection, Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2008).

17 By 1973, the year the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, the United States was a country that had been profoundly affected by the rights revolution of the previous decade. The successes experienced by the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the women’s liberation movement were both normalized and problematized. While the values of these new lobby groups permeated popular culture and government policy, these ideas also began to be greeted by organized resistance by those who opposed the development of a rights culture. It would be the clash between these two sides that would be one of the most important legacies of the decade. The 1970s were the period when the advances of the 1960s began to be negotiated at an individual and federal level.38 In the last years of the 1970s, Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, and Howard Phillips, four men who had been active in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, began to make a concerted effort to make the Right a national political force again. Using new forms of technology and the established networks of both single-issue groups and fundamentalist Christians, they broadened the reach of conservatism by speaking to and for groups that were previously considered either apolitical or tied to the Democratic Party. These men, who identified themselves as the founders of what they called a “New Right,” differed from Goldwater-era conservatives primarily in their reliance on social issues as a key mobilizing strategy.39 The “New Right” was rarely linked in any formal way to the Republican Party at either a federal or state level, although their work often benefited conservative candidates. This outsider status was ultimately beneficial to them, for as Critchlow suggests, “because members of the New Right were a minority within a minority, they were able to press with impunity an agenda that interjected new issues and policies into the political arena.”40 “New Right” figures wielded influence from within think tanks and Political Action Committees (PACs), distributing dollars and running advertisements as they saw fit. In theory, this allowed them to be as critical of liberal and moderate Republicans as they were of Democrats. It also meant that they were removed from the politics of compromise that tended to necessitate cooperation and concessions between the two parties. The vision of

38 For further discussion of the importance of the 1970s as an historical epoch see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001). 39 For Viguerie’s account of the “New Right” and its vision for society see Richard Viguerie, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead (Falls Church: Viguerie Co., 1981). 40 Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 131.

18 government that the “New Right” espoused was fundamentally different. It pursued an absolutist form of politics, often at the expense of passing legislation that would meet some of its goals. Its lobbying efforts were aggressive and confrontational, and it depicted the world in terms of allies and enemies. “New Right” ideologues such as Weyrich and Phillips focused much of their energy on criticizing the impact that the rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s had had on American society. They declared that these changes were forced on the public by a liberal minority and upheld by an intrusive federal government, and they aimed to utilize public disquiet about these social shifts. In particular, they worked throughout the late 1970s to mobilize fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, and the political emergence of what is known as the “Christian Right” has been claimed by the ideologues of the “New Right” as one of their greatest triumphs.41 Viguerie, Weyrich, Phillips, and Ed McAteer of the Christian Freedom Foundation actively courted influential preachers such as Falwell and Jim Robison and persuaded them that they, and their flocks, needed to become involved in the political process. Once evangelical and fundamentalist ministers began to align themselves with the goals of the “New Right,” conservatives were able to reach a relatively untapped political base via the Christian media network and its array of television and radio stations.42 Although the “New Right” appealed to conservative Christians on a variety of social issues, the fight against Roe v. Wade proved to be an extremely important means of gaining and mobilizing recruits. In the opinion of Sara Diamond, “without the unifying and galvanizing drive to end legal abortion, the Christian Right would not have become a social movement formidable enough to swing elections.”43 In the 1980s and 1990s the abortion debate was generally understood as a struggle

41 The importance of the “Christian Right” to the “New Right” stemmed, in part, from changing patterns of religious participation amongst the American population. The authority of mainstream churches declined over the course of the 1960s and 1970s as attendance rates plummeted, while smaller denominations, often evangelical or fundamentalist in outlook, experienced a massive surge in terms of congregants. Although not all evangelical and fundamentalist churches identify with the conservative agenda of the “Christian Right” the increasing importance of these types of religious forums helped contribute to the authority of men like Falwell and Robison. For an in depth study of the growth of evangelical Christianity in Orange County, California, see McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 241–59. 42 One of the most notable examples of this type of was the formation of Moral Majority, an organization founded by Falwell in 1979 after a meeting with Viguerie, Phillips, Weyrich, and McAteer. Moral Majority’s platform declared that it was “pro-life, pro-traditional family, pro-moral, and pro-America.” McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 21. For a more detailed discussion of Falwell’s emergence as a nationally prominent “Christian Right” minister and the formation of the Moral Majority see Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,” 310–80. 43 Diamond, Not by Politics Alone, 132.

19 between liberalism and conservatism, between those who espoused a politics based on equal rights and those who advocated traditional values. In addition, second-wave feminism was increasingly conflated with the Left, and this manifested itself in federal politics when the Democrats became the party that supported a woman’s right to choose in the 1984 election. This has led some scholars to assume that since the anti-abortion movement was hostile towards a key feminist goal, it was thus a natural ally of the socially conservative wing of the “New Right.” Indeed, Luker’s Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood posits the idea that the debate over abortion was essentially a struggle over traditional gender roles and the meaning afforded to motherhood and the family.44 Although there were individuals within the movement who were hostile to second wave feminism in the 1970s, these ideas became much more dominant in the 1980s after the “New Right” had started to intervene in debates about abortion. Notably, the antifeminist rhetoric that began to be used often mirrored the language of Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent member of the Right who had played an important role in Goldwater’s campaign. In downplaying the importance of gender concerns within the early movement, I am agreeing with Keith Cassidy’s critique of Luker, particularly with his suggestion that her thesis is “not the only or the most persuasive explanation of the cultural origins of the abortion dispute and the characteristics of abortion opponents.”45 While this thesis is not about the anti-abortion movement’s relationship with feminism, its findings do impact on feminist understandings of the backlash in that they challenge the idea that the national right-to-life movement was a natural constituency for the “New Right.” Historians of both the right-to-life movement and conservatism have overlooked the effect that the “New Right” had on the development of organized opposition to abortion. Accounts of conservatism in this period focus almost solely on the victories achieved at a federal level and on the key figures of the “New Right” and the “Christian Right.” The story these texts tell is primarily one of victory and coalition building, of a series of successful campaigns against secular humanism and liberalism that united social and economic conservatives.46 Perhaps most significantly, they do not explore the nature of the single-issue groups that conservatives formed alliances with, instead telling the story as though these groups and activists came into being with the advent of the “New Right.”

44 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 161–73. 45 Cassidy, “The Right to Life Movement,” 129–39. 46 For examples of these kinds histories of victory see Edwards, The Conservative Revolution; Heineman, God is a Conservative; Martin, With God on our Side.

20 Within the literature on the anti-abortion movement, the focus on the role of the “New Right” can be understood as part of a larger historical narrative that exists regarding the importance of social issues in the rejuvenation of conservatism. A great deal of scholarship focuses on the way that matters relating to gender and sexuality helped galvanize the Right in the late twentieth-century. In particular, these texts have explored how fights over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), gender issues, and gay rights helped conservatives gain power at both a state and federal level.47 When the “New Right” deplored the social and political changes that had occurred in America, legalized abortion was singled out for especial criticism, and this has meant that scholars such as McKeegan have concentrated on exploring how conservatives understood and mobilized around the abortion issue. The growth of the anti-abortion movement has almost uniformly been conflated with the broader resurgence of conservatism that occurred at the end of the 1970s. However, in the early and mid-1970s, prominent right-to-lifers espoused tactics that stood in stark contrast to the goals of the “New Right,” and they greeted the growth of conservatism in the late 1970s with wariness and ambivalence. Indeed, some groups and individuals opposed to abortion continued to struggle with the ideas and tactics of the “New Right” even after the election of a President who openly supported right-to-life goals. Ultimately, this thesis suggests that the incursion of conservatives into the abortion debate closed down the kinds of dialogue available to right-to-lifers, a move that changed the way that this social movement functioned. This thesis will show that the anti-abortion movement that existed prior to the intervention of the “New Right” was one that embraced moderation and individualism. Although activists within the movement held a range of positions on issues stemming from

47 For work on Phyllis Schlafly and the movement to stop the ERA see Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism; Donald G. Matthews and Jane Sherron De Hart, Sex, Gender and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). For work on gender and conservatism see Elinor Burkett, The Right Women: A Journey Through the Heart of Conservative America (New York: Scribner, 1998); Conover and Gray, Feminism and the New Right; Jean Hardisty, “Kitchen Table Backlash: The Antifeminist Women’s Movement,” in Unraveling the Right: The New Conservatism in American Thought and Politics, ed. Amy Ansell (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 105–25; Klatch, Women of the New Right; Catherine Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For work on issues relating to sex and conservatism see John Gallagher and Chris Bull, Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996); Karen M. Harbeck, Gay and Lesbian Educators: Personal Freedom, Public Constraints (Malden: Amethyst, 1997), 39– 59; Whitney Vincent Strub, “Perversion for Profit: Obscenity and Pornography in the Postwar United States” (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006); Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,” 238–309.

21 legalized abortion, this did not preclude them from speaking as anti-abortionists or in occupying leadership roles within the movement. Indeed, right-to-lifers in the mid-1970s viewed differing beliefs as a source of strength for the movement overall, as this would allow them to speak on behalf of a truly broad cross-section of the American public. Rather than dictating a series of set opinions that had to be held by all opponents of abortion, the major right-to-life organizations seemed loath to adopt positions that would alienate potential new recruits. While there was a basic expectation that everyone in the movement would be opposed to liberalized abortion laws, even this issue was not as clear-cut as it might seem. This thesis is premised on the idea that there were distinct ideological and philosophical differences between some elements of the national anti-abortion movement and the social conservatives of the “New Right.” It concentrates on groups that were not affiliated with any particular religious denomination and that therefore did not rely on doctrinal justifications for their opposition to abortion.48 The first half offers a series of case studies that centre on organizations and individuals in the movement who have tended to be overlooked. In general, the historical scholarship on opposition to abortion tends to focus on large or controversial right-to-life groups such as the NRLC and American Life League (ALL).49 These organizations were not the only voices speaking on behalf of the anti- abortion movement during this period, and they were not the only forums for discussions about politics, philosophy, and leadership styles. While the NRLC has long been one of the major anti-abortion organizations in the United States, in the 1970s its reach and ambitions were somewhat more limited than they are today. The NRLC was founded in 1966, but it did not really become active until 1971. Although approximately 250 local and state groups were affiliated with the national

48 For accounts of the attitudes and activities of American Catholics with regard to abortion and birth control see McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 216–81; Mary C. Segers, “The Catholic Church as a Political Actor,” in Perspectives on the Politics of Abortion, ed. Ted Jelen (Westport: Praeger, 1995), 87–130. For an article that contrasts the positions of the Catholic hierarchy and the Southern Baptist Convention see Michele Dillon, “Religion and Culture in Tension: The Abortion Discourses of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention.” Religion and American Culture 5, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 159–80. For texts that discuss the beliefs of fundamentalist and evangelical right-to-lifers see Scott Flipse, “Below-the-Belt Politics: Protestant Evangelicals, Abortion, and the Foundation of the New Religious Right, 1960–75,” in Farber and Roche, eds., The Conservative Sixties, 127–41; Clyde Wilcox, “Evangelicals and Abortion,” in A Public Faith: Evangelicals and Civic Engagement, ed. Michael Cromartie (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 101–15; Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,” 280–309. 49 For scholarship which focuses on the NRLC or ALL see Michael W. Cuneo, “Life Battles”; Michael W. Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 60–67; Haussman, Abortion Politics in North America, 52–5; Paige, The Right to Lifers.

22 organization by mid-1972, it was not until after the Roe v. Wade decision that the NRLC held its first national meeting or attempted to articulate a national right-to-life agenda. Indeed, Andrew Merton claims that until 1975, the group was basically a clearinghouse with a miniscule number of employees, and that the real “power of the movement lay in the local organizations in every state.”50 In his opinion, it was a national right-to-life organization in name only. Although the group had moved beyond simply co-ordinating and linking various state groups by the mid to late 1970s, it was still struggling to articulate a national agenda. The NRLC underwent repeated changes in leadership during the 1970s, and these were often accompanied by bitter splits which undermined the unity of the organization. During the 1970s the group was also loathe to take a position on anything beyond sanctity of life issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide. The NRLC did not have an official position on when life began, on the issue of exceptions, on birth control, or on political lobbying. Most of its tactics and activities until the end of the 1970s were thus neutral on anything other than abortion, for while it did not want to drive away potential supporters, it also did not want to lose its more conservative members. The group thus did not try and build coalitions outside the anti-abortion movement, and nor did it outline a position on how it thought the movement might achieve political or legal victory. In contrast, the anti- abortion groups that this thesis discusses attempted to make opposition to abortion as broadly appealing as possible, and they argued that right-to-lifers needed to be willing to compromise on certain issues and to forge coalitions with moderates on both sides of the issue. The thesis begins by examining Americans United for Life (AUL), a right-to-life organization that was active on a national level prior to Roe v. Wade. AUL included early movement leaders and thinkers such as Dr. Joseph Stanton, John Archibold, Dr. John Hillabrand, and George Williams. AUL emphasized its ecumenical nature while struggling internally over competing ideas about opposition to abortion and the development of the movement. The thesis then focuses on Marjory Mecklenburg and American Citizens Concerned for Life (ACCL). Members of groups such as AUL and ACCL understood their opposition to abortion in ways that counter many of the traditional narratives of how the right-to-life movement functioned as a lobby group. In focusing on these overlooked moments within the history of the anti-abortion movement I am hoping to help broaden

50 Merton, Enemies of Choice, 126.

23 historical understandings of the growth of both right-to-life activism and the development of the movement as a social and political powerhouse Mecklenburg, a former Home Economics teacher and mother of four, was inspired to action by attempts to reform the abortion laws in her home state of Minnesota. By dint of who she was she offered a compelling rebuttal to many of the charges laid against the anti- abortion movement. She was not a man opposed to women’s liberation and her Protestantism meant that she was not a Catholic who could be dismissed as simply obeying the dictates of the Pope. She and her obstetrician husband Dr. Fred Mecklenburg helped found MCCL in 1968, and under her leadership it went on to become a model for other state groups, with a membership of approximately ten thousand by the time Roe v. Wade was handed down.51 Mecklenburg became increasingly influential at a national level, and joined both AUL and the NRLC in the early 1970s. After the Supreme Court legalized abortion she helped revitalize the disorganized NRLC by calling state anti-abortion leaders from around the country to see if they would be willing to meet on a regular basis to hold strategy sessions.52 In June 1973, after the NRLC formally separated itself from the Catholic hierarchy, she became its first chairperson. One year later, she left the group to lead ACCL.53 Mecklenburg remained the head of ACCL until 1981. This meant that the group had a clearly articulated and relatively constant vision of society, and it is this perspective that I explore in my case studies.54 Although ACCL, with its membership of approximately three thousand, was never as large as the NRLC, it wielded a level of federal influence that belied its size.55 It developed and marketed an educational slide show called “Double Speak.” It

51 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 58–60. 52 Ibid., 82–3. 53 Mecklenburg’s time as head of the NRLC was difficult and she left the group in 1974. The split was acrimonious, and for much of the 1970s she continued to have a strained relationship with some of its leading figures. 54 In the period discussed by this thesis the leadership of the NRLC was held by Marjory Mecklenburg, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Dr. Carolyn Gerster, and Dr. Jack Willke. 55 The exact membership numbers of the NRLC are difficult to ascertain, as Judie Brown freely admitted in the early 1980s that during her time at the NRLC she had artificially inflated its membership lists. In an interview with Connie Paige she stated, “I know that [NRLC] say that they represent twelve million people. I made that up … Somebody called and asked after I took over there, so we came up with a formula. If you took the two thousand groups and figured the average group has a five-member family, you multiply that all out to twelve million. It was a total lie.” Paige, The Right to Lifers, 86. Indeed, it was not just Brown who admitted that the NRLC’s estimates about its total membership were dubious. In an interview with Andrew Merton, Jack Willke and Carolyn Gerster declared that the group did not base its figures on dues-paying members but instead counted “people who will march with us, vote with us, [and] who will attend conventions.” When Merton noted that their claim to represent eleven to thirteen million people was not terribly scientific, Willke agreed, but noted that “it wins elections.” Merton, Enemies of Choice, 201–2.

24 provided assistance and launched joint fundraising efforts with state groups, and it sponsored organizational internships for college students. It began a resource library in Minneapolis that was used by members of the general public as well as anti-abortion leaders. It also gathered information for legal briefs relating to abortion and helped provide expert witnesses in several important cases. Its members were involved in state-based politics, but they also routinely testified before the House and Senate on matters of concern.56 Mecklenburg was also considered for a position in the federal bureaucracy by a Democratic President, and was actually appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. In terms of their membership and the type of activism they engaged in, ACCL and AUL are representative of the changed political and social landscape of the late twentieth century. Theda Skocpol suggests that although there has been a proliferation in the number of civic and political groups in American society, there has been a dramatic shift from “membership groups” to “advocacy groups.” Earlier organizations held regular meetings, included members from across the class spectrum, and “engaged in multiple rather than narrowly specialized pursuits.” Contemporary groups tend to have far fewer members, focus on one specific goal or interest, and are often run by advocates or managers rather than by members. AUL and ACCL reflect several of these changes. Like other national anti-abortion groups such as Life Amendment Political Action Committee (LAPAC) and ALL, they did not rely on the formation of local or state chapters to gain members, nor did they require members to engage in regular activities. They had “individualized contact” with their members through newsletters and direct-mail appeals, but their members did not gather at regular meetings or generally participate in shaping the agenda of the group. Some right-to- life groups, such as ACCL, did ask their members to send telegrams and letters to members of Congress and state legislatures, but these kinds of action are generally decided on by the leaders of the group and occur in response to specific issues and causes. This shift in types of group activity that took place after the 1960s is one of the reasons why this thesis focuses

56 For a listing of the work engaged in by ACCL, see a brochure entitled “Some Recent Accomplishments of American Citizens Concerned for Life,” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, Gerald Ford Presidential Library (hereafter referred to as GFPL).

25 so much on the leaders of organizations rather than on the activities of grassroots members.57 It is worth noting from the outset that I am not intending that the ideas and activities of ACCL be understood as representing the ideas and activities of the entire right-to-life movement. However, it is worth emphasizing that although ACCL articulated a vision of anti-abortion activism that was sometimes at odds with the beliefs of other national groups, this did not prevent the group from acting and speaking on behalf of the cause. Nor did it stop other right-to-lifers or members of Congress from accepting ACCL as legitimate representatives of the movement. In the 1970s, both Republicans and Democrats wanted to work with “moderate” right-to-lifers such as those found in ACCL, and they cultivated alliances with Mecklenburg in part because she engaged in a type of activism that relied on uniting Americans rather than dividing them. Thus, although Mecklenburg and ACCL were unusual, I would argue that they are of historical interest in that their place within the anti- abortion leadership was assured throughout the 1970s, and this stemmed in no small part from Mecklenburg’s own unique role in the history of the right-to-life movement. This thesis can be generally understood as being made up of two halves. The examples discussed in the first section chart the development of opposition to abortion into an organized social movement and tease out the kinds of debates and struggles that occurred during this process. By focusing on groups such as AUL and ACCL and figures such as Marjory Mecklenburg, Professor George Williams, and Frances Frech, I am hoping to demonstrate the breadth and vibrancy that existed within the movement at this time. Williams and Mecklenburg donated their extensive papers to archives, which also means that these chapters can explore the internal workings of these groups and understand the issues that provoked conflict or compromise, instances that would not be evident if one relied simply on the newsletters and public statements produced by these organizations. While the first half of this thesis charts the growth of the right-to-life movement and its attempts to define itself as a national interest group, the last half explores what happened

57 This is not to imply that grassroots right-to-lifers are removed from civic engagement. Many of them do participate in local groups with cross-class memberships and regular meetings, and they often see commitment to their cause as requiring more than simply producing a checkbook. They often join multiple anti-abortion organizations, identifying as members of local, state, and national groups, while a smaller number engage in forms of direct action and protest. Theda Skocpol, “Advocates without Members: The Recent Transformation of American Civic Life,” in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, eds. Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 461–509.

26 to the movement once it gained access to federal power. With the emergence of the “New Right” and the election of Reagan to the presidency, the movement was forced to respond to the increasingly conservative nature of federal politics. This section of the thesis explores the growth and constant splintering of the movement, and focuses specifically on the relationship between the right-to-life movement, the “New Right,” and the Reagan administration. This section is based primarily on the papers of various White House staff members, selected documents from the Williams collection, and the papers of ACCL. By relying on these documents, I can demonstrate how the right-to-life movement’s relationship with the White House changed during Reagan’s two terms in office, and how anti-abortion leaders and activists expressed their concerns in both their private and public correspondence. Although the case studies discussed in this thesis do not provide a complete history of the movement in the 1970s and 1980s, it is hoped that cumulatively they will offer fresh insights into both the growth of the national anti-abortion movement and the way that external factors helped shape what message right-to-lifers presented to the world. While these general concerns shape the overall thesis, each chapter analyses specific moments or issues that prompted action from right-to-lifers. Chapter one explores the nature of the anti-abortion movement prior to the Roe v. Wade decision through a detailed analysis of AUL. Founded in 1971, AUL underwent a series of internal contests over what exactly it meant to be opposed to abortion and how that opposition might best be expressed. As the group’s members discussed their ideas about the issues of exceptions, direct mail, and education, they enunciated a vision of the anti-abortion movement that prioritized moderation and reflected an optimistic vision of American society. By charting the history of AUL prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, this chapter argues that the anti-abortion movement was aware of conservative arguments from its very beginning but that these ideas were rejected by some groups who favoured a more inclusive approach to coalition building. The second chapter examines the political activism of the movement in the years immediately after the legalization of abortion, focusing specifically on the 1976 presidential election. Before social conservatives began to dominate abortion politics, some right-to-lifers pursued a form of activism that relied primarily on voter education rather than on channeling money into PACs. This election did not offer a presidential candidate who was clearly aligned with the fight against abortion, but rather than shy away from the campaign, activists such as Marjory Mecklenburg and Frances Frech worked for the candidate that best

27 suited their goals for the right-to-life movement. They encouraged people to vote with abortion at the forefront of their mind, but they also believed that the ability to compromise was vital if they were to be an effective force in federal politics. My third chapter focuses on the last years of the 1970s and examines the impact that the sexual revolution had on right-to-lifers. Issues pertaining to reproduction and sexuality were used throughout the 1970s to mobilize social conservatives, but this chapter argues that anti-abortionists did not always pursue an approach that was easily reconciled with the ideas of the “New Right” on these matters. At both the state and federal level, Mecklenburg and ACCL articulated ideas about sexuality that placed them in direct opposition to conservatives. Mecklenburg’s support for sex education programs in the public schools and ACCL’s work for federal rights and aid for pregnant women both demonstrate a form of anti-abortion activism that drew from the political Left. This chapter uses the challenge of the sexual revolution as a means of examining the divisions that existed within the movement with regard to both socially conservative issues and in terms of the role of the federal government. In the late 1970s, the “New Right” became an increasingly prominent part of the national landscape, and vocal opposition to abortion was a key part of its traditionalist message. Chapter four examines the sudden emergence of the “New Right” and its impact on the anti-abortion movement, and suggests that some right-to-lifers viewed these new allies as a threat to the wellbeing of the movement as a whole. The activities of ACCL demonstrate that prominent anti-abortion organizations were wary of the “New Right” from the time of its emergence and worked hard to offer a meaningful alternative to such polarizing political activity. This chapter argues that not all leaders in the anti-abortion movement in the late 1970s embraced conservatives as political saviors and that some right- to-lifers articulated a form of social activism that attempted to bridge the gap between the increasingly polarized Left and Right. After Reagan’s election as president in 1980, many anti-abortionists felt that the introduction of a constitutional amendment banning abortion was finally within their reach. The first term of Reagan’s presidency, however, was to prove deeply disappointing for right- to-lifers, and chapter five examines the tumult that the movement experienced in the early 1980s. The nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court and the internal fighting that pitted Senator Orrin Hatch’s amendment against Senator Jesse Helm’s bill

28 called into question the nature of the alliance that had been formed between the anti- abortion movement and the “New Right.” This chapter argues that tensions always existed between the goals and activities of these groups, and that, rather than thriving with the election of a President who opposed abortion, the movement actually suffered as a result of their role in the “Reagan revolution.” My final chapter offers an overview of the anti-abortion movement during Reagan’s two terms in office. It suggests that the increasingly conservative views expressed by right- to-life organizations stemmed in part from the difficulty that leading activists had in negotiating the competing demands placed on them by the “New Right” and the White House. Socially conservative groups wished to solidify the links between the abortion issue and other conservative causes, but this was not an alliance that anti-abortion organizations necessarily desired. The first section of this chapter explores the controversy that surrounded the Civil Rights Restoration Act, and suggests that during the federal struggle over this measure, the NRLC found itself at odds with both the “New Right” and the Reagan administration. The second section of this chapter sketches the relationship between the anti-abortion movement and the Reagan administration. It argues that the symbolic politics practiced by the White House helped ensure that although Reagan’s two terms in office were marked by compromises and disappointments, right-to-lifers remained loyal to both the President and the Republican Party. This chapter suggests that the growing ties between anti- abortionists and the “New Right” led to a fundamental shift in the makeup of the movement, which concomitantly restricted the kinds of leaders and groups that were able to speak at a national level on the abortion issue. By the end of the decade, the kinds of nuances evident in the early movement were all but gone. The key focus of this thesis is the development of organized opposition to abortion as a national social movement during the 1970s and 1980s. Within this account, certain themes appear that speak to a bigger picture. Chapters one to three argue that there were elements within the national right-to-life movement that were neither politically Left or Right until the direct intervention of the conservative movement in the late 1970s. These chapters also contend that in the 1970s, moderation and diverse opinions were not only tolerated but were seen as central to the continued vitality of the movement. Drawing from these conclusions, chapters four to six explore the relationship between the anti-abortion movement, the “New Right,” and the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. The examples

29 discussed in these three chapters suggest that this association was often problematic for right-to-lifers, even if their leadership was loath to admit it. Apart from these major themes within the thesis, there are also several sub-themes that emerge in discussions of specific examples. The importance of education efforts and their relationship to the underlying philosophy and goals of the movement are explored in sections of chapters one, two, and three. The role of direct-mail fundraising and the ethics of revenue raising methods are discussed in chapters one and four. The debates surrounding coalition building as opposed to the politics of division are discussed in chapters one to four. Lastly, the effect of political compromise on the movement is teased out in chapters five and six. Together, it is hoped that these chapters paint a portrait of the right-to-life movement that complicates traditional narratives regarding the inherent conservatism of those who opposed legalized abortion. This thesis was initially intended to be an examination of hostility to feminism within the right-to-life movement, a view that seemed intimately tied to the ideas of the “New Right” and the “Christian Right.” At its most basic, the contention was that the entry of social conservatives into debates about abortion could not be divorced from their broader opposition to the goals of second-wave feminism, and that the increasing links between the anti-abortion movement and the “New Right” would have produced a marked increase in anti-feminist rhetoric and ideas amongst right-to-lifers in general. Drawing from Joan W. Scott’s ideas about writing gender history, this thesis was intended to be an exploration of how concerns about the gender order shaped the politics of the contemporary United States.58 After trips to a variety of archives in the United States and three years of thinking and writing about the movement, however, my focus changed. This is not to say that there were not numerous examples of negative depictions of feminism and its goals in the papers of anti-abortionists and social conservatives. Rather, through examination of the archives a different story emerged, one that placed far less emphasis on the role of feminism and that centered instead on the history of the anti-abortion movement and the changes that had occurred within it during the 1970s and 1980s. In focusing on this story, it was hoped that this thesis might contribute to existing historical narratives about both the ascendance of conservatism and the nature of the backlash against feminism. For academics and the general public, it sometimes seems as though the only distinctions that exist in the violent and polarized abortion debate in the United States are

58 Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

30 between the anti-abortion movement and those promoting abortion rights. The divide between these two stances appears to be so insurmountable that differences on either side can seem less important than that which unites them against a common enemy. This thesis argues that there was a moment in time when these divisions were not so stark. It is hoped that the nuances that existed within the early anti-abortion movement will allow historians to gain fresh insight into both the development of the right-to-life movement and the effect that the “New Right” had on the social movements of the 1970s. Rather than being an impenetrable coalition of like-minded allies, the union of anti-abortionists with the Right was problematic, occasionally hostile, and above all, a source of division amongst right-to-lifers themselves. By exploring this relationship, this thesis aims to demonstrate that there was once the possibility of compromise where now there seems to be none.

31

32 CHAPTER 1

FIGHTING THE “HURRICANE WINDS” OF ABORTION REFORM: AMERICANS UNITED FOR LIFE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-DEFINITION

On 22 January 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that fundamentally changed the debate over birth control, sexuality and abortion. The breadth of the Roe v. Wade decision was unexpected even amongst abortion rights advocates, but as Kristin Luker discovered in her interviews with activists, for right-to-lifers it generally came “like a bolt out of the blue.”1 The movement to reform or repeal abortion laws had been gaining momentum throughout the late 1960s, but these efforts were generally aimed at state laws. Many of the anti-abortion groups thus sprang up in areas where efforts were being made to alter the law, with the primary focus being on the immediate threat rather than on the formation of a cohesive national identity or position. Although these state groups sometimes had striking successes, most scholars have focused on the movement after Roe v. Wade.2 Historians who have dealt with this period in any great detail, such as Donald T. Critchlow, James Risen, and Judy Thomas, have tended to write predominantly about the NRLC or about individuals within the movement.3 There is thus a need both for more scholarship on the general right-to-life movement and also on the ideas and debates that occurred amongst these early activists. This chapter focuses on the first years of existence of AUL, an anti-abortion group founded in 1971 that was conceived specifically as a national organization geared towards education.4 The debates and conflicts that occurred within AUL in these early years offer historians important insights into the evolution of the anti-abortion

1 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 126. 2 For examples of works that focus almost exclusively on the movement after the Roe v. Wade decision see Jacoby, Souls, Bodies, Spirits; Mason, Killing for Life; McKeegan, Abortion Politics; O’Connor, No Neutral Ground?; Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels. 3 Donald Critchlow writes about the anti-abortion movement at this time as part of his broader project of examining the federal government’s relationship with the birth control movement, and thus his focus is primarily on those organizations with strong links to the Catholic hierarchy. James Risen and Judy Thomas focus on John O’Keefe and his philosophy of civil disobedience and anti-abortion sit-ins. See Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 138–9; Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels, 43–77. 4 Both Critchlow and Melissa Haussman mention AUL’s role in the early-right-to-life movement, but these accounts do not go beyond the group’s statement of purpose and its most basic functions. See Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 139–40 (he refers to them as the American Right to Life Association [ARTLA]); Haussman, Abortion Politics in North America, 52–4.

33 movement and challenge some of the ongoing assumptions about the effectiveness and ideology of right-to-lifers at this time. In the fight over exceptions, members of AUL engaged in a struggle over the practical matter of when abortion might be acceptable, but they also embarked on a broader debate about who anti-abortionists would speak for as a social movement. The interrogation of direct-mail fundraising techniques that went on at the same time similarly offered an opportunity for AUL to examine what kinds of tactics and methods they would use as an organisation, ideas that were echoed again by the educational efforts of the group. These battles served effectively to reinforce the value of moderation and were essentially a rejection of absolutism within the organization. In the early 1970s, anti-abortionists in AUL consciously engaged with several of the ideas that would be advocated by the “New Right” in the latter part of the 1970s, and yet they rejected these positions in favor of a vision of society that was essentially positive. This is an outcome that would seem almost unthinkable when contrasted with the movement a decade later. At the time that AUL was founded, the most notable organization opposed to legalized abortion was the NRLC, which had been established in 1966 by Monsignor James McHugh at the behest of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB).5 In its early years, the group was intended simply to form links with the state and local right-to-life groups that were emerging in response to the reform and repeal movements. Although the Bishop’s pledged financial support to the fight against abortion in 1967, the NRLC itself was not very active during this period. Its next major intervention into the abortion debate came in 1971 when it promised to “provide material and information” to the groups it had formed links with, and it continued to play this coordinating role within the movement for several years. After Roe v. Wade the group formally separated from the Catholic bishops, which led the Catholic hierarchy to create the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA) in 1974. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, however, the NRLC maintained an extremely strong relationship with the Catholic Church. The group often worked hand in hand with the Family Life Division of the USCC, and it benefited from NCCB initiatives on abortion that were aimed at recruiting new members from parishes. Furthermore, lay Catholics were extremely important to the NRLC, for they

5 Historians differ as to the exact date that the NRLC was founded and even over who established the organization. Merton notes that it was founded in 1965, Cuneo suggests 1967, and Haussman claims it was not established until 1970. While Cuneo agrees that McHugh began the group, Haussman credits Dr. John Willke and his wife Barbara. Unless otherwise noted, in my summary of the NRLC’s early history and the role of the Catholic hierarchy I am drawing from Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 138–9.

34 constituted approximately seventy percent of its membership. Although the Catholic Church’s backing and financial support helped the NRLC in its early years, this close relationship often proved problematic for the broader anti-abortion movement. As Michael Cuneo notes, right-to-lifers were often desperate “to dispel charges (which were rampant in the news media during the late sixties and early seventies) that pro-lifers were mere stooges of the Catholic hierarchy dedicated to imposing their own straitjacketed morality on the entire nation.”6 In short, the NRLC, the most prominent right-to-life group of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was rarely active and was constrained by its ties to the Catholic hierarchy. When AUL was founded, it attempted to offer a new approach to the fight against liberalized abortion laws. On 5 February 1971, Professor Charles E. Rice dispatched a letter to citizens concerned about changes in the legal status of abortion, inviting them to join together in AUL. This new organization, which drafted a declaration of purpose in March under the auspices of the Emergency Council for Life, was to be a “national, non-sectarian, educational organization of citizens who affirm the sacredness of all human life from conception to natural death.”7 AUL was started by the Society for a Christian Commonwealth (SCC), a conservative Catholic group intimately connected to L. Brent Bozell and his magazine Triumph.8 Although AUL was envisaged as an independent organization, for the first year of its existence Bozell played a key role on the Board of Directors and the SCC controlled many elements of fundraising and policy. The initial money for the group came “from 50–55 individuals (largely Catholics) for a total of $50,000,” and some of the early Board Members contributed to this initial fundraising effort.9 George Williams, a Professor with the School of Divinity at Harvard University, was subsequently elected chairman, and by November of the same year the Board of

6 Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan, 60. 7 The origins of AUL are recounted in great detail by Professor Rice in a letter written in 1972. See Charles Rice to George Williams, 10 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, Andover-Harvard Divinity Library [hereafter referred to as A-HDL]. 8 In this period, Bozell and Rice provided significant links between the anti-abortion and conservative movements. Bozell was the brother-in-law of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and publisher of the conservative journal National Review. He was the ghostwriter of Conscience of a Conservative, a book that played an important role in Goldwater’s bid for the Presidency in 1964. He was also the founder in 1966 of the conservative Catholic magazine Triumph. Rice, who was also a Catholic, founded the Conservative Party in New York in 1962. Buckley was an early supporter of this political party, and was eventually elected to the Senate running on its ticket. For a more detailed discussion of the importance of Catholic conservatives to the broader movement and on Bozell and Rice in general see Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950–1985 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). For a text that analyzes Bozell’s millennialism and its legacy for both conservative and right-to-life activists see Mason, Killing for Life, 139–57. 9 Joseph Stanton to Edward Lewis, 7 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

35 Directors was heavily populated by lawyers, doctors, and academics.10 Above all, AUL was an organization for white-collar professionals. Although the initial emphasis on professors and MDs was not necessarily deliberate, it did serve to position AUL as a “respectable” alternative to grassroots activists, who at this stage were still widely understood by the media and by opponents as being dogmatic and irrational Catholics. A year after this letter was distributed, the organization underwent a serious crisis that led some members to leave in disgust and prompted others to engage in a wide- ranging debate about how the anti-abortion movement should develop and about the role AUL should play within that movement. In this time before the Supreme Court’s decision, Board members enunciated a complex vision of both the issue of abortion and also of how a burgeoning social movement might best proceed. The opinions expressed in the arguments over exceptions, direct mail, and education reveal a group aiming to posit itself as a moderate and ethical organization. Several of the leading figures in AUL rejected the tactics and philosophies that would become increasingly prominent within the anti-abortion movement in the late 1970s, and despite the clear elaboration of the absolutist position it would be those who were willing to compromise that would prevail. While AUL should not be read as being representative of the entire anti-abortion movement at this time, neither should it be dismissed because it differed so greatly from the later movement. At the time of the fight over exceptions, AUL had members who ranged in their stance on abortion and who reflected various levels of experience and commitment to the cause.11 At this time there were only a handful of national organizations and AUL was one of the few to be consistently active prior to Roe v. Wade, which meant that it had a level of influence that belied its size. In the 1980s, it went on to play an important role in the numerous challenges to abortion conducted by the Reagan Justice Department, and it has one of the longest histories of anti-abortion groups active

10 The early members of the Board included academics such as Professor Charles Rice of the University of Notre Dame, Professor Germain Grisez of Georgetown University, Professor Victor Rosenblum of Northwestern University, Arthur Dyck who had formerly been an Assistant Professor at Harvard Divinity School, and Professor George Williams of the Harvard Divinity School. Of these academics, Rosenblum and Rice were Professors of Law. It also included several doctors such as Dr. Joseph Stanton, Dr. John Hillabrand, Dr. Ratner, and Dr. Kenneth Mitzner. 11 In addition to the academics, doctors, and lawyers listed above, AUL also included core members of several early right-to-life groups. Stanton founded VOLCOM, a Boston based group that was a subset of MCL. Louise Summerhill founded Birthright, a Canadian organization that spread quickly throughout the United States. Mitzner was the President of Mobilization for the Unnamed, a Los Angeles group. Archibold was an establishing member of Colorado Right to Life, a very early state group that became active in July 1967 after Colorado became the first state to repeal its abortion laws. He was also a founding member of both AUL and NRLC. Hillabrand of Toledo, Ohio founded Alternatives to Abortion, which subsequently became Heartbeat International. Marjory Mecklenburg, who joined AUL during its first year, helped establish MCCL in the late 1960s. She is discussed in greater detail later in this thesis.

36 today. It thus provides an excellent means of understanding the nuances that existed with the right-to-life movement in the early 1970s.

EXCEPTIONS

In November 1971, AUL issued an official press release and a statement from Williams that announced to the nation that a new anti-abortion organization had arrived. In both releases emphasis was placed on the non-sectarian nature of the group, with Williams declaring that AUL was made up of people “with diverse religious affiliations … and of none.”12 This focus on the group’s disparate makeup echoed an earlier attempt by Rice and Bozell to organise a National Right to Life Congress without “ecclesiastical backing,” a move that pitted them directly against the Catholic hierarchy.13 AUL was distancing itself from the Catholic Church’s anti-abortion efforts by emphasising that those in this new organization were united not by religious faith but by a common desire to “help their fellow citizens … see the immense social and personal damage being wrought by the hurricane winds swirling over the big cities and capitals and striking down the laws against abortion.”14 While the board members may not have had doctrinal reasons for opposing abortion, they did posit a theory about why the procedure was increasingly accepted. In Williams’ statement he argued that the sexual revolution, the advent of women’s liberation, and the growing concerns about a population explosion had cumulatively led to the “trivialization” of abortion. Although not everyone in AUL necessarily agreed with his assessment (and Williams’ himself seemed to have ambivalent views on these social trends), it was a fairly accurate summation of the reasons that right- to-lifers gave for the liberalization of abortion laws at this time.15 Second-wave feminists were a key target of later right-to-life groups, but AUL did not focus a great deal of attention on the changing nature of the family or in deploring the shifts in gender norms that were then occurring in American society. Indeed, this statement, which effectively

12 Statement of Professor George Williams, 19 November 1971, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 6, A-HDL. 13 Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 186. 14 Statement of Professor George Williams, 19 November 1971, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 6, A-HDL. 15 At this time it was quite common for anti-abortionists to uniformly condemn and oppose the population control movement, but Williams was “very much concerned [both] about a population explosion in certain part of the world” and within the United States itself. Although he opposed the way that abortion was often pushed as a solution by population controllers, he firmly believed that something did need to be done and personally advocated the use of contraception. For an elaboration of his opinions regarding the idea of population control, see George Williams to John Hillabrand, 18 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 1, A-HDL.

37 introduced the group on to the national scene, was one of the few times in its early years that it critiqued the social movements that had emerged in the 1960s and that later proved so troublesome to the “New Right.” Less than one year after AUL was founded, the organization was nearly rent asunder by competing ideas about what exactly it meant to describe oneself as supporting the right to life.16 This crisis within the group resulted in the departure of several members and the dissolution of formal ties with the SCC, but it also demonstrates the competing ideas within the movement with regard to abortion, birth control and euthanasia. While external commentators and contemporary historians have understood the right-to-life movement as being fairly monolithic in its stances, the debate that occurred within AUL is emblematic of the fluidity that existed at this time amongst anti- abortionists. Although this argument over exactly what the group stood for was bitterly fought and provoked impassioned rhetoric, the eventual victors are notable primarily because they carefully posited themselves as an alternative to the absolutist hard-liners. For the first year of AUL’s existence, a great deal of energy was expended on establishing the organization as a lobby group. As Barbara Craig and David O’Brien have noted, much of what anti-abortionists understood about promoting their cause was gleaned from the civil rights movement. Thus, even before the Roe v. Wade decision there was a great deal of emphasis placed on being a “national, preferably Washington, D.C.- based organization, staffed by full-time professionals (experienced lobbyists, lawyers, media and public relations experts).”17 AUL had a great deal of difficulty in finding an executive director, and by late 1971 tension over the way the group was being run had begun to produce acrimonious exchanges at meetings. Although some of these arguments were probably a by-product of attempting to establish a new organisation, one issue went beyond managerial style and forced members to confront what they wanted the philosophy of AUL to be. These tensions manifested themselves in arguments over exactly what kind of abortions the group was opposed to and what stance it would take on the abortifacients that were beginning to be developed at the time. Although all right-to-lifers were generally opposed to abortion, there were still variations within the movement that caused incredible controversy, and these nuances were known as “exceptions.” At the most extreme end, which I have termed the absolutist position, were those who felt that the procedure was immoral and who

16 This struggle within the group is briefly outlined in Mason, Killing for Life, 140. 17 Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics, 44.

38 therefore opposed all abortions, even if they were performed to save the life of the mother. Those who held this position thus, in principle, found even the law as it stood prior to the abortion reform movement unsatisfactory.18 Many in the right-to-life movement tended to avoid having an opinion on this scenario, arguing instead that modern gynaecological and obstetrical advances had made this a theoretical proposition rather than an example likely to occur. The absolutists within the movement also opposed all forms of birth control and considered the pill, IUDs, and prostaglandins to be abortifacients. Those who held all of these positions constituted the most extreme wing of the right-to-life movement. At the more moderate end of the spectrum were those who were opposed to abortion but who conceded that there was a need to allow women whose lives were in physical danger to have access to the procedure. Another aspect that distinguished moderates from absolutists was that although they were often troubled by prostaglandins they did not denounce all birth control, and they generally tended to have ambivalent (or even positive) views on sex education. I have termed those who held one or all of these positions as moderate because they accepted the idea of compromise and were slightly more flexible than absolutists with regard to sexuality and fetal life. Tolerant individuals went beyond moderates in their understanding of instances where abortion might be necessary, accepting scenarios that went beyond medical necessity and that acknowledged social causes that might cause a woman to seek termination of her pregnancy. The most common examples cited were when a pregnancy had resulted from rape or incest, or where the mother’s health (either medically or psychologically) was in danger from a pregnancy. They also tended to have positive views on sex education and sometimes even advocated birth control. While these nuances within the movement might seem rather minor when compared to the hostility that arose between abortion rights advocates and right-to-lifers, they caused rifts and divisions among anti- abortionists throughout the 1970s. These fights over what philosophy should undergird the movement reveal how, during these early years, right-to-lifers understood themselves as a social movement and what political ethos was predominant.

18 One example of such absolutist beliefs was raised in the debate within AUL. In Arthur Dyck’s account of a telephone conversation that he had had with L. Brent Bozell he specifically enquired as to whether AUL should be opposed to “all existing laws in the U.S., including a law like the one in South Dakota, which prohibits abortion except where the life of the mother is threatened.” Bozell admitted that, in principle, AUL would oppose such a law, but after prompting admitted that this would not be working policy. See Memo re. telephone conversation with Brent Bozell, Arthur Dyck to George Williams, Papers of George Hunston Williams, 14 February 1972, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

39 The debate over exceptions was primarily a struggle between L. Brent Bozell (who was speaking both as an individual and as a representative of the SCC) and Professor Williams, Chairman of AUL. While many of the Board members clearly identified with one side or another, the fight seems to have focused on Williams because of the particularly tolerant position on abortion that he had expressed in earlier publications, particularly in an essay entitled “The Sacred Condominium.” At the meeting at which AUL was founded, there had been little to no debate about what exactly AUL stood for. The inviting letter was written in general terms, and the meeting itself was to “include no debate over the right to life—that right will be assumed.” Similarly, the declaration of purpose issued after the founding meeting stated simply that the organization “affirm[ed] the sacredness of all human life from conception to natural death.”19 At the January 1972 board meeting some members suggested that this declaration of purpose might be understood to allow for certain exceptions (initially encompassing instances of rape, incest, threats to the life of the mother, and possibly also the use of abortifacients).20 It thus appeared as though AUL would go from espousing an absolutist stance to suddenly embracing a tolerant position on abortion. These attempts to read into the statement of purpose an implicit endorsement of exceptions were problematic enough, but Williams held a stance on abortion that was even further removed from the absolutist ideas of Bozell and the SCC.21 In the eyes of Bozell, Williams was attempting to redefine the purpose of AUL so that the group was opposed simply to “abortion on demand.”22 If this were so, then in 1972 this meant that Williams tacitly endorsed almost all of the abortion reform measures that had been passed since 1967 (except, no doubt, the New York law).23 Prior

19 Charles Rice to George Williams, 10 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 20 L. Brent Bozell to John Hillabrand, 3 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 21 Even Williams’ stance on euthanasia did not sit easily with traditional right-to-life opposition to the practice, for, as he told Hillabrand, he had always felt that “the artificial prolongation of life without hope by means of complicated medical facilities was as unnatural as abortion.” While he opposed active intervention, he seemingly did not oppose allowing “the natural forces of dying to take over.” George Williams to John Hillabrand, 2 September 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 3, A-HDL. 22 L. Brent Bozell to John Hillabrand, 3 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 23 In 1970, New York enacted an extremely liberal repeal measure that essentially allowed women to terminate their pregnancies up until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy. This horrified anti-abortionists who mobilized under the leadership of Terence Cardinal Cooke to have the measure reversed. This grassroots movement was quite successful, and in 1972 the state legislature voted to overturn the liberalized law. Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed this decision, much to the outrage of state and national right-to-lifers. Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 176.

40 to Roe v. Wade, most anti-abortionists were called to action because they directly opposed the reform of these very laws. Furthermore, Rice claimed that in “The Sacred Condominium,” Williams had stated that he felt:

Abortion could legitimately be allowed in cases of rape and incest; where the unborn child is proven “to be seriously defective physically or mentally beyond any doubt;” in cases of statutory rape; and in cases of adulterous intercourse.24

This understanding of when abortion might be necessary was as far from Bozell’s absolutist stance as one could go and still remain within the anti-abortion movement. Indeed, in Rice’s opinion, such views necessarily precluded Williams from being Chairman of AUL, and he bluntly stated that “all members of the Board who cannot in conscience support AUL’s opposition to all liberalized abortion should resign for the good of the cause.”25 Although this debate over the morality of abortion demonstrates that there was no uniform understanding of the procedure, within AUL these arguments were about more than just philosophical concerns. For many of the board members, and indeed for Williams himself, the fight over exceptions was intimately tied to concerns about the growth and tactics of the anti-abortion movement. Williams consistently argued that in suggesting exceptions to AUL’s statement of purpose he was thinking not of his own beliefs but of how to make AUL as broadly appealing as possible. Shortly after the January meeting Williams reminded the board that they had “band[ed] together as Americans, rather than as expressly conservative Catholics, for Life.”26 In a letter written about euthanasia, he further outlined these ideas, telling Dr. John Hillabrand that “whenever we can suggest any nuances in our collective thinking, the more likely we are to be able to enlist those who are largely on our side.”27 Ultimately, Williams believed that for AUL to flourish it needed to be an organization that could attract anti-

24 Charles Rice to George Williams, 10 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. For the actual ideas expressed by Williams see, George Hunston Williams, “The Sacred Condominium,” in The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives, ed. John T. Noonan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 146–71. 25 Ibid. [underlining in original]. 26 Memo to the Members of the Board of AUL, 26 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL [emphasis in original]. 27 Williams outlines this conversation in a letter to another member of the group, see George Williams to John Archibold, 2 September 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 3, A-HDL.

41 abortionists of various shades, and to do this they would need to be willing to embrace those who were not absolutists. Williams’ ideas about diversity within the organization were mirrored to a certain extent by others in AUL. When the group was founded one of the reasons the statement of purpose was so broad was to allow for divergent views amongst members. AUL was to be an organization that could be a home to absolutists, moderates, and more tolerant individuals. Thus the board contained absolutists such as Bozell, Rice, Donald McClane, Loretta Young, and John Archibold, moderates such as Charles Carroll and Arthur Dyck, and Williams, who expressed the most tolerant position of them all. As Archibold noted, while he and Carroll did not agree on the issue of exceptions, their relationship and commitment to the cause had in many ways been strengthened by their differences. Although he did not approve of compromising simply to achieve a broader base, he also cautioned against “exclusivism,” a comment seemingly aimed at Bozell and Rice.28 Dyck expressed similar concerns, warning Bozell in a telephone conversation that AUL “could never expect to have a broad base and broad support” if they followed Bozell’s line and opposed abortion even when the life of the mother was endangered.29 In contrast to the positions of Williams and Archibold, Rice was emphatically opposed to compromising in order to appeal to a larger audience. In his eyes:

The pro-life movement does not need a pseudo-ecumenical organization that will present a diluted position in order to enlarge the nominal representation of the board … To construct the appearance of ecumenicity by diluting the position so as to embrace those who tolerate liberalized abortion murder in some cases would be a disservice to the cause.30

Underlying this struggle was a concern about what would benefit the movement. Those who sided with Williams tended to believe that the best way for right-to-lifers to become a powerful single-issue group was to accept that one could be opposed to abortion without espousing the stance put forward by the Catholic Church. Absolutists such as Rice and Bozell feared that embracing such a position would undermine the moral

28 John Archibold to George Williams, 4 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 3, A-HDL. 29 Memo re. telephone conversation with Brent Bozell, Arthur Dyck to George Williams, 14 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 30 Charles Rice to George Williams, 10 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

42 authority of anti-abortionists and would ultimately dilute their effectiveness. Although these debates became less urgent after the Supreme Court’s decision, at the time they represented a significant struggle over what kind of social movement right-to-lifers hoped to become. Tolerant individuals, and, to a lesser extent, moderates, wanted to be as all-encompassing as possible. Their goal was to mobilize the population by whatever means necessary, with the primary goal being to represent as many Americans as possible. Williams believed that the best way for AUL to do this was to focus primarily on opposing “abortion on demand,” for he believed that there was an untapped segment of the population that was generally opposed to the procedure but who accepted the necessity of some reform to the existing laws. As he told Marjory Mecklenburg when she joined the board, “the Society for a Christian Commonwealth should not be expecting more from an interfaith and secular national body than even conservative Catholics hope to achieve among Catholics alone.”31 In contrast, absolutists tended to focus on the immorality of all abortions and, thus coalition building played a distinctly minor role. Bozell could not and would not work within AUL if it espoused anything other than total opposition to abortion, and he was not persuaded by ideas about broadening the reach of the organization. Interestingly, the problems between the SCC and AUL grew out of Professor Williams’ attempts to further the ecumenical nature of AUL. During his first year as chairman, Williams had been working to convince Reverend Preus, the President of the Missouri Synod Lutherans, to become a member of the board of AUL. Preus was the president of the only Protestant denomination officially opposed to “abortion on demand” at this time, and he also represented approximately three million Missouri Lutherans.32 For Williams and his supporters, the involvement of Preus with the board thus offered a prime opportunity to posit themselves as an organization that was more than just “a Catholic front group.”33 These concerns about the image of the movement and the inclusion of numerous religions was in part a reaction to the charges levelled at right-to-lifers in the popular media by reform and repeal groups. Although Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Judy Fink, Marjory Mecklenburg, and Dr. Carolyn Gerster were just some of

31 George Williams to Marjory Mecklenburg, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 3, A-HDL. 32 George Williams to Members of the Board of AUL, 26 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. According to McGreevy, at this time, “except for Missouri Synod Lutherans, Mormons, members of the Christian Reformed Church, and the occasional Orthodox rabbi, only Catholics seemed willing to defend restrictions on abortion.” McGreevy, Catholics and American Freedom, 261. 33 L. Brent Bozell to George Williams, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

43 the prominent Protestant anti-abortionists who were active in the early 1970s, they were working as individuals and did not have the backing of their church hierarchy. This was in direct contrast to the active involvement of the Catholic Bishops who had pledged time, money, and resources to the movement from its very beginning. In his letters to Preus, Williams’ repeatedly emphasised that although “some members of the board are considerably more absolutist on [abortion] than the Missouri Synod,” he did not hold such a position (and by inference Preus would not be required to agree with such hard-liners). In fact, on 21 January 1972, he glossed over the fight that was occurring over exceptions by stating that the basic position of AUL was “opposition to abortion on demand, and the alteration of the laws in the states.”34 In Bozell’s opinion, Williams had used the issue of Preus’ membership to bring up the topic of exceptions by declaring that the “participation in AUL of Dr. Preus and the Missouri Lutherans evidently could not be expected in light of the ‘extreme’ and ‘conservative’ position of AUL.”35 In a letter distributed to the Board a few days later Williams emphasized how important Preus’ involvement was to the future of AUL, declaring:

If we cannot admit the head of the only Protestant denomination … to have gone officially on record against the general Protestant trend for abortion on request, then it will be impossible to call ourself Americans United for Life. We would then be only Some Americans Disunited over what constitutes a possible abortifacient.36

On 27 January 1972, Preus accepted Professor Williams’ offer to join the board, and in doing so he strengthened the position of members who felt that the organization must be tolerant of those who were not absolutists on the abortion issue. The symbolic presence of Preus and his role in the Lutheran-Missouri Synod lent further weight to claims that the group was an interfaith organization that represented all people of good conscience. Although the struggle over exceptions was just beginning at the time Preus joined, his stature and moderate stance only strengthened Williams’ arguments about the desirability of expanding AUL’s base of support.

34 George Williams to Jacob Preus, 21 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 6, A-HDL. 35 L. Brent Bozell to George Williams, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 36 George Williams to Members of the Board of AUL, 26 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

44 In the end, the fight over exceptions would change little about the running of AUL. The Catholic movie star Loretta Young, who had allowed her name to be used in mailings on behalf of the group and who was the Honorary Chairman, resigned quickly, hinting darkly that the organization seemed to be perpetuating fraud in its attempts to raise funds whilst betraying its stated Declaration of Purpose.37 A more significant repercussion was the departure of Bozell and McClane in March 1972, who took with them the formal ties, financial links, and support of the SCC (and presumably of Triumph magazine). Those who stayed behind clearly understood that AUL’s mandate was to be as all-encompassing as possible. Although the statement of purpose was not rewritten or reinterpreted, those who supported a moderate stance and who wanted the organization to be as broad as possible were the clear victors. The group had accepted the idea that they should embrace all who were generally opposed to abortion, allowing individual members to reconcile their own beliefs regarding abortion in their work outside the group. Even those who could not agree to the idea of exceptions were willing to reject the absolutism of Bozell and the SCC and accepted having a Chairman like Professor Williams who espoused tolerant views about what it meant to believe in the right to life. Far from demanding conformity, at this moment in time, AUL embraced a vision of the anti-abortion movement that wished to appeal to the society that surrounded the group rather than acting simply as a righteous minority. In the early years of the right-to-life movement the emphasis was on tolerance and understanding rather than on ideological purity. In the early 1970s, the anti-abortion movement was flexible enough to encompass diverse stances and to promote compromise over absolutism.

DIRECT MAIL

The fight over the philosophy of AUL produced some of the most vehement reactions during this time, but a simultaneous struggle was going on about how the organization should publicize its efforts and raise much-needed funds. This dispute centred on the role direct mail ought to play in an organization such as AUL, a topic of particular interest when one considers the emphasis placed on this form of revenue raising by “New Right” organizations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Direct mail is a form of fundraising that makes sophisticated use of technology to distribute promotional

37 Loretta Young to George Williams, 7 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 3, A-HDL.

45 materials to the public. It relies heavily on the use of lists of individuals who have already responded to appeals for related causes or from organizations that have a similar agenda. In the 1970s, “New Right” ideologue Richard Viguerie promoted and perfected the use of direct mail as a means of advancing the conservative agenda, and he subsequently became extremely wealthy as a result of the fees associated with his work. Interestingly, he would later argue that raising money was only one of the purposes of a direct-mail campaign, and that the letters distributed often functioned most effectively as forms of advertising.38 He claimed that his work helped not only raise money but also served to mobilize and politicize a large number of heretofore inactive Americans. By sending out provocative mailings to a cross-section of conservative individuals, he increased the kind of returns possible for a fundraising effort, and is often credited with revolutionising the way that single-issue groups interacted with the public. It is generally supposed that Viguerie introduced direct-mail techniques to single-issue groups. Little to no work has been done on how early right-to-lifers conducted their revenue raising efforts or how they pitched themselves at the public, perhaps because it is assumed that they relied on the auspices of the Catholic Church to recruit new members and garner funds. Although AUL made use of direct-mail techniques early on in its history, its members also engaged in a prolonged discussion as to what the broader ethical implications were of asking for donations and whether or not such types of methods were appropriate for them. This debate reveals much about how they conceived of the growth of the anti-abortion movement as a whole. From its inception, AUL had a direct-mail account with Patrick Gorman Consultants, a link initiated by the SCC, and the services of Patrick Gorman were the primary means by which AUL raised funds and advertised its existence. Initially, Gorman conducted mailings and tested out differently worded appeals to various types of groups, aiming to gain both donations and to finetune a “house” list for AUL’s use. Within direct-mail circles, the generation of such a list was almost as important as the actual funds received, for a list with a good response rate could eventually be rented out (at a substantial charge) to other organizations. Gorman tried targeting a variety of interest groups, including sending mailings to Catholic and Jewish lists, to those who had signed a petition opposing the liberalization of the abortion laws in New York, and also to general lists of contributors to conservative political candidates. As well as testing out

38 For an account of the role direct mail played in the development of the “New Right,” see Richard A. Viguerie and David Franke, America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power (Chicago: Bonus Books, 2004), 107–36.

46 different types of donor lists, his company also sampled the effectiveness of including a brochure and in having the envelope include a “teaser” or inducement to open the mailing. Although this was a test mailing, Gorman’s conclusions, which he shared with SCC, were not particularly optimistic. He told Bozell that Patrick Gorman Consultants felt that “AUL cannot produce net revenue through direct mail solicitations.”39 It is unclear whether this observation was shared with the Board of AUL but, based on subsequent correspondence and the concerns raised by several members of the Board, it would seem unlikely. By early 1972, some individuals in AUL had concluded that Gorman had not been dealing in an appropriate manner with the group. A pyramid form of mailings had been undertaken and some 675,000 people had received material from AUL, but only 11,000 people had sent in contributions that amounted to approximately eight dollars per person. Thus the funds received had been fed back into the direct-mail campaign, with little to no money left for the Washington-based office and full-time executive director that AUL so longed for (and that had been mentioned as goals in the initial letters).40 As direct mailing was a relatively new form of raising revenue many in AUL seemed uncertain as to exactly what it was or how it functioned, but some Board members felt that this was not an acceptable result. They debated Gorman’s work in several different meetings at the end of 1971 and did not reach a satisfactory conclusion, and so in January 1972 they subjected him to an extensive grilling about his practices. This exchange outraged Bozell, who described Gorman as being “put on the stand and confronted with a hostile and censorious inquiry conducted by persons who did not in the course of the meeting reveal any professional or moral credentials for such a role.”41 Although their behaviour towards Gorman may have left much to be desired, the board members who were concerned about the direct mailings were deeply worried “that this form of fundraising [might] be ethically unjustifiable.”42 They were troubled by the kinds of fees Gorman was charging, about the small rate of return, and about the fact that most of the donations received went back into funding yet more mailings rather than

39 For a very detailed analysis of the effectiveness of these approaches and lists see Memo re. AUL Summary, Patrick Gorman to Society for the Christian Commonwealth, 27 July 1971, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 6, A-HDL. 40 Joseph Stanton to Edward Lewis, 7 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 41 L. Brent Bozell to George Williams, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 42 Germain Grisez to George Williams, 24 December 1971, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

47 into the projects promised in the promotional materials. Professor Germain Grisez pointedly noted, “people think they are helping [to save] the unborn, while actually most all their money goes for fund raising.”43 At heart, several members of AUL were suspicious that Gorman was, in the words of Professor Williams, “a slick businessman.”44 In his 1971 memo to Bozell, Gorman noted that direct-mail fundraising differed from other forms of revenue generation in that the development of a “house list” was considered an investment, and this seems to have been Gorman’s intention in his work for AUL. Organizations thus often conducted mailings knowing that they would, at best, break even. More frequently these campaigns produced a loss for the group.45 While this approach was not unheard of in direct-mail circles, members of AUL did not see the primary purpose of the group as being to garner a list of potential contributors, nor did they approve of using the donated money in such a way. AUL was founded with the clearly defined aim of providing educational materials, and Board Members wanted to see money given by the public going towards these efforts. Rather than being an organization that existed in name only, the high-profile members of AUL envisaged themselves as offering a new kind of approach to the anti-abortion movement that would help halt the move to change the existing abortion laws. Gorman’s suggestions about a “house list” thus seemed to some members like a shady proposal, one that exploited the good name of AUL and did nothing for the development of the right-to- life movement. The other problem that arose with regard to the direct-mail campaign concerned the level of control AUL was able to exert over the content of the fundraising material. The initial terms of the agreement between AUL and Patrick Gorman Consultants had given the SCC exclusive rights to supervise and contribute to the campaign until at least October 1972. Despite the fact that the materials were sent out with the names of AUL Board Members on the mast head, they had no right to inspect the wording of the letters or to help construct their national image. They were also not entitled to organise or produce their own advertisements, as Bozell rather tersely reminded the Board after they

43 Ibid. 44 L. Brent Bozell to Professor Williams, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. Not all members of the Board agreed with the grilling of Gorman, with Louise Summerhill summing up these sentiments when she noted that she was “extremely embarrassed for Mr. Gorman … I do not believe he should be subjected to cross-examination by the Board of A.U.L., and I, personally, would have resented this, if done to me, just as he does.” Louise Summerhill to George Williams, 24 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 45 Memo re. AUL summary, Patrick Gorman to Society for the Christian Commonwealth, 27 July 1971, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 6, A-HDL.

48 ran an advertisement in the New York Times in February 1972.46 To remedy this situation, Williams and the Board voted to allow the Chairman of AUL to examine the content of all mailings prior to the final print run. They also established a Committee on Guidelines so that they could help Gorman “give the proper silhouette to our national image.”47 Neither Bozell nor Gorman felt that this was necessary, and thus the fight over direct mail spilled into the broader struggle over the philosophy of the group. Although Gorman Associates were ostensibly working for AUL, the links between the direct-mail firm and the SCC meant that they were clearly aligned with Bozell on most of the issues that confronted the group. Williams dryly noted that during the struggle in the early part of 1972, Gorman and his brother appeared to have “highly personalized convictions about what AUL should be doing,” opinions that may well have seemed out of place given that neither brother was a member of the Board of AUL.48 Gorman in particular appeared to have strong beliefs not only on general issues concerning AUL but also with regard to the greater fight over exceptions. For his part, Bozell vehemently defended Gorman’s work, claiming that the Board was responsible for jeopardising the direct-mail efforts by its inefficiency and its poor treatment of Gorman. By questioning the principles of direct mail and the levels of funding required to develop a house list the Board was hindering the development of the other projects promised in the mailings. Bozell argued that those who responded to AUL’s appeals had a right to assume that they were investing in long term and sustainable projects, and that the only way to achieve such projects was by escalating AUL’s commitment to direct mail.49 Attacks on Gorman and debates over the ethics of direct mail only served to stop fundraising efforts and further delay the fulfilment of the promises made in the mailings. This circuitous logic was not convincing to those who were troubled by the cost of this form of fundraising, and Bozell’s close links to Gorman Consultants were certainly of little help during the fight over exceptions.

46 L. Brent Bozell to John Hillabrand, 3 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 47 George Williams, Memo to the Members of the Board of AUL, 26 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 48 George Williams to John Hillabrand, 18 March 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 1, A-HDL. 49 Bozell slipped the importance of continuing with direct mail into a jargon riddled sentence, arguing that “the responders to these appeals have had the right to assume (a) that the funds collected would be utilized in such a way as to build and sustain long-term, large-scale programs on behalf of human life—in such a way, e.g. as is embodied in the direct mail ‘pyramiding’ or ‘snowball’ approach, to which there is presently no rival way either in being or in prospect.” L. Brent Bozell to George Williams, 20 January 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL.

49 In the struggle over the statement of purpose, Bozell claimed that Gorman was worried that any broadening of the AUL statement could lead his business to be charged with fraud. As Bozell reminded Arthur Dyck, “money that that has been raised has been given on the understanding that this organization is flatly opposed to abortion.”50 However, if Gorman’s chief concern was simply about possible misrepresentations made in the mail outs, this would not necessarily have ended his working relationship with AUL. After Bozell and the SCC had officially severed their ties with the group, the nature of the contract with Gorman Associates had to be renegotiated. The Board of AUL wished to be allowed to vet the mail outs and to exercise greater control over the process of direct mailing, but Gorman was seemingly not interested in accommodating the demands of his employers. In May 1972, Gorman sent a letter to Bozell terminating the direct-mail contract, a letter that Bozell then forwarded to Professor Williams.51 Even in ending his association with AUL, Gorman clearly identified who he considered himself answerable to. Approximately two weeks later, a reporter contacted the Board asking whether Gorman raised funds for the group.52 The reason for this enquiry was revealed on 21 May, when the Washington Post published a lengthy article detailing the dubious dealings of an organization known as “Friends of the FBI,” a fundraising group of which Patrick Gorman had been a founding member and that had subsequently been dismantled.53 Amongst the many claims made by the Washington Post about “Friends of the FBI,” the one that most resonated with AUL was the assertion that the majority of the money raised was going towards the fees of those involved.54 While it was not uncommon in the 1970s for revenue raised by direct mailing to go primarily towards paying the organization that produced the fundraising letters, this was not the way that AUL wanted to operate.

50 Memo re. telephone conversation with Brent Bozell, Arthur Dyck to George Williams, 14 February 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/3, Folder 7, A-HDL. 51 For a more detailed account of Gorman’s circuitous resignation, see Memo from Paul Haring, page 3, Papers of George Hunston Williams, 404/3, Folder 4, A-HDL. 52 Ibid. 53 See Nick Kotz, “The Troubled ‘Friends of the FBI,’” Washington Post, 21 May 1972, A1 and A14; Lee Edwards, “For ‘Friends of the FBI,’” Washington Post, 4 June 1972, B7. Interestingly, Edwards, one of the two other founders of the group, went on to play a role in the rise of the “New Right” and wrote a history of the period. See Edwards, The Conservative Revolution. 54 According to the Washington Post, of the $400,000 that had been raised, “[Luis] Kutner and his commission received $47,000, [Lee] Edwards got $27,500 in fees for his public relations firm, [Patrick] Gorman got $155,000, including $77,500 in fees and commissions, plus unknown amounts he charged for later mailings.” The only funds that clearly went towards the stated goals of the organization were $75,000 allocated for a study. Kotz, “The Troubled ‘Friends of the FBI,’” Washington Post, 21 May 1972, A14.

50 Although these complaints were based on specific grievances with Gorman and the SCC, they also offered an opportunity for members of AUL to discuss how they thought opponents of abortion should move forward and gain national attention. At heart, they felt that the kind of fees associated with this method of fundraising were not conducive to the growth of the movement. They could proceed as a group that on paper had the support of a large number of individuals and that had a strong house list, but this route would effectively render AUL incapable of anything more than fundraising. Most of the donations would go back into the pockets of the direct-mail consultants, with almost nothing left over for the kind of action that the Board Members felt was necessary. By splitting with Gorman, they were rejecting a kind of fundraising that they found unethical and deceptive. After Gorman’s departure they trialled different approaches to finding supporters and acquiring donations, but these new methods were all conducted with an emphasis on the work of the organization rather than simply on the number of contributors it could depend on. AUL wanted above all to be a group that could lead the movement forward by offering a new approach, and it had little interest in being an organisation with a high profile that simply took the money of subscribers while offering little in the way of tangible action.

EDUCATION

The struggle over direct mail and exceptions dominated the first year and a half of AUL’s existence, but during that time the organization was also engaged in a far more peaceful although no less important discussion about its function within the anti-abortion movement. Although the group was broadly defined as an organization dedicated to education, this simple statement of purpose belies the complex vision that members of AUL had about the role of abortion in society and the part they would play in halting its legalization. Rather than being a purely reactive organization, AUL envisaged itself as helping to shape how the procedure was understood. The significance of this goal should not be underestimated, for it reflected a fundamental optimism about both society and social change. By focusing on a goal such as education, AUL was enunciating a vision of society that was inherently positive in that it assumed that the majority of the population could and would make the “right” decision on abortion given the correct tools and information. AUL would disseminate educational materials, but the rest would be up to the general public.

51 Whereas the NRLC attempted to harness the burgeoning right-to-life movement by uniting existing grassroots groups, AUL was never intended to be representative of regional organizations. Rather, the value of AUL lay in its ability to fight for the right-to- life on a national basis. Although it was concerned by the state battles to reform abortion laws, much of its work both before and after Roe v. Wade focused on educational efforts. Members of the group were generally not interested in becoming involved in specific contests over abortion, and nor did they see themselves as political partisans. AUL’s purpose was to disseminate information, to produce materials that would inform the public about the true nature of abortion, and to engage in debates about the broader medical and philosophical ramifications of legalized abortion. From its inception, AUL demonstrated an inherently positive view about how social values and norms were shaped. Members of AUL did not condemn their fellow citizens for not being as strongly motivated as they were, for they felt that the majority of information disseminated on the issue was produced by their opponents and deliberately obfuscated the humanity of the fetus and the implications of liberalized abortion laws. Essentially, the group assumed that if it could provide clear and evocative information there would naturally be a shift in support and its job would be done. Thus, in the first years of its existence the majority of AUL’s energy went towards general efforts at education. To this end, AUL focused on developing alternate means of disseminating information. Through a quarterly newsletter, a speaking bureau, and an information retrieval service, it attempted to fill a void that existed within the right-to-life movement by ensuring that all groups, big and small, rural and urban, could have access to the same information and could be kept abreast of developments on both sides of the issue. It also authorised a book on abortion that had contributions from several board members and that was partially subsidized by the group so that it could reach as wide a range of potential readers as possible.55 To try to counter the perceived bias of the media, AUL worked to have its point of view aired on television and radio as well as distributing copies of a film with a right-to-life position, although this venture ran into difficulties during the dissolution of the relationship between SCC, Patrick Gorman Consultants, and AUL. These efforts to disseminate material were generally well received within the right-to-life movement, with a Utah member of the NRLC writing to AUL to tell them

55 For discussion of these projects, see Memo to Fellow Directors of AUL, George Williams, 19 June 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 1, A-HDL; Dennis Cook to David Mall, 12 October 1973, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/2, Folder 2, A-HDL.

52 that their information retrieval system was the kind of project that the “NRLC should have put out three years ago.”56 Members of the group did not want to replicate the efforts of any other major anti-abortion organizations, and they focused on education because they felt that it was an approach that a national group could make a major contribution to. Although AUL presumably supported the efforts of the NRLC, ACCL, and March for Life in their varied approaches to opposing abortion, it directed all its efforts towards education until the middle of the 1970s. It was not the instigator of letter writing campaigns, nor did it petition state legislatures or congressmen, and nor did it organise or advocate protesting at abortion clinics. Instead, it informed the public and the right-to-life movement of new medical findings regarding the humanity of the fetus, of histories of abortion in other countries, of damage wrought to women who had terminated their pregnancies, and of other areas where the sanctity of life was threatened. AUL’s immediate goal in its early years was to attain the status of a tax-free organisation, which necessarily prohibited it from engaging in legislative or explicitly political activity. This does not mean, however, that members of the group naively chose to focus on education or that they were unaware of the role political action might play in the movement. Six months before the Roe v. Wade decision, the Executive Director of AUL strongly recommended to board members that the group set up a corporation that would not be tax deductible and that could thus engage in politics. In a letter to Professor Williams, Dr. Stanton neatly summed up why such a suggestion was not for AUL, stating that:

I view the main and essential thrust of A.U.L. as educational, a humanitarian and moral presence, doing a job no other group is doing. I have confidence, if we educate America on the issue and the values involved, we will not have to concern A.U.L. with politics or lobbying. Knowledgeable people will activate themselves on this issue.57

Education would be more effective than political lobbying because it would go beyond the specifics of electoral contests and would instead garner new converts to the anti- abortion position. There was thus a strong internal logic behind the group’s decision to avoid politically partisan activities, a logic that has often been overshadowed by the more

56 Dennis Cook to David Mall, 12 October 1973, Papers of George Hunston Williams BMS 404/2, Folder 2, A-HDL. 57 Joseph Stanton to George Williams, 5 June 1972, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 404/1, Folder 4, A-HDL [emphasis added].

53 high profile activities of single-issue groups in the electoral contests of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is my contention that AUL’s belief in the power of education was intimately tied to the other battles within the group that prioritised compromise over absolutism and that were above all concerned with the ethics of everything the group did. The victory of moderates within AUL during the struggle over exceptions helped the group to further realise the importance of allowing people to participate in the movement who had varying levels of commitment and opposition to abortion. By focusing on disseminating information rather than directly working to affect electoral politics the group was assuming that an educated voter would be more useful to the cause than a PAC, for such a citizen would take an awareness of the right-to-life position into every part of their life. Although this approach might not yield the dramatic results or headlines that were associated with interventions into politics, it would ensure that AUL remained above all a broad-based organisation that could speak on behalf of all right-to-lifers without having to make the kind of tactical concessions associated with partisan politics. Far from dictating a set approach, AUL called on right-to-lifers to navigate their own beliefs and to become active on their own terms, a method that reflected an overarching faith in the ability of the average American to make “the right decision” if they were just given the chance.

CONCLUSION

The debates within AUL in its early years offer historians a glimpse of the anti-abortion movement that runs counter to many of the narratives on offer. AUL, called into being by an absolutist and deeply conservative Catholic organisation, vigorously challenged this legacy by embracing a conception of the movement that welcomed all who were generally opposed to abortion. Rejecting the idea of moral absolutism, the Board Members of AUL instead emphasized the importance of compromise and tolerance within the group, and by extension within the movement itself. By focusing on their commonalities rather than their differences they hoped to be able to speak to as many people as possible, for at heart they believed that the majority of Americans would oppose the legalization of abortion if they were only given clear information about the horror of the procedure. It posited itself as a national representative of the anti-abortion

54 movement, and the majority of the Board did not see the tolerant stance of some of its members as standing in the way of that role. Rejecting many of the tactics and positions that came to dominate the later anti- abortion movement, AUL instead assessed each new challenge with an eye to how it would affect both the group and the movement as a whole. In interrogating the direct- mail services of Patrick Gorman Consultants, the group was responding both to the specifics of their relationship as well as broader concerns about the ethics of such types of fundraising. By focusing on education rather than on political lobbying, AUL consciously prioritised an approach that would keep it in touch with the grassroots but that also allowed it to help bring people into the fold. Although the specifics of these debates became less pressing after Roe v. Wade, these issues continued to pose problems for right-to-lifers throughout the 1970s. Debates about how to proceed and how to reach as many Americans as possible marked the movement’s emergence as a national force. In this regard, the struggles that AUL experienced can be understood not just as specific to it as an organization but also as representative of the kinds of questions that had to be confronted after the legalization of abortion.

55

56 CHAPTER 2

ABORTION AND THE 1976 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: THE

EARLY YEARS OF RIGHT-TO-LIFE POLITICAL ACTIVISM

1976 was the year that the United States was suddenly and dramatically forced to confront the polarized nature of abortion in a national political contest. This election was the first opportunity after Roe v. Wade for right-to-lifers to ensure that their agenda was included in the national political conversation, and they were quite successful. At every level of the campaign, presidential aspirants found themselves faced with the need to take a position on the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.1 The Republican and Democratic parties each included a plank explicitly dealing with legalized abortion. Major news publications such as Time and Newsweek included articles speculating about the role the issue would play at the ballot box. Even the two eventual presidential contenders, Carter and Ford, actively courted the right-to-life vote. This chapter examines how anti-abortionists perceived the 1976 campaign and teases out their views on political activism and their understanding of single-issue lobbying. It suggests that it is incorrect to assume that anti-abortionists were not interested in the presidential elections simply because national right-to-life organizations did not endorse candidates and did not form PACs. Furthermore, although anti-abortion protests dogged Carter throughout the election and attracted the attention of the media, this was not the only type of activism that right-to-lifers engaged in. The broader movement emphasized the importance of engaging in politics, but it did not dictate the approach that right-to-lifers took. State-based organizations tended to concentrate on creating guides to the candidates’ positions, reflecting the broader belief that education and informed decision-making were paramount. Individuals who became directly involved in the campaign, such as Marjory Mecklenburg and Frances Frech, shared this focus, but they also argued that if the anti- abortion movement was to be successful as a lobby group, it would need to learn to build

1 See “1976’s Sleeper Issue,” Newsweek, 9 February 1976, 21, 23, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 43, 1980 Elections, Folder 1, GFPL; “Flare-Up Over Abortion,” Time, 13 September 1976, 21, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 1, GFPL.

57 strategic alliances. Since neither of the presidential candidates was clearly acceptable to right- to-lifers, the movement was forced to experiment with how it approached federal politics and how it understood itself as a single-issue lobby group. During the 1976 election, right-to- lifers made pragmatic decisions about how best to mobilize voters, and in doing so they demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the relationship between social issues and practical politics. At this time, the anti-abortion movement was still broad enough to absorb difference without experiencing the kind of rifts that emerged during Reagan’s time in office. Despite the attention devoted to the issue by the media the candidates, political scientists and historians such as Maris Vinovskis have broadly concluded that in this campaign, anti-abortionists were all sound and no fury.2 Since abortion as an issue did not ultimately motivate many voters, other scholars have often downplayed or overlooked the activities of right-to-lifers in 1976.3 Those historians that have examined the role of anti- abortionists in the election tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the activities of the Catholic hierarchy, in part because of the actions of the NCCB both before and during the campaign. In 1975, the Bishops released a highly unusual document called the “Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities” that advocated the formation of “non-sectarian ‘pro-life’ groups in every Congressional district.” These new organizations were intended to work with existing Catholic right-to-life groups to help elect members of Congress that would support an anti- abortion amendment to the Constitution.4 Although the Catholic hierarchy had been publicly critical of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, this Plan represented an important shift in that it advanced a clear program by which the right-to-life movement could become a political powerhouse at a federal level. The release of the Plan immediately garnered a great deal of attention, in part because this call to mobilize around the issue of abortion unnerved many politicians. Although the success of the Pastoral Plan was fairly

2 In analyzing voting behaviour in the 1976 campaign Vinovskis concludes that “when voters pulled the levers in polling booths across the country, very few of them decided to vote for either Ford or Carter on the basis of the candidates’ positions on abortion.” Maris Vinovskis, “Abortion and the Presidential Election of 1976: A Multivariate Analysis of Voting Behavior,” in The Law and Politics of Abortion, eds. Carl Schneider and Maris Vinovskis (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1980), 201. 3 For texts that chart the abortion debate in this period but that do not mention the 1976 elections or do so only in passing see Haussman, Abortion Politics in North America; Jacoby, Souls, Bodies, Spirits; Rickie Solinger, Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America (New York: New York University Press, 2005). 4 For an example of the way the news media reported the NCCB’s action see George Dugan, “Catholic Bishops Approve a Plan to Mobilize Public Support Against Abortions on Request,” New York Times, 21 November 1975, 19. For further detail about the role of the Bishops in the 1976 election see Timothy A. Byrnes, “The Politics of the American Catholic Hierarchy.” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 3 (Autumn 1993), 502–5.

58 limited, the Catholic hierarchy continued to intervene in the presidential campaign, and both Ford and Carter held highly publicized meetings with the Bishops at which they discussed, amongst other things, their views on abortion.5 Scholars such as Vinovskis, Barbara Craig, and David O’Brien have taken the release of the Pastoral Plan to be the catalyst for anti-abortion political activity, but I would argue that this simplifies the complex relationship between the Catholic hierarchy and the right-to- life movement. Calls to become politically active were not unheard of amongst anti- abortionists, and some organizations had produced guides about to get involved in the political process in preparation for the 1974 congressional elections.6 Furthermore, the intervention of the Bishops was problematic for right-to-lifers because it seemed to support to the widely held view that the anti-abortion movement was primarily Catholic. Even before the legalization of abortion, right-to-lifers had struggled to combat this perception, and after Roe v. Wade organizations such as the NRLC had always stressed the denominational diversity of its rank and file members. Throughout the 1970s, national anti-abortion organizations attempted to frame their opposition to abortion as an issue of human rights rather than as echoing the doctrines of a specific religion. The attention generated by the Pastoral Plan was thus not particularly beneficial to the movement as a whole, and in many ways it may have worked against the efforts of anti-abortionists to define themselves as an inclusive social movement. Historians who have focused on the NCCB’s activities have also tended to downplay the work of the anti-abortion movement as a separate entity from the Catholic hierarchy. Many of the organizations that were active in the 1976 campaign were not specifically Catholic and nor were they formed as a result of the actions of the Bishops, and this chapter explores the efforts of several state groups that were independent of the Catholic hierarchy. Although they may well have been encouraged by the NCCB’s Plan, these organizations developed their strategies and negotiated electoral politics autonomously. Both local and national level groups ensured that there was room for individual agency and for decisions to

5 For further accounts of these meetings see Charles Mohr, “Abortion Stand by Carter Vexes Catholic Bishops; Nominee Tells 6 Prelates He’ll Withhold Support for an Amendment,” New York Times, 1 September 1971, 1; James M. Naughton, “Bishops ‘Encouraged’ by Ford on Abortion; But They Aren’t ‘Totally Satisfied,’ Preferring an Outright Ban,” New York Times, 11 September 1976, 1. 6 For example, see “The Making of a Candidate,” prepared by New York State Right to Life Committee, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Political Strategy, GFPL; “How You, as a Pro-Life Citizen, Can Become Personally Effective in the 1974 Election,” prepared by ACCL, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Mailings/Pamphlets, GFPL.

59 be made about pragmatic politics, and they tended to place their faith ultimately with the voter. To focus simply on the dictates and behaviour of the Catholic hierarchy without looking at the specifics of anti-abortion political activism does not help historians understand the diverse array of views about politics and single-issue lobbying that were expressed during the campaign. When historians discuss the 1976 election, they generally understand it as revolving around few meaningful or polarizing issues. The Vietnam War had ended, the nation was in a period of détente with the Soviet Union, and stagflation had yet to transform the economic concerns of Americans. The dominant theme of the election is usually assumed to be the role of government in the aftermath of Watergate, for there seemed to be few other issues of note in this competition between two men whose philosophies and records were still ambiguous to many Americans. The focus on abortion is thus of especial significance, for this otherwise unremarkable political contest was the first time that one of the new social issues figured so prominently in the campaigns of both major parties. Exploring how the anti-abortion movement understood the election and how right-to-lifers conceived of themselves as political agents offers historians an opportunity to explore the nuances that existed within this single-issue group. In many of the accounts of this period, there is still an assumption that anti-abortionists were not interested in politics until the “New Right” realized the important role that the issue might play in mobilizing voters. This emphasis on sudden changes and seismic shifts in politics and behaviour offers a narrative that excludes the kinds of pragmatic and personal decisions that many right-to-lifers made during the 1970s. An examination of the 1976 campaign reveals a movement that could withstand disunity and partisan politics and activists that possessed a complex understanding of electoral politics.

ABORTION AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

The issue of legalized abortion was remarkably prominent throughout the course of the election, emerging in the primaries and remaining controversial right up until Election Day. Although right-to-life activists played a large part in forcing candidates to take a stand, the specifics of the campaign itself also meant that the issue was afforded an extra level of importance. At the beginning of the primaries, neither party had a clear frontrunner for the

60 Presidency, and within both parties there were candidates who articulated strong positions on the right-to-life. These two factors, coupled with a renewed focus on domestic affairs, helped ensure that the issue of abortion remained topical throughout the campaign. Figures such as Ronald Reagan in the Republican Party and Ellen McCormack within the Democratic Party forced other candidates to weigh into the abortion debate. McCormack, a housewife from Long Island and a mother of four children, ran solely on the issue of abortion, and relied on the help of other housewives to manage her campaign. Despite her candidacy being treated as a sideshow by much of the news media, McCormack managed to receive matching-funds from the Federal Election Committee and was eventually listed in the primaries of nineteen states. Her goal was never to win the Democratic nomination, but rather to demonstrate to politicians the importance of abortion to the electorate, and she eventually won 267,500 votes nation-wide. After the primaries were over she campaigned as a candidate for the New York Right to Life Party, which subsequently received more votes than both the Liberal Party, which was fading from relevance, and the Conservative Party, which was still in its heyday.7 Her candidacy helped contribute to a climate whereby the words and actions of both grassroots activists and the Catholic hierarchy generated a great deal of media attention, and this meant that in the 1976 election, abortion became an issue that would not go away. Indeed, in the early days of the campaign, Ray White exulted to the NRLC that:

Today the news media is talking and writing about the impressive political sophistication of the prolife movement. This is a dramatic change since only eighteen months ago … politicians were avoiding Right to Life advocates like the proverbial plague.8

As Jimmy Carter emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, his position on abortion came under intense scrutiny, in no small part because of his own

7 For an example of the way her candidacy was treated by the news media see Paul Houston, “Woman’s Candidacy Cited: Misuse of Election Fund by Ideologues Foreseen,” New York Times, 28 January 1976, 1, 16. For further accounts of Ellen McCormack’s campaign see O’Connor, No Neutral Ground? 72; Paige, The Right to Lifers, 113–6. For a discussion of McCormack and the Right to Life Party see Robert J. Spitzer, The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987), 40–80. 8 Memorandum from Ray White to NRLC Board of Directors and Friends, 5 February 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 10, 1976, Folder 2, GFPL.

61 actions. Throughout both the primary and presidential campaigns, he repeatedly stated that he felt abortion was wrong, going so far as to declare that the changes wrought by Roe v. Wade were “one instance where my own beliefs were in conflict with the laws of our country.”9 Nevertheless, this did not mean that he was an acceptable candidate from the point of view of right-to-lifers. In the presidential caucuses in Iowa, Carter gave the distinct impression that he favoured a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. In a statement reprinted in the Catholic Mirror, Carter declared that he favoured “a national statute that would restrict the practice of abortion,” and it was this position that caused many Iowa anti- abortion activists to work for Carter during this contest.10 According to the New York Times, Carter’s unexpected victory in the caucuses was “attributed in part to support from Roman Catholic voters who believed he was sympathetic to their campaign to overturn the … Supreme Court decision permitting abortion.”11 He subsequently clarified his position to Newsweek, and this time, although he again emphasized that he thought abortion was wrong, he declared that without knowing the specifics he could not support an amendment to the constitution that would outlaw abortion.12 This seeming about face angered many right-to- lifers, some of whom felt that they had been deliberately misled. At the 1976 Democratic Convention, Carter won the nomination and chose Walter Mondale (D-MN) as his running mate. Kenneth Heineman suggests that the selection of Mondale was further evidence of the strength of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and argues that social liberal activists went into the Convention intending “to write the Democratic platform and steer Carter toward an acceptable running mate.”13 Heineman thus implies that Carter himself had little input or influence over the wording of the platform, an issue that certainly divided anti-abortionists in their attempts to understand and critique Carter’s position during the campaign. The 1976 Democratic Party Platform was the first instance when the Democrats articulated support for abortion rights, albeit in a qualified

9 Wesley G. Pippert, The Spiritual Journey of Jimmy Carter: In His Own Words (New Macmillan, 1978), as cited in Andrew Flint and Joy Porter, “Jimmy Carter: The Re-emergence of Faith-Based Politics and the Abortion Rights Issue.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1 (March 2005), 38. 10 Ibid. 11 Warren Weaver Jr., “Bayh Accuses Carter of Raising ‘False Hopes’ of Abortion Foes,” New York Times, 30 January 1976, 22. 12 For examples of media coverage of the role that abortion played in Carter’s victory in Iowa see B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Carter’s Candor is Becoming an Issue in the Campaign,” New York Times, 26 January 1976, 16; Newsweek, 2 February 1976, 18, as cited in Vinovskis, “Abortion and the Presidential Election of 1976,” 192. 13 Heineman, God is a Conservative, 85.

62 manner that would seem quite unfamiliar to those exposed to the language that the party used in the 1980s. In 1972, the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) had introduced a minority plank that declared that women had a right to an abortion, but this plank had narrowly lost. In 1976, the NWPC, NOW, and the National Education Association successfully worked together to include a plank that endorsed abortion.14 Andrew Flint and Joy Porter suggest that Carter was opposed to the Democratic Party Platform’s declaration that an amendment to the constitution that would overturn Roe v. Wade was “undesirable,” and argue that right-to-lifers were well aware of Carter’s personal views on the issue of legalized abortion.15 This was simply not the case. Although Carter later declared that he regretted the wording of the Party Platform, he had already enunciated his own stance on the issue well before it had been drafted. It is also fair to say that many anti-abortionists did not believe Carter when he claimed to oppose the wording of the Democratic Party Platform.16 An oft-stated accusation was that Carter’s own staff had helped to write the platform, and Carter himself noted on a Meet the Press appearance that his team “had a major input into the exact wording [of the platform] and into the principles expressed therein.”17 While Carter may not have believed that outlawing abortion was “undesirable,” he certainly did not foresee himself supporting any efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, a seeming contradiction that perhaps was a reflection of his oft-stated Baptist belief in the “absolute and total separation of church and state.”18 Carter’s position on abortion was complex, and it caused a great deal of confusion amongst right-to-lifers. Flint and Porter are incorrect in their assumption that Carter’s verbal assurances that he opposed abortion were enough to attract the support of right-to-lifers. Right-to-life leaders and grassroots activists demanded not just words but also a commitment to action from politicians. Thus, Carter’s opposition to a constitutional amendment rendered him an unacceptable candidate to anti-abortionists. Indeed, the Right

14 Ibid. 85; O’Connor, No Neutral Ground? 72. 15 Flint and Joy, “Jimmy Carter,” 38. 16 In fact, an entire organization was formed to “inform the public what actually happened at the Democratic convention” and Carter’s role in making “the Democratic Party officially [become] the party of abortion.” See Letter from Democrats for an Open Party, 16 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 2, GFPL. 17 O’Connor, No Neutral Ground? 73. 18 Don Richardson, ed., Conversations with Carter (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 57, as cited in Flint and Joy, “Jimmy Carter,” 33. For a further discussion of the influence Carter’s faith had on his campaign and presidency, see Leo P. Ribuffo, “God and Jimmy Carter,” in Transforming Faith: The Sacred and Secular in Modern American History, eds. M. L. Bradbury and James B. Gilbert (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 141–59.

63 to Life of Greater Cincinnati newsletter reflected the general sentiments within the movement by mocking all those who would say “I’m personally opposed to abortion— but…” If an individual declared that they were against abortion but then refused to work towards or support the banning of the practice then, according to most anti-abortionists, that individual was essentially advocating a position that supported abortion rights.19 Even Carter’s sincere and oft-stated religious faith and relatively moderate stance on the social issues could not save him from the taint of pragmatic politics, of trying to court both right- to-lifers and their opponents. The phrasing of the platform, coupled with Carter’s own ambivalence about a constitutional amendment, meant that most anti-abortionists opposed the Democrats in the 1976 presidential campaign. In contrast to the support for abortion rights offered by the Democratic Party, Reagan’s bid for the Republican Party nomination created a climate whereby economic and socially conservative opinions were afforded a great deal more attention than might otherwise have been the case. Although many of his criticisms of the Ford Administration focused upon economic and defense matters, this campaign was also the moment when it gradually became apparent that “social issues” would play an increasingly important role in the politics of the nation. In a 1976 radio address during the primaries Reagan told listeners that the intrusion of government agencies into the family structure was “the central issue of this campaign and of our time,” and to social conservatives no issue better exemplified this interference than the legalization of abortion.20 Reagan was personally opposed to abortion, but his bid for the Presidency is of historical significance because he was the first serious candidate to espouse a position that almost completely tallied with the goals of the anti- abortion movement.21 Unlike Carter and Ford, he supported the ongoing struggle to enact a “Human Life Amendment” and thus end legalized abortion.22 In the 1980 presidential election Reagan explicitly courted the right-to-life vote, and this led some movement leaders

19 Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati News Letter, October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 20 McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 31. 21 Although Reagan was perceived by anti-abortionists as a candidate who fully supported their cause, some in the movement could not forget that in 1967, while he was Governor of California, he had signed into law an abortion reform measure that proved to be extremely permissive. Ellen McCormack was one of the most prominent right-to-lifers who could not forgive Reagan for this mistake, and in the 1980 election she refused to endorse his candidacy and again ran on the Right to Life Party ticket. She publicly declared that she felt that he endorsed a “Human Life Amendment” for purely political reasons. Merton, Enemies of Choice, 170. 22 A more detailed discussion about the attitude of the movement towards “Human Life Amendments” and “States’ Rights Amendments” occurs in Chapter 4.

64 to align themselves with him out of the assumption that he would work aggressively for federal measures that opposed abortion. Reagan’s surprising levels of success in the primaries meant that when the Republican Party Platform was written in June 1976 it needed to reflect the perspectives of both Reagan and Ford. One of the victories for Reagan’s supporters was that the Platform took a clear stance in opposition to abortion, despite the fact that Ford’s views on the matter did not completely tally with Reagan’s position. The plank began by acknowledging the differences that existed within the party on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and while it did not offer a wholehearted endorsement of the anti-abortion viewpoint, it clearly pledged support for “the efforts of those who seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life of the unborn child.” It also protested the recent ruling in Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth 428 U.S. 52 (1976) by deploring the “Supreme Court’s intrusion into the family structure through its denial of the parents’ obligation and right to guide their minor children.”23 At the Kansas City Republican convention Ford emerged as the eventual victor, but he ran on a platform that contained a great deal of compromise language on issues that mattered to Reagan’s supporters. Although the platform’s explicit acknowledgement of the work and concerns of anti-abortionists helped to mobilize some right-to-lifers behind the Ford-Dole ticket, in the end it would prove to be the President’s own position that would prevent him from fully reaping the support of the anti-abortion movement. Ford did not approve of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, and he was clear in his opposition to abortion-on-demand. Indeed, he repeatedly declared that the Supreme Court had gone “too far,” thus echoing criticisms made by conservatives about the liberal decisions handed down by both the Warren and Burger courts. Nevertheless, he did not support a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion. Ford wanted to return the issue of abortion to the individual states. This approach, commonly referred to as a “States’ Rights Amendment,” was anathema to many anti-abortionists. For right-to-lifers, the problem with Roe v. Wade was not a question of states’ rights versus federal rights, and nor was the decision objectionable because of the Court’s usurpation of the privileges of elected government. Broadly speaking, the anti-abortion movement firmly believed that legalized abortion was

23 “President Ford’s Position on … Abortion,” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL.

65 wrong. Right-to-lifers such as Frances Frech felt that abortion was not morally acceptable and would not become “right” even if the people voted to make it legal.24 Furthermore, if the decision were left up to individual states it would be very likely that some states would completely outlaw abortion while others would liberalize their laws as New York had done in 1970. The procedure would still be available depending on one’s income and geographical location.25 Ford’s support for a “States’ Rights Amendment” would consequently do nothing to protect or promote the inherent sanctity of life. Right-to-lifers were also suspicious of the President’s attitudes toward abortion because of his wife Betty’s views on the matter. In a profile on Sixty Minutes, Betty had praised the Roe v. Wade decision for bringing abortion “out of the backwoods” and “putting it in the hospitals where it belong[ed].”26 This interview, in which she also stated that she would not be surprised if her daughter Susan came to her for advice about premarital sex, and “compared marijuana smoking to drinking ‘your first beer,’” prompted 34,000 letters to the White House.27 Betty was also a firm supporter of ratification of the ERA, appearing at rallies and fundraisers and corresponding with state legislators who were considering the amendment. This work for the ERA was not particularly popular with the public, and the mail received by the White House on the subject “ran three to one against her.”28 Mrs Herman Fridger summed up the sentiments of those who were troubled by Betty’s social views, declaring that one of the reasons she could not support the Republican Party in 1976 was that the First Lady was “a women’s libber … who has made it known that she tries to influence some of her husband’s decisions.”29 This perception of Betty’s power was reinforced when Time magazine declared that President Ford would probably “oppose

24 Frances Frech to Marjory Mecklenburg, 22 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. 25 It was also quite unlikely that such an amendment would receive enough votes to be ratified, for by the time of the 1976 election, approximately half the states had passed “permissive abortion laws.” See “Flare-Up Over Abortion,” Time, 13 September 1976, 21, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 1, GFPL. 26 Heineman, God is a Conservative, 73. 27 Although a great deal of the mail that Betty received was supportive, her views on these issues were not appreciated by social conservatives. For quote regarding marijuana see Heineman, God is a Conservative, 73. For details of the mail received after the Sixty Minutes interview see Dorothy McCardle, “Mail Call at the White House: A Busy First Lady Betty Ford,” Washington Post, 4 January 1976, Papers of Sheila R. Widenfeld, Box 39, Ford, Betty —Mail Analyses, GFPL. For an overview of the weekly amounts of mail sent to Betty Ford while she was First Lady and a detailed breakdown of the subjects that the letter writers addressed see Papers of Sheila R. Widenfeld, Box 39, Ford—Betty—Mail Analyses, GFPL. 28 Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 138. 29 Letter from Mrs Herman Fridger, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 6, GFPL.

66 abortion more strongly if it were not for his wife.”30 Although she was allegedly coached to be less inflammatory and thus toned down her sentiments regarding abortion rights, the damage was done by the time of the 1976 campaign.31 According to Heineman, Ford was explicitly warned by one aide that “every time the New York Times and the Washington Post praised Betty, Ford lost Catholic and blue-collar support.” This assessment of her negative effect was related almost solely to her stance on abortion.32 After Carter and Ford emerged as the nominees, right-to-lifers were forced to make a difficult decision. This was the first presidential contest since the legalization of abortion, and many movement leaders had hoped that the electorate would be offered a chance to clearly vote in support of the right-to-life. While Carter’s refusal to support a constitutional amendment certainly provoked a public reaction from many in the anti-abortion movement, this did not mean that anti-abortionists necessarily flocked to the Republican Party. More notably, nor did it mean that movement leaders opted out of the election after the defeat Reagan and McCormack, their preferred primary candidates.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHT-TO-LIFERS AND THE CAMPAIGN

Ostensibly, neither Carter nor Ford were satisfactory candidates for the right-to-life movement. Although both proclaimed their personal opposition to abortion, neither supported the “Human Life Amendment” that most anti-abortionists felt was necessary to combat the Roe v. Wade decision. The debate that this provoked within the movement over which candidate was preferable thus demonstrates a vibrant conception of the role of politics in social causes. At no point in time did anti-abortionists question whether they should be involved in the electoral process, and indeed the most common concern was that they had not been able to exert enough influence in party politics. Since they did not form PACs or produce “hit lists,” it is useful to look both at the activities of specific activists as well as at the types of materials distributed by groups if one wants to gauge right-to-life attitudes and ideas about this campaign.

30 “Flare-Up Over Abortion,” Time, 13 September 1976, 21, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 1, GFPL. 31 Ibid. 32 Heinman, God is a Conservative, 74.

67 One of the most notable examples of an anti-abortionist engaging in political activities can be found in the work that Marjory Mecklenburg performed for the Ford-Dole campaign. Mecklenburg supported the Republican ticket because its position came closest to tallying with her beliefs regarding the sanctity of human life. She felt that the Republicans would work to ensure that some aspects of the right-to-life position were implemented in Washington, in contrast to the situation that would occur if a Democrat were elected. She actively tried to convince other anti-abortionists of the importance of working within the two-party system. She believed that it was essential for opponents of abortion to participate in the democratic conversation, and that opting out or relying on a write-in vote would allow others to dictate the terms of the national debate. While she tried to rally right-to-lifers behind Ford, she was simultaneously attempting to shape the kind of message the President offered on key issues and to control which anti-abortion groups had access to campaign headquarters. Prior to the intervention of the “New Right,” it was relationships with these types of activists that the Republican Party wished to foster, and anti-abortion leaders such as Mecklenburg were keen to help shape the national conversation on abortion. Mecklenburg went to Washington to work for the Ford-Dole Campaign Committee in September 1976. According to the National Catholic Register, Mecklenburg was not simply a volunteer but had been actively recruited by the campaign headquarters of the Republican Party. Although she emphasized that her work for the committee should not “be construed narrowly or exclusively as dealing with abortion,” she also acknowledged that she interpreted the Republican Party’s abortion plank as calling on those who supported an amendment to the constitution to actively work for the election of candidates campaigning on that platform.33 Although Mecklenburg was acting as an individual and was not representing ACCL, the recruitment of someone who such longstanding ties to the movement at a national and state level meant that her work for the Ford-Dole slate was loaded with symbolic significance. Mecklenburg strove to convince anti-abortionists that the President had long been committed to a right-to-life position, and routinely circulated memoranda to editors of right- to-life publications, anti-abortion organizations, and prominent figures within the

33 Patrick Riley, “Pro-Life Leader Marjory Mecklenburg Joins Ford-Dole Campaign Committee,” National Catholic Register, 10 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL.

68 movement.34 Although Mecklenburg did not deny Ford’s problematic endorsement of a “States’ Rights Amendment,” she worked hard to refocus attention on the sentiments expressed in the Republican Party Platform and the general philosophies that had been endorsed therein. She placed particular emphasis on the selection of Senator Dole as Ford’s vice-president. Dole supported a “strong Human Life Amendment,” had testified at the platform hearings in favour of the right-to-life position, and had advised the party “to pay attention to pro-life voters.” In information circulated amongst anti-abortionists it was also stressed that Dole had narrowly won his Kansas Senate seat in 1974 by defeating an abortion rights candidate, and that his triumph occurred “with the help of pro-life forces.”35 The selection of Dole was thus understood as a victory for anti-abortionists and Mecklenburg presented it as effectively neutralizing Ford’s own disappointing stance on amending the constitution. Many in the right-to-life movement felt that the media was downplaying the differences between the two candidates and that this might confuse those who opposed abortion but who lacked strong ties to the movement. According to Frances Frech, president of the Population Renewal Office, a large segment of the anti-abortion movement “waver[ed] back and forth,” seeing little difference between the two candidates and following “the media line that the platforms of the two parties don’t mean anything.”36 In the eyes of those who were supporting Ford, there were extremely important differences with regard to the abortion issue, and time and again they declared that a vote for Carter was essentially a vote for legalized abortion. A memorandum circulated by Mecklenburg two weeks before the election implored anti-abortion leaders to “be certain that people in your area understand the position of the candidates and … that they vote with this issue in mind.”37

34 For examples, see Memo to Pro-Life Friends, 1 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 6, GFPL; Memo to Pro-Life Friends, 6 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Memos, GFPL; Memo to Pro-Life Newsletter Editors, 6 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Memos, GFPL; Memo to Pro-Life Leaders, 20 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Memos, GFPL. For examples of responses, see especially letters from Reverend Paul Marx, Edward C. Freiling, and Frances Frech in Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. 35 “The Facts,” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 36 Frances Frech to Marjory Mecklenburg, 27 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. 37 Memo to Pro-Life Leaders, 20 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Memos, GFPL.

69 Behind many of these efforts lay a basic concern that people in the general community and even within the anti-abortion movement simply did not understand the important distinctions between Carter and Ford. To further this awareness, organizations such as Volunteers for Pro-Life Candidates Committee and Democrats for an Open Party (DOP) began circulating information so that community groups, churches, and grassroots activists could be alerted to the important differences between the candidates and the party platforms. Ellen McCormack, the anti-abortionist who ran in the Democratic primaries and who would later be a candidate for the Right to Life Party, worked with DOP in the immediate aftermath of the release of the Democratic Party Platform.38 For some in the anti-abortion movement, the need to work against Carter went beyond mere partisan politics. In one memo, the situation faced during the 1976 election was interpreted as affecting not only federal politics but also the future strength of the movement itself:

The media have tried to create the impression that the abortion issue is not important to voters and that it will not be a factor in who is elected president. If Carter walks into the White House without much trouble, it will confirm the charges that the voters didn’t care about the issue, that pro-life forces are not strong enough to mobilize pro- life voters, and that pro-life sentiment is coming not from the mainstream of American life but from a small group of loud-mouthed fanatics.39

Not only would anti-abortionists have a hostile President in the White House, they would also potentially lose the ability to influence politicians at the federal and state level. This blow would come just at the moment when right-to-lifers had been gaining strength and stature at a national level, and many within the movement feared that it would be a setback that would not be easily overcome. As one scrawled assessment of the election put it, “our credibility is on the line.”40

38 “Carter Smears Bishops Says Ellen McCormack,” National Catholic Reporter press release, 20 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 3, GFPL. 39 Memo from Volunteers for Pro-Life Candidates Committee, 12 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 40 Handwritten list, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL.

70 While these sentiments seemingly dominated the writing of Ford supporters, this did not mean that all anti-abortionists were convinced. In memos penned by Mecklenburg, there were numerous acknowledgements of the divisions within the movement and the problem of people throwing their vote away by lodging protest votes. A letter written to Mecklenburg by Reverend Paul Marx of the Human Life Centre warned that many right-to-lifers seemed to be planning to write-in votes for Ellen McCormack, and declared that this bothered him a great deal. He went on to say that any “vote for a write-in candidate is a vote for Carter, and I want Carter licked to prove once and for in this country that abortion is an issue despite the newspaper accounts.”41 Frech also felt that there was general discontent amongst grassroots activists, and warned Mecklenburg about “the small group of hard-core purists” who planned either to ignore the elections or to write-in votes for McCormack or Reagan. She noted that such individuals “know their actions will help Carter, but they say, bitterly, that the country deserves him.”42 This kind of inflexibility was of deep concern to those anti- abortionists who supported Ford, for it indicated an unwillingness to work within the political process. Frech’s tone was practically scolding in her final mailing to the right-to-life movement, declaring:

A write-in vote, a third party vote will be merely a protest. And we have protested long enough. Now we must save lives. Now we must use our heads and have a little practical political sense.43

To refuse to participate in the presidential elections would potentially limit the ability of the movement to shape politics at a federal level. Right-to-life leaders had observed the effectiveness of the civil rights movement and of women’s liberationists in shaping policies and platforms, especially within the Democratic Party. These groups had not opted out of the two-party system but had instead used their clout at the ballot box to ensure that their

41 Reverend Paul Marx to Marjory Mecklenburg, 14 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. 42 Frances Frech to Marjory Mecklenburg, 27 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. Frech and Marx were quite justified in their concerns about right-to-lifers opting out of the election for some prominent anti-abortion figures declared that the only correct response was to say “to hell with that choice” and vote for either Tom Anderson of the American Party or cast a write-in vote for Ellen McCormack. See Charles E. Rice, “Reject Both Ford and Carter,” The Wanderer 109, no. 41 (7 October 1976), Papers of American Citizens Concerned for life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL. 43 Letter from Frances Frech, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL [emphasis added].

71 demands and goals became campaign issues that candidates were careful to address. If right- to-lifers could not demonstrate numerical strength on Election Day then many in the movement feared that abortion would never again play the kind of role that it had in the 1976 campaign. By refusing to compromise and negotiate, Mecklenburg and Frech believed that those who lodged protest votes for McCormack or Reagan were jeopardizing the broader movement, particularly with regard to their refusal to focus on goals beyond the endorsement of a “Human Life Amendment.” Mecklenburg worked hard to convince right-to-lifers of Ford’s acceptability, but she also attempted to offer tactical advice to his campaign coordinators on how to make the President more palatable to the movement. As the presidential debates drew near, Mecklenburg produced a suggested script that would allow the president to effectively rally anti-abortionists behind him. She stressed that he needed to emphasize the actions he had taken to support both pregnant women and to counteract federal funding of abortion, actions that could be construed by right-to-lifers as tallying with their position.44 On the tricky issue of Ford’s support for a “States’ Rights Amendment,” she suggested that he say “he was not wedded to … specific language,” and that he simply wanted Congress to have the opportunity to offer the amendment that it felt was best. Similarly, she acknowledged that he needed to recognize the necessity of exceptions in any such amendment, but ended by noting that he should not elaborate on what precisely those exceptions might be.45 This memorandum was carefully tailored to allow Ford to articulate ideas that would let anti- abortionists know that he supported their goals. She suggested that he soften his support for a “States’ Rights Amendment,” refuse to engage in the debate over exceptions, and first and foremost emphasize that he was opposed to abortion. By making himself seem open to input and to already be working to foster respect for life and maternity, Mecklenburg hoped that he would be perceived by anti-abortionists as a strong ally rather than as the lesser of two evils. In a later memorandum she offered suggestions as to how Ford might make use of the specific social and political situation in a state that he was campaigning in. After the

44 Indeed, most of the more detailed proposals in the memo focused on government support for distressed and needy pregnant women, an issue that was very dear to Mecklenburg’s heart and that she lobbied for during Carter’s term in office. 45 Marjory Mecklenburg to Stu Spencer, 21 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Debate, GPFL.

72 arrest of a prominent anti-abortionist in the Bronx, Mecklenburg suggested to the campaign coordinators that the President might capitalize on this event by mentioning it while he was in New York the next day. Ford was set to appear with Senator Buckley (C-NY), a notable conservative and opponent of abortion, and thus he could potentially garner the support not only of right-to-lifers but also of Buckley’s followers. In Mecklenburg’s eyes, referring to the events occurring at a grassroots level would help Ford capture Democratic votes in the area by demonstrating to them that he was aware of the struggle to end abortion as it played out on the ground. She ended this memo by noting that some right-to-lifers were already suggesting that this arrest “could become another Rosa Parks incident.”46 Through her role within the campaign attempted to equip Ford with grassroots knowledge while encouraging him to condemn the arrest of anti-abortion protesters. As these two examples demonstrate, Mecklenburg worked hard to shape the President’s message in ways that would appeal to right-to-lifers, but while she was a volunteer with the Ford-Dole committee she also offered advice on the anti-abortion movement in general. In early September, Randy Engel, the executive director of United States Coalition for Life (USCL), wrote to James Baker, the national chairman at Ford Campaign headquarters. In this letter she requested a meeting with Baker and other administration officials and expressed USCL’s general dissatisfaction with the Ford administration and the Republican Party Platform. Engel proposed the meeting because she supported Ford and the Republican Party but felt that they could not receive the anti- abortion vote until they began offering deeds rather than simply rhetoric.47 This request was met with uncertainty at campaign headquarters, and Baker requested Mecklenburg’s personal guidance and assessment on what the appropriate response should be.48 The opinion she offered was blunt and to the point, and she seemed far more concerned with protecting the Ford-Dole campaign than with supporting her fellow right-to-lifer. While noting the variety of opinions held by anti-abortion organizations at a national level, she declared that “the U.S. Coalition for Life is militant and extremist.” She went on to suggest that if any meeting with right-to-lifer leaders did occur it would probably become necessary to meet with all the

46 Ibid. 47 Randy Engel to James A. Baker, 1 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 2, GFPL. 48 James A. Baker III to Marjory Mecklenburg, 27 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 2, GFPL.

73 prominent figures, and thus “the only safe thing to do is to see that none of the national groups meet with the President or his high level advisors.”49 Mecklenburg, who on a philosophical level no doubt would have liked to see Ford meet with certain anti-abortion leaders, encouraged Baker and the committee not to risk alienating some right-to-lifers by meeting with any one individual or organization. She limited the effect that Engel could have on the campaign, and she strongly advised that anti-abortionists should only have access to low-level advisers if meetings became necessary. Marjory Mecklenburg’s work for the Ford-Dole Committee shows the complexity of the anti-abortion position. Here was a leading individual who was willing to tell other right- to-lifers that they might need to make pragmatic decisions about which of their goals was most important to them. Above all, she and individuals like Frech were strongly reminding anti-abortionists that idealism and politics were not good bedfellows. Although Mecklenburg engaged in a level of individual political engagement that was not necessarily manageable for all grassroots activists, by her example she demonstrated that the movement had many within it who were passionately engaged in the democratic process and who were willing to compromise to help shape national policy.

ANTI-ABORTION ORGANIZATIONS AND ELECTORAL POLITICS

For those right-to-lifers who did not have the time or the influence to become directly involved in the campaign of one candidate, another way of participating in the 1976 election was through the efforts of state and local groups. Although many of these organizations did not officially endorse either Carter or Ford, they did encourage their members to vote with abortion in mind. Much of the right-to-life work done in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade had emphasized education rather than political strategy. This focus was still the dominant mode of operation during the 1976 campaign, and thus organizations worked hard to distribute material that contrasted the records of the contenders and the respective parties. Although this may have limited the ability of anti-abortion groups and national organizations to rally right-to-lifers behind a single candidate, this approach was linked more generally to right-to-life understandings about how abortion would be made illegal. In the early years of

49 Marjory Mecklenburg to Jim Baker, 30 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 2, GFPL.

74 the movement, it was widely believed that the American public was unaware both of fetal development and of exactly what the Roe v. Wade decision entailed.50 This perception was evident in the way that many organizations approached the 1976 elections, for the primary goal was to make “available accurate information on candidates’ positions and attitudes regarding pro-life issues.”51 These explanations normally worked to the detriment of the Democratic Party, but they did not constitute clear endorsement of Ford. Above all, this type of approach emphasized the need for informed decision making by the voter. It also required grassroots activists to actively engage with the electoral system and to make choices based on their own assessment of the issues.52 Social conservatives such as Judie Brown later derided this emphasis on education, remembering that during the 1976 elections:

Calls were coming into our office every day about politics … The National Right to Life [Committee] at that time had no involvement in politics whatsoever, and so we had to say, “We can’t tell you who to vote for. All we can tell you is their positions.” It was just terrible.53

Groups at both the national and state level circulated material that outlined the various stances of politicians on issues of interest to anti-abortionists. Some, such as the Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, conducted detailed surveys of local members of

50 This belief was even evident in the campaign, with one right-to-lifer suggesting that to defeat Carter they simply needed to link him explicitly to the Supreme Court decision via slogans such as “Carter supports legalized abortion right up to birth” and “Carter supports denying fathers the right to protect their unborn children.” This approach would thus make “him unattractive to the large group of voters who might want abortion for rape or for deformity but not for convenience; or who might favor abortion up to viability, but not up to birth.” See “Suggestions for a Pro-Life Strategy to Defeat Jimmy Carter,” undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Carter, Folder 1, GFPL. 51 MCCL memo on Abortion Views of Presidential, Vice-Presidential Candidates, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 52 For an example of this kind of general approach see “Will These Issues Affect Your Vote?” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. For a pamphlet that contrasts the records of the candidates and ends by strongly condemning Carter see “What Makes a Good Man Bad?” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL. 53 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 147. Interestingly, Brown’s assessment of the NRLC’s position is contradicted somewhat by a letter written by Dr. Mildred Jefferson while she was president of the group. She declared that since the Democratic Party opposed a “Human Life Amendment,” it was necessary for the NRLC to support “the principle in the platform that was accepted by the Republican National Party.” Similarly, in an editorial deploring both Ford and Carter, Charles Rice claimed that Jefferson had called the Republican tick “one that pro-life people can support.” See Mildred Jefferson to Friends of Life, 15 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 43, Carter, Folder 1, GFPL; Charles E. Rice, “Reject Both Ford and Carter,” The Wanderer 109, no. 41 (7 October 1976), Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL.

75 Congress and then published the results to allow Ohio voters to know the positions of their representatives.54 Other organizations, such as MCCL, put together packets of documents to circulate generally amongst anti-abortion leaders. These packets included statements made during the election as well as articles relating to Carter’s record on abortion while he was Governor of Georgia. Despite distributing a collection of documents that seemingly challenged Carter’s claims to support the right-to-life position, the memorandum ended by including contact details for both the Ford and Carter campaign headquarters for those interested in learning more about the candidates.55 MCCL was still a resolutely bipartisan organization, and the material it distributed was intended solely to educate right-to-lifers so as to enable them to be politically astute. MCCL also worked hard to disseminate information in a form that would be understandable to those who were not already involved in the right-to-life movement, and to this end they distributed an article reprinted from The Catholic Bulletin entitled “Presidential Hopefuls Do Differ on Abortion.”56 While this piece was described as investigative journalism, it primarily contrasted the positions and actions of Carter and Mondale with Ford and Dole, and thus was simply another means of highlighting how unacceptable the Democratic candidates were. Interestingly, however, this article was distributed with a memo to anti-abortion leaders, the purpose of which was to provide specific directions about how to maximize the impact of the piece. Right-to-lifers were instructed to submit the article so that it could be included in church and right-to-life newspapers to run the weekend before the election, and they were assured that the piece would “correct [the] confusion that exists in many areas regarding the candidates’ stands.” Grassroots activists were also encouraged to distribute copies of the article in church bulletins, after church services, and even to pass it out in church parking lots. The memo ended by reminding anti-abortion leaders that “it is always important that accurate information be available!”57 MCCL were thus pushing anti- abortionists to disseminate their information beyond the scope of their own organizations and to attempt to mobilize the broader Christian constituency.

54 News Letter Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 55 MCCL memo on Abortion Views of Presidential, Vice-Presidential Candidates, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 56 Nancy Koster, “Presidential Candidates Do Differ on Abortion,” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL. 57 MCCL to Pro-Life Leaders, 22 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 1, GFPL.

76 Perhaps the most interesting conception of how the abortion issue might shape politics was expressed by Richard Kradjel in a speech to Pennsylvanians for Human Life. Kradjel discussed the importance of the 1976 election in a manner that was very similar to the way that the ideologues of the “New Right” subsequently approached the 1978 congressional campaigns. Using Bella Abzug, a prominent feminist within the Democratic Party and general nemesis of social conservatives as his example, he elaborated on how she, as a supporter of legalized abortion, would use electoral statistics to push congressmen into kowtowing before the abortion rights position. If anti-abortion congressmen were not returned to office and congressmen who supported legalized abortion were re-elected, Kradjel declared that Abzug would effectively be able to claim that “there is no muscle in the pro-life movement.” He argued that Abzug knew how to talk to politicians in the only language that they understood, namely getting elected, and he implicitly conveyed the idea that anti-abortionists did now know how to use politics to their own ends. While his suggested means of combating this failure consisted primarily of distributing leaflets, Kradjel was already hinting at a new way for anti-abortionists to have an impact. He declared that it was essential “that pro-lifers act in this election to get out the vote in support of pro-life candidates and work for the defeat of abortion candidates.”58 In 1976 however, he seems to have stood almost alone in suggesting that anti-abortionists needed to work specifically against abortion rights candidates rather than more generally supporting the right-to-life contenders. The actions of state and local anti-abortion groups may not have garnered many national headlines, but they demonstrate that the movement was keenly participating in the 1976 election. Although there was little consensus on which candidates to work for or how best to approach the election, this variety of opinion is indicative of a movement that could tolerate diversity and difference. In 1976, right-to-lifers were encouraged to approach politics on their own terms, to work on the issues and for the candidates that tallied with their own beliefs, and to try unusual approaches to push abortion to the forefront of the debate. This was a moment of experimentation and fluidity within the movement, a moment when politics was seen as open to all.

58 Speech by Richard J. Kradjel at Regional Pro-Life Conference in Philadelphia, 9 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL.

77 Two weeks before Election Day, Frances Frech readied herself for defeat and informed Mecklenburg that:

I’ve stopped caring so much … and it’s kind of a relief—a little bit like falling out of love. Now it isn’t going to hurt so much if we lose.59

Although she believed that Ford would not be able to mobilize right-to-life voters behind his candidacy, she still vowed to continue making speeches and sending out letters, for then at least she would know that “I tried as hard as I could.”60 Even after Jimmy Carter’s victory, anti-abortionists did not believe that their efforts had been repudiated or that their foray into politics had been a failure.61 Dr. Mildred Jefferson, then president of the NRLC, was quick to remind anti-abortionists that “the national right-to-life movement is only three years old, yet we held our own nationally against the mighty combination of the powerful Democratic machine and the money of organized labor.”62 Similarly, an article in Columbia magazine argued that the most important thing about the 1976 campaign was the “unprecedented— and by many unanticipated—degree abortion became a red-hot national issue.”63 While right-to-lifers may not have elected the candidate they desired, they had succeeded in making abortion a national issue that had been addressed both at the federal level and also in numerous congressional races. Grassroots activists had thrown themselves into electoral efforts, and plans were already underway for the future. Jefferson ended her November 3 statement by declaring that “we have just begun to fight … we cannot retreat … 1978 is just two years away.”64

59 Frances Frech to Marjory Mecklenburg, 22 October 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford, Folder 1, GFPL. 60 Ibid. 61 For further accounts of Jimmy Carter’s presidency see William E. Leuchtenburg, “Jimmy Carter and the Post-New Deal Presidency,” in The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era, eds. Gary M. Fink and Hugh Davis Graham (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 7–28. 62 Dr. Mildred Jefferson, “Statement on the Outcome of the 1976 Political Campaign,” 3 November 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 10, 1976, Folder 4, GFPL. 63 Russell Shaw, “How Did the Elections Affect the Prolife Movement?” Columbia, undated, 36, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Miscellaneous, Folder 6, GFPL. 64 Dr. Mildred Jefferson, “Statement on the Outcome of the 1976 Political Campaign,” 3 November 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 10, 1976, Folder 4, GFPL.

78 CONCLUSION

Two months before Election Day, Joseph Lampe, Marjory Mecklenburg’s colleague and the treasurer of ACCL, summed up the stance that many right-to-lifers had taken in 1976. In a letter written to the editor of Christianity Today, he explained:

Basically, our feeling all year has been that the impact of the pro-life movement on the presidential race is of unknown magnitude and very unpredictable. Consequently we have felt it best to concentrate on making friends and influencing the candidates’ and the parties’ positions on abortion in a persuasive, nonconfrontational manner … It’s real progress just to have [abortion] emerge as a major continuing issue in the campaign and in Congress.65

Right-to-lifers approached the 1976 election with quite specific political aims. In the absence of a candidate who clearly agreed with the goals of the movement, activists focused instead on ensuring that their position was accounted for in the national conversation. They hoped to educate the general population not only about the impact of the Roe v. Wade decision but also about how certain policy decisions affected respect for life. They wanted to establish themselves as a voting bloc that had to be considered in platform decisions and in electoral races. Furthermore, they saw the future of the right-to-life cause as firmly tied to participation within the democratic process. While the movement had relatively concrete ambitions, there was also a tacit acknowledgement that it was up to each activist to develop their own priorities and work towards their own goals. For individuals like Mecklenburg and Frech, that meant campaigning for the candidate and party that came closest to their vision of what it meant to support the right to life. While both women certainly wanted a “Human Life Amendment” and probably would never have supported a “States’ Rights Amendment,” they were willing to temper their own heartfelt beliefs to support Ford’s bid for the presidency, and they encouraged other activists to assess which of their goals were more important to them. Ultimately, they were articulating a belief in the importance of compromise and moderation,

65 Joseph A. Lampe to David Kucharsky, 2 September 1976, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 45, Ford Campaign, Folder 2, GFPL.

79 of forming alliances rather than simply opting out of the two-party system. Other anti- abortionists may not have been able to overcome their disappointment with Ford, but they were willing to engage in educational efforts that worked to his advantage. At the national, state, and grassroots level, right-to-lifers worked hard to rally voters around a single issue and to make sure that their position was heard. They produced and distributed information regarding the candidates’ stances on abortion, and they saw this as being of use in and of itself. This chapter has focused on how anti-abortion activism manifested itself at a time when right-to-lifers were supposedly not interested in federal politics. Moreover, the type of activism undertaken is of note in this election precisely because it has so often been overlooked in the narratives surrounding the anti-abortion movement. The kinds of attitudes expressed by right-to-lifers challenge the notion that anti-abortionists were unwilling to compromise and were ignorant of the kind of strategies needed to be influential in politics. Here was a moment when anti-abortionists were politically engaged and yet were willing to tolerate disagreement and diversity, to explore bipartisan approaches, and to put their faith in the judgment of the voter.

80 CHAPTER 3

THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT AND THE DILEMMA OF

THE “SEXUAL REVOLUTION”

The right-to-life movement of the 1970s and 1980s had a fundamentally problematic relationship with ideas of sex and sexuality. As Kristin Luker explains in her study of abortion activists, many anti-abortionists in the late 1970s understood sex as “literally sacred.” They saw intercourse as a glorious gift from God to be practiced within the sanctity of marriage. This extremely positive attitude towards human sexuality and physical intimacy stemmed, however, from the act’s “transcendent [ability] to bring into existence another human life.”1 Confronted with non-procreative sex or sex that occurred outside the confines of marriage, the movement lost all sense of certainty. The social changes wrought by the sexual revolution of the 1960s thus posed numerous dilemmas for both individual activists and the movement as a whole. This chapter examines ACCL’s initiatives regarding human sexuality. It does not focus on the specific attitudes about intercourse that right-to-lifers held, but instead uses issues relating to sex as a means of understanding the competing visions of society that existed within the movement. Not all of these beliefs can easily be categorized as either liberal or conservative, and this ambiguity existed at a time when anti-abortionists were supposedly embracing the tactics and beliefs of the “New Right.” By examining the work of Mecklenburg and ACCL in the late 1970s, I am suggesting that some anti-abortion leaders rejected the ideas of social conservatives at a time when such ideas were supposedly becoming nationally dominant. The first part of the chapter explores Mecklenburg’s role in a fight over a sex education program in the public school system, and suggests that she consciously attempted to negotiate a position on this matter that was not determined by the politics of social conservatives. The second section examines ACCL’s efforts on behalf of federal legislation that protected the rights of pregnant women, and argues that the group worked to expand the rights and responsibilities of government even as the “New Right”

1 For a more detailed discussion of Luker’s conclusions about right-to-life attitudes towards sex see Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 165–71.

81 increasingly opposed such initiatives. In the late 1970s, right-to-lifers in ACCL pursued numerous goals, not all of which tallied with either socially or economically conservative ideas about sexuality or the role of the federal government. This did not preclude them from speaking as representatives of the broader movement. At the end of the 1970s, the “New Right” began to intervene publicly in debates over the so-called “social issues,” and abortion became increasingly linked in the public mind with criticisms of permissive liberal values. As the “New Right” also pushed debates about sexuality to the fore, anti-abortionists found themselves expected to take a stand. Some right-to-lifers embraced their new allies and gladly took up the agenda of social conservatives. Most members of the movement, however, tended to stay out of this broader conversation about sexuality. They focused primarily on abortion and rarely, if ever, made public statements about other social issues. Although these anti-abortionists were presumably pleased about the increasing attention afforded to abortion, on many levels they seemed unaffected by the religious and social rhetoric that accompanied this newfound prominence. A far smaller minority, like the activists in ACCL, engaged directly with these debates and attempted to present a right-to-life position on sexuality that would appeal to a cross section of the population. Several individuals, including Mecklenburg and Joseph Lampe, founded ACCL in the aftermath of the Roe v. Wade decision. The group remained relatively dormant until 1974 when Mecklenburg, fresh from her troubled stint at the NRLC, took on a more prominent role within the organization. Although ACCL was firmly opposed to abortion, it focused many of its efforts on what it described as “alternatives to abortion.” This phrase was used to encompass a range of activities, including support for pregnant women and children, promotion of educational resources about adoption, and a less emphasized belief in the necessity of contraception. As well as concentrating on these alternatives, the group was more generally intended to help “broad[en] the base of support of the pro-life movement … and to [build] effective pro-life organizations.”1 Although other groups shared these aims, Lampe bluntly told one supporter that members of ACCL believed that these goals was not being effectively pursued, a situation that no doubt would be rectified by drawing on Mecklenburg’s considerable experience in the Minnesota battles against abortion reform. Many of the general initiatives undertaken by ACCL in the 1970s were intended to help broaden the reach of the right-to-life movement. For the purposes of this chapter, however,

82 it was also one of the few national anti-abortion groups that addressed issues relating to sex and sexuality directly, and the opinions that were expressed demonstrate a moderate social and political outlook.

THE SEXUALITY OF TEENAGERS

On 24 January 1964, Time magazine ran a cover story declaring that the United States was in the midst of a second “sexual revolution.”2 This idea that the country was in the process of undergoing a change in both its sexual norms and values was a common one in the United States in this period, for in many ways, there did seem to be a seismic shift occurring in society. During the next two decades, the attitudes of the general public towards certain elements of adult sexuality became more liberal, particularly when it came to issues relating to birth control, heterosexual relations, public nudity, and sex education. Although there is not a complete record of the changes that occurred with regard to sexual mores during this period, an examination of the answers given to public opinion surveys allows us to chart the increasingly tolerant attitude of Americans towards practices and lifestyles that had once been considered scandalous. During the post-war period, one of the most significant social changes that occurred was the widespread acceptance of the use of contraceptive devices. In 1959, seventy-two percent of Americans believed that information about birth control should be available to anyone who wanted it, and six years later eighty-one percent agreed with this idea.3 By 1974, these levels of support had risen to ninety-one percent. While these early respondents did not necessarily believe that adolescents and the unmarried should have access to such information, in a 1971 poll sixty-nine percent of participants felt that both birth control information and services should be available to unmarried young people over the age of eighteen.4 By 1972, seventy-three percent of respondents believed that birth control information and services should be available to sexually active adolescents, regardless of

2 “The Second Sexual Revolution,” Time, 24 January 1964, 40–5. This description of the changes of the 1960s as a “second sexual revolution” was in reference to the social hygiene movement of the Progressive era, also referred to as the “first sexual revolution.” Kristin Luker, When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—and Sex Education—Since the Sixties (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006), 37–44. 3 Survey 621, “Birth Control,” George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 1654; Survey 702, “Birth Control,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 1915. 4 Survey 821, “Population Growth and Birth Control,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 2300.

83 whether or not they were married.5 Attitudes towards providing information about sexuality to children and adolescents also became steadily more tolerant in this period. Although levels of acceptance fluctuated with regard to the idea of sexual education courses in public school systems, survey responses chart a clear and growing approval of such forms of education. In 1965 approximately sixty-nine percent of respondents described themselves as being “for” sex education, and of those who supported such courses, forty-six percent also approved of the idea that schools discuss birth control.6 During the 1970s, the highest level of acceptance was recorded in 1974 when almost seventy-nine percent of respondents approved of such programs, and although these levels of support dipped over the course of the decade, by 1983 approximately eighty-four percent of respondents were supporters of sex education in the schools.7 Coupled with this increasing tolerance for access to information about sexuality, education, and contraceptives was the quite dramatic shift in attitudes towards sexual activity before marriage. In 1969, sixty-eight percent of respondents told pollsters that premarital sex was wrong, but in 1973, only forty-eight percent of those questioned felt the same way.8 In the same year, in a survey of young people aged eighteen to twenty-four, fifty-seven percent believed that premarital sex was acceptable if the individuals were in love, while nineteen percent approved of such encounters even when neither party was in love.9 College students were even more accepting of premarital relations, with seventy-three percent of respondents in 1970 saying that they were not concerned if the person they married was a virgin. When collegians were again surveyed on the matter in 1975 seventy-nine percent of them did not think it was wrong for people to have sex before they were married.10 This acceptance of premarital sex gradually also extended to include children born out of wedlock. In 1970, only twelve percent of respondents believed it should be legal to bear children outside of

5 Survey 853, “Abortion,” George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1972–77: Volume 1, 1972–75 (Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1978), 54. 6 Survey 710, “Sex Education,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 1940. 7 Tom W. Smith, “A Report: The Sexual Revolution?” The Public Opinion Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), 428. 8 Survey 785, “Premarital Sex,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 216; Survey 874, “Sexual Attitudes,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 1, 1972–75, 147–9. 9 Survey 7018, “Sexual Mores on the Campus,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 2249; Special Survey, “Attitudes of Youth,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 1, 1972–75, 198. 10 Special Survey, “Views of College Students,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 1, 1972–75, 491.

84 marriage. Nine years later this figure had grown to thirty-three percent, and by 1985 forty- two percent of Americans agreed.11 Social attitudes also became more liberal in the 1960s and 1970s when it came to public forms of nudity. In 1969, seventy-three percent of respondents declared that they would find pictures of naked people in magazines offensive, seventy-six percent that they found the idea of topless nightclub waitresses objectionable, and eighty-one percent that they disapproved of actors appearing naked in Broadway plays.12 In 1973, when asked the same questions, respondents were notably more permissive in their responses on these matters, with some questions reflecting a shift of almost twenty percent. Only fifty-five percent of those surveyed four years later objected to nude images in magazines, fifty-nine percent to topless waitresses, and sixty-five percent to actors performing in a state of undress on stage.13 Although these changes might not seem particularly significant, the sizable decrease in opposition in the space of less than five years hints at the important changes that were occurring in American society. As Luker notes in her discussion of the polling data with regard to sexual issues:

Changes of this magnitude are extremely rare in the sixty or so years that public opinion has been polled. The sheer size of the shift in opinion and the very short time in which it took place make it clear that the sixties were indeed a watershed.14

This is not to suggest, however, that American society underwent a complete transformation during this period, or that all issues relating to sexuality were equally acceptable in the eyes of the public. Indeed, Tom Smith reminds us that although there were notable changes in the approval of some areas relating to sexuality, acceptance levels for homosexuality, pornography, and extramarital sex actually decreased during the 1970s and 1980s. He thus argues that the metaphor of a sexual revolution “poorly describes and generally exaggerates the changes in the sexual mores of Americans.”15 These considerations

11 National Opinion Research Center polls, as cited in Smith, “A Report,” 422. 12 Survey 780, “Pornography,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 3, 1959–71, 2201–2. 13; Survey 874, “Sexual Attitudes,” The Gallup Poll: Volume 1, 1972–75, 147–52. 14 Luker, When Sex Goes to School, 77. 15 Smith, “A Report,” 419.

85 aside, it is fair to say that in regard to certain kinds of heterosexual relations outside of marriage as well as the use of contraceptives to control fertility, there were marked shifts both in terms of social norms and in levels of acceptance. These changes were to have a profound effect on society, ultimately affecting understandings of both gender and the very nature of heterosexual marriage. Prior to the advent of the contraceptive pill, biology had been destiny for most women. Sexual relations had always carried the risk of pregnancy, and bearing children outside of wedlock was generally perceived as scandalous. With the invention of the pill and the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut that loosened restrictions on the distribution of contraceptives, children became a choice rather than an inevitable outcome of sex. As more and more people within society accepted the idea of birth control, family planning, and premarital sex, the emphasis shifted to mutual pleasure rather than reproduction.16 This idea of expected and wanted children became even more entrenched after the decision in Roe v. Wade. Sex had become divorced from parenthood, with the unexpected result being that women could now engage in essentially the same sexual practices as men with little of the social stigma that had previously been attached to such behaviour. As society increasingly accepted the idea that sex should not be limited to the confines of marriage, it simultaneously became more common for women to choose to have children outside of marriage. Indeed, Luker suggests that “in an earlier era out-of-wedlock births represented miscalculations and accidents, [but] in this new era they increasingly represented conscious choices.”17 The same logic of individual responsibility that was applied to terminating a pregnancy was now increasingly applied to continuing one, with or without a husband. While the number of out-of-wedlock pregnancies grew throughout the 1970s, public attention tended to focus on the spectacle of the pregnant teenager. In the past, young women who became pregnant generally got married quickly or were sent away to have their child and then give it up for adoption, but in the 1970s and 1980s more and more pregnant American adolescents remained in the public eye as visible reminders of the sexual

16 For a detailed discussion of the historical origins of the sexual revolution and its impact upon society see Luker, When Sex Goes to School, 37–87. 17 Ibid., 79. For a discussion of how single mothers had been understood immediately before the “sexual revolution” see Regina Kunzel, “Pulp Fictions and Problem Girls: Reading and Rewriting Single Pregnancy in the Postwar United States.” The American Historical Review 100, no. 5 (December 1995), 1465–87.

86 revolution.18 The situation was considered to be so extreme that in 1978, Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) declared “adolescent pregnancy the top priority of the Carter administration.”19 Here was sex without marriage, and sexuality seemingly without adult maturity. The solution to this crisis of teenage sexuality differed remarkably depending primarily on political persuasion. To many liberals, it seemed simply that adolescents did not have enough information about how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, and thus the answer lay in providing more education and more access to contraceptives and abortion. To social conservatives, the permissive nature of modern society was the real root of the problem. Teenagers needed to be educated to say no rather than being taught that sex was simply a form of physical expression. This debate over teenage sexuality was played out repeatedly in American communities in fights over the content of sexual education courses, fights that were often as much about the changing nature of American society as they were about educational curricula.20 Many advocates of sex education felt that by instructing children and teenagers thoroughly about contraceptive use and human sexuality there would be a concurrent fall in the number of teenage pregnancies. Dissemination of this information would also effectively reduce the incidence of abortion by producing fewer unwanted or unexpected pregnancies, and so at first such advocates claimed not to view themselves as working in opposition to anti-abortionists. While many right-to-lifers did not initially take a public position on sex education, they were increasingly forced to address the issue by the late 1970s. As social conservatives began to wage war on “secular humanism” they often targeted the public school system. In sex education, they found a prime example of the federal government attempting to usurp the proper role of parents. At heart, those opposed to teaching sex education in the school system believed that this was an attempt by liberals to force their

18 For an analysis of teenage sexuality in the years after the invention of the contraceptive pill and the legalization of abortion see Petchesky, Abortion and Woman’s Choice, 205–38. 19 Maris Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? Some Historical and Policy Considerations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), xii. 20 For further accounts of the history of sex education in the United States see Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Luker, When Sex Goes to School; Claudia Nelson and Michelle Martin, eds., Sexual Pedagogies: Sex Education in Britain, Australia and America, 1879–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Jeffrey Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

87 beliefs on the nation at large. As one angry opponent asked, “who gave educators the right … to change our children’s values?”21 Critics of sex education were not opposed to the concept of teaching children about the mechanical and scientific aspects of sex, for indeed such information had routinely been disseminated in health classes throughout the twentieth century. Rather, they were concerned because they believed, in the words of Phyllis Schlafly, that:

The major goal of nearly all sex education curricula being taught in the schools is to teach teenagers (and sometimes children) how to enjoy fornication without having a baby and without feeling guilty.22

At heart, opponents were troubled by these new educational courses because they “took for granted the core assumption of the sexual revolution—that marriage was just one lifestyle among many.”23 Such a stance was completely at odds with socially conservative ideas about the sacred ties between sex, marriage, and the (heterosexual) family. These struggles provided a space for those with various kinds of agendas to fight alongside one another, for such courses prompted concerns not only about promiscuity and the sexual revolution but also seemed to threaten the role of parents by implicitly fostering the notion of children’s rights. Indeed, opponents routinely argued that sex education programs were essentially attempts to undermine parental authority, as they were premised on the assumption that parents could not responsibly teach their children about sex without the interference of a government institution. Luker, in her work on the fight over sex education, suggests that “the period between the early 1970s and early 1980s was … a moment in which opinion leaders of almost every stripe believed that sex education was the best response to the twin problems of teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.”24 Although the struggles over sex education may not have been as prominent or as hard fought as the recent debates about abstinence teaching, I

21 Daniel Roos, “Sex has Slayton Parents up in Arms,” Worthington Globe, 5 January 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL. 22 “What’s Wrong With Sex Education?” The Phyllis Schlafly Report 14, no. 7, section 1 (February 1981), 1. For another example of the way that social conservatives viewed sex education programs see Janet Mignard, “For Eighth Grade Students: Health Unit to Teach Contraception,” Moral Majority Report, August 1983, 2. 23 Luker, When Sex Goes to School, 84. 24 Ibid., 220.

88 would argue that it there was not a general consensus over the matter. In the late 1970s, the “New Right” certainly did not feel that sex education was the best way to combat teenage pregnancy. Representatives of socially conservative groups became involved in local struggles, and it was common even in the 1970s for these battles to be conducted in the public sphere. Interestingly, although these early fights over sex education often polarized those on the political Left and Right, anti-abortionists did not necessarily align themselves with the socially conservative position. Mecklenburg’s involvement in the fight over sex education that occurred in Slayton, Minnesota in 1979, for example, put her in an uncomfortable position in that she was pitted against both members of MCCL, an organization that she had helped found, and also to those who increasingly strove to speak for what they dubbed “the pro-family coalition.” Nevertheless, she rejected absolutism on either side to instead foster a type of political activism based on inclusion. In late 1978, Slayton High School attempted to address the increasingly controversial nature of teaching adolescents about human sexuality by creating a select advisory committee that would review the curriculum and content of a course proposed for the school. Although the committee was no doubt intended to serve as a place for discussion of the specific program proposed for Slayton, its meetings quickly became a forum for general opponents of such subjects to hold forth. The concept of sex education in the public school system was roundly criticized, often before quite large crowds, and the issue became a rallying point for Minnesota based social conservatives. In early January 1979, Theresa Todd, state director of anti-feminist group the Eagle Forum and vice-chairman of the Pro-Family Lobby, joined by Marlene Reid, state chairman of Women for Responsible Legislation and vice-chairman of the Minnesota Affiliation of Morality in Media, addressed the select advisory committee. They were both implacable opponents of sex education in the schools, and they enunciated what was emerging as the standard socially conservative position on such programs. Todd declared that “sex education [was] in the schools only to ‘promote promiscuity,’” and accused secular humanists of “‘infiltrating the schools’ and … ‘influencing all of the textbooks our children are forced to read.’”25 Both Todd and Reid argued that a state religion of humanism was being taught in the schools, and that this religion had usurped the place of Christianity. When quizzed as to whether there was a “right way” to teach children

25 Daniel Roos, “Sex has Slayton parents up in arms,” Worthington Globe, 5 January 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL.

89 about sexuality, Todd answered that it should be left to parents to decide when and how much information to supply, while Reid stated emphatically that if sex could not “be taught without moral overtones it should not be taught in the schools.”26 The proceedings of these meetings were duly reported in the local newspapers, and as a result of this coverage Mecklenburg sent a letter to Gerald Mitchell, the principal of Slayton High School. Rather than adding her name to the list of opponents, she instead wrote a sympathetic note expressing her distress at learning of the kinds of criticisms being made of the sex education course and offering to assist him if necessary.27 While Todd and Reid argued that such programs essentially promoted immorality, Mecklenburg believed that the course seemed very sound. This was not an observation made out of ignorance, for she had admired Mitchell’s work so much that she had circulated some of the material from the proposed curriculum to HEW and to the House Select Committee on Population to assist them in their deliberations on various pieces of legislation. Here was a stark contrast in attitudes towards sex education, held by individuals who would all normally be understood as being social conservatives. Mecklenburg had a long history of holding liberal attitudes about adolescent sexuality, with Paige going so far as to suggest that Mecklenburg’s “support for the idea of distributing contraceptive devices to teenagers” had been a key factor in her departure from the NRLC.28 Mecklenburg was clearly not someone who opposed sex education as a concept, nor was she particularly hostile to the idea of the school system interfering with parental rights. Instead, her attitude towards such programs tallied with her overall belief in the need for innovative responses to the problem of abortion, particularly approaches that focused on preventative measures. Although Todd and Reid were most closely associated with the fight against the sex education curriculum, local members of MCCL also became involved. Members of this group seemed to view their opposition to the program as representing the right-to-life stance. It was thus somewhat of a shock to them when Mitchell began to refer to the letter of support that he had received from Mecklenburg, who at that time was probably the most nationally significant anti-abortionist to have come from Minnesota. Mrs Jim Surprenant and Mrs Douglas Anderson wrote to Mecklenburg as representatives of the Murray County

26 Ibid. 27 Marjory Mecklenburg to Gerald Mitchell, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL. 28 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 84–5.

90 MCCL, and their letter put Mecklenburg in an awkward position. They requested a copy of her note to Mitchell because they thought that perhaps the principal had been distorting what Mecklenburg had written. However, they ended the letter by implicitly reminding her that her actions would always be understood in terms of how they reflected on the movement, assuring her that “we are confident you would not do anything that could be used against us as pro-lifers.”29 Surprenant and Anderson believed that they were speaking for the movement in their opposition to the Slayton sex education curriculum, and they were essentially informing Mecklenburg that there ought to be only one right-to-life stance on sex education, a socially conservative one. Mecklenburg did not agree. She wrote a polite letter back to Surprenant and Anderson that clearly and firmly outlined the reasons for her support of the Slayton program. Describing the course outline as “moderate and realistic,” she went so far as to suggest that “the kind of community cooperation and leadership that has developed to address this topic in Slayton could become a model national program for smaller communities.” She was not an absolutist in her stance on the program, however, for she offered alternative ways that this information could be disseminated if the primary objection was to the role the schools would play in the sex education course. Her suggestions included the idea that churches could teach some programs, or that parents and children could both be involved in the program, or that classes could be offered for parents who would then pass on the information. Although she was willing to acknowledge some of the objections to the program and offer compromise solutions, she was still insistent, however, that information on sex and sexuality needed to be taught in a formalized setting, not left up to individual parents to selectively choose what to impart. She ended her letter by reminding Surprenant and Anderson that, “the problem of adolescent sexual activity and pregnancy is far too serious to let good faith efforts of prevention like those begun in Slayton perish because of differences.”30 Mecklenburg was ultimately arguing that sex education programs should not be opposed simply by dint of what they were trying to do, but should instead be assessed for how they might tally with the goals of right-to-lifers.

29 Mrs Jim Surprenant and Mrs Douglas Anderson to Marjory Mecklenburg, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL. 30 Marjory Mecklenburg to Mrs Jim Surprenant and Mrs Douglas Anderson, 2 July 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL.

91 It was on this point that Mecklenburg differed most dramatically from social conservatives such as Todd and Reid. Although it would obviously have been unacceptable if a course advocated abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancies, other elements of sex education programs were not inherently problematic for anti-abortionists unless they were fundamentally opposed to the schools providing information about how to engage in non- procreative sex. Mecklenburg essentially believed in compromise. Although she often mentioned as an aside that abstinence would have been ideal amongst adolescents, she strongly supported initiatives that were focused on preventing unwanted pregnancies rather than on stopping sex outside of marriage. She was unapologetic about her support for Slayton’s program, for she felt that such courses helped “foster a responsible approach to sexuality and parenthood,” and she had in fact testified before Congress making this very argument.31 In a broader sense, sex education could well fall within the reach of her rhetoric about “alternatives,” for such education was yet another means of stopping the practice of abortion. Mecklenburg also wrote to Principal Mitchell on the same day that she responded to Surprenant and Anderson. In this letter, she described the two MCCL leaders as expressing “dismay” at her support for Slayton’s Human Sexuality Course, and noted her surprise that he had been referring to her initial correspondence, for she had heard nothing from him with regard to her offer of assistance. She asked that he use “the utmost care in utilizing [her] letter in public debate,” observing that when it came to controversial matters the “possibility of hypersensitivity and overstatement [was] great.”32 Despite the slightly reprimanding tone of her note to Mitchell, she reiterated her support for the program and her willingness to offer material or practical aid. She even included a copy of her letter to Surprenant and Anderson, although this time she specified that she expected it to be kept confidential. She could easily have viewed Mitchell’s actions, using her name and position against people that she would normally find herself allied with, as a betrayal. Instead, she simply reminded him that her letter had been a “private expression of understanding.”33 This did not mean that she advocated one position in public but espoused another behind closed doors, but rather

31 Ibid. 32 Marjory Mecklenburg to Gerald Mitchell, 2 July 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL. 33 Ibid.

92 that the kinds of statements and activities that she might make in the public arena would be more tempered than when speaking to a smaller audience. Although Mecklenburg did not agree with Surprenant and Anderson’s opposition to Slayton’s program, she did not view this as precluding her from working with them on other matters of mutual concern, and nor did she expect them to view her as an opponent simply because she differed from them on this issue. Unlike the politics of division practiced by activists like Todd, Mecklenburg was a coalition builder. In her exchanges over the Slayton course she demonstrated a willingness to temper some of her beliefs so that others might be more inclined to compromise, but she was also not one to shy away from a stance that provoked controversy. It would have been easy for Mecklenburg to downplay her support of the program to Surprenant and Anderson or indeed to have never contacted Mitchell. Instead, she resolutely stood by her belief in the need for sex education for teenagers, a stance that put her in direct confrontation with social conservatives, some of whom were her allies within the right-to-life movement. She felt that the positive attributes of the Slayton program outweighed the potential negatives, and she was thus willing to support it despite the opposition it had generated amongst locals like Todd, Surprenant and Anderson.

LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS

As the Slayton education course was being debated in Minnesota, Mecklenburg and ACCL were also engaged in a broader conversation within the anti-abortion movement about what role the federal government might play in right-to-life efforts. Once again they found themselves pioneering an approach based on conciliation and compromise, whilst simultaneously sketching a vision of government that stood in marked contrast to many of the ideas held by economic conservatives. Mecklenburg and ACCL lobbied Congress to enact legislation that would broaden the responsibilities of the government, and their goals extended beyond those traditionally associated with right-to-lifers. Although they were ultimately successful with regard to several pieces of legislation, these efforts would also force Mecklenburg to confront the limits of coalition building and to reassess the value of acting as a moderate force within the movement. Although there were legal cases throughout the 1970s that established just what limits a state could put on the practice of abortion, right-to-lifers understood that the only

93 way to reverse Roe v. Wade was either by a new Supreme Court decision or by passage of a constitutional amendment.34 Attempts to enact an amendment met with little success in the 1970s, but events at a national level introduced anti-abortionists to the power of federal lobbying. In 1976 Senator Henry Hyde (R-IL) successfully introduced a rider to the appropriations bill for HEW. Hyde’s legislation denied the use of public funds for abortion except in instances where the mother’s life was in danger. It thus outlawed federal Medicaid funding of abortion.35 This legislation reflected an economically conservative approach to restricting abortion rights, and was deplored by abortion rights supporters as disproportionately affecting low-income women. While the enactment of what came to be known as the Hyde Amendment was a victory for right-to-lifers in that it stopped the federal government from being in the “abortion business,” it was not the only legislative goal that anti-abortionists pursued. Social movements of the 1970s and 1980s were often explicitly concerned with the role of the State, and groups on both the political Left and Right routinely turned to Congress to enact their vision of society. While activists on the Left tended to be united by a desire to expand the rights of minorities, social conservatives generally wanted legislation that returned America to an idealized past. They believed that liberals who were opposed to the traditional institutions of American community life had taken their agenda to the federal level, which had then worked to impose these secular values on the majority. While they often argued that it decisions about sex education, gay-rights ordinances, pornography, and prayer in school should be made at the local level, they ultimately believed that the federal government needed to legislate against changes that threatened the morality of the nation. Although social conservatives wanted the State to intervene on matters that concerned them,

34 The most significant abortion cases that came before the Supreme Court during the 1970s tended to concern state regulation and funding. See Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth 427 U.S. 52 (1976), Beal v. Doe 432 U.S. 438 (1977), Maher v. Roe 432 U.S. 464 (1977), Bellotti v. Baird 443 U.S. 662 (1979), Harris v. McRae 448 U.S. 297 (1980). 35 Since appropriations for HEW were reallocated each year, the debate over government funding of abortion was fought from 1976 to 1981 with varying degrees of success. Although the initial 1976 rider allowed funding only to preserve the life of the mother, the 1977 battle was more contentious as the Senate tried to introduce exceptions for cases of rape or incest or if an abortion was judged “medically necessary.” These exceptions would be altered in 1979 and again in 1980 until the period from 1981 to 1993, when the rape and incest exemptions were dropped. Paige, The Right to Lifers, 81. For the text of the amendment and the debate that it provoked in Congress see “‘The Hyde Amendment,’ Congressional Record—House, June 24, 1976, 20410–12,” in Hull, Hoffer, and Hoffer, eds., The Abortion Rights Controversy in America, 181–87. For further accounts of the history of the Hyde amendment and its aftermath see Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics, 118–32; Frederick Jaffe, Barbara Lindheim, and Philip Lee, Abortion Politics: Private Morality and Public Policy (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981), 127–35; Tribe, Abortion, 151–9.

94 they essentially wanted it to restrict rights rather than expand them. While anti-abortionists shared this desire in that they wanted to end legalized abortion, this did not mean that all in the movement shared a broader belief in the benefits of small government. In the late 1970s, ACCL repeatedly turned to Congress to enact legislation created and protected rights. Notably, this legislation was not solely focused on the fetus. but also worked to ensure rights for pregnant women. Members of ACCL worked to broaden the criteria for receiving Medicaid, and they strove to ensure that both pregnant women and their children would have access to welfare programs if necessary, thus accepting and reinforcing the legitimacy of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. The legislative remedies that they sought, as well as their belief that the federal government needed to expand its obligations towards pregnant women, are of note in that they demonstrate an understanding of government that seems informed by the Left. Despite the increasing attention paid in the media to the arguments about abortion put forward by social conservatives, members of ACCL remained steadfast in their pursuit of a legislative agenda that relied on government intervention and protection. Evidently, they did not see these newcomers as the philosophical or tactical leaders of the right-to-life movement, but nor did they see the movement as requiring uniformity. Mecklenburg and ACCL still spoke as and for anti-abortionists, and indeed through their work in 1978 and 1979 they attempted to establish themselves as moderates who could work with the federal government to ensure that all facets of life were respected. In the 1970s, pregnancy occupied an awkward position within the right-to-life movement. The fetus normally dominated anti-abortion discussions, whether it was with regard to its rights, its humanity, or its historical status. The pregnant woman was often overlooked once she had made the “correct” decision to continue her pregnancy. Indeed, many of the posters and images used by anti-abortionists presented the fetus as existing in a kind of vacuum, a free-floating and presumably independent entity deserving of the same rights as all born individuals.36 The attention ACCL paid to issues surrounding pregnancy was thus quite unusual. Although there were several prominent anti-abortion groups such as

36 For more detailed explorations of the symbolic meaning of images of fetuses see Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 83–144; Barbara Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn, trans. Lee Hoinacki, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Meredith Michaels, “Fetal Galaxies: Some Questions About What We See,” in Fetal Subjects: Feminist Positions, eds Lynn Morgan and Meredith Michaels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 113–32.

95 Birthright that supported women who gave their offspring up for adoption, efforts to improve the status and experience of pregnancy itself were normally conducted at a grassroots level on a case-by-case basis. Rather than focusing their efforts on overturning the Supreme Court’s decision, Mecklenburg and ACCL attempted to work within the parameters set by Roe v. Wade. Although they desired an amendment that would protect fetal life, they also believed that it was necessary to compromise and work towards saving the unborn in the present. For many in the movement, attempts to save individual fetuses were centered on protests and sit-ins at abortion clinics, an approach that meant that the level of care offered to women who continued their pregnancies varied depending on the resources of individual groups. In contrast, ACCL focused its lobbying efforts at the federal level and attempted to help all pregnant women rather than just those considering an abortion. While it was not unusual for right-to-lifers to express concern about the low regard in which motherhood was held, ACCL went beyond mere lip service and became deeply involved in several lobbying efforts to extend (or create) rights for pregnant women. In doing so, they pursued a line of reasoning that firmly placed the pregnant woman at the centre of the abortion decision. They believed that in some instances, the decision to have an abortion was intimately tied to the perceived financial and physical hardships suffered by pregnant women, difficulties that were reflective of the low esteem in which pregnancy was held by society. Rather than using coercive methods to force women to carry to term (such as by outlawing abortion or by making the cost prohibitive), ACCL pursued legislation that created rather than reduced rights. ACCL was no stranger to lobbying at a federal level and routinely submitted written or oral testimony on behalf of legislation that it supported, but in 1978 and 1979 it focused considerable amounts of energy on bills specifically related to pregnancy. The group keenly followed the debates surrounding the Child Health Assessment (Assurance) Program (CHAP), the Pregnancy Disability bill, and the Adolescent Pregnancy Services bill.37 Its members publicized their support for these bills by writing letters to Congressmen, members of the news media, and heads of other right-to-life organizations. They also worked hard to ensure that bills that were reported out of committee remained right-to-life in intent. To this

37 The names given to these bills were often altered after enactment, but the names used here are those used by members of ACCL in their correspondence both with other right-to-lifers and with federal legislators (the Pregnancy Disability bill was also referred to as the Pregnancy Disability Benefits bill, and the Adolescent Pregnancy Services bill became known as the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act).

96 end they sent out alerts to anti-abortionists when bills were under attack or when changes had been made to a piece of legislation that altered the level of coverage and protection it afforded to pregnant women. Interestingly, ACCL repeatedly emphasized that a bill did not have to deal directly with abortion for the group to consider it a right-to-life bill. The Pregnancy Disability bill was intended to “prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy” in the work force by ensuring that pregnancy-related disabilities were covered by employer medical insurance plans. ACCL testified for this piece of legislation in both the Senate and the House because it felt it was, “on balance, a pro-life bill.”38 On 1 March 1978, the House approved the bill and amended it to include a so-called conscience clause that allowed employers to limit coverage of abortions in medical plans unless the life of a pregnant woman was threatened. Although this amendment was no doubt pleasing to members of ACCL, the group still took great pains to emphasize that it supported the bill “with or without an abortion amendment” and that it had testified for the legislation before it had been amended to include the abortion conscience clause.39 Presumably the group did not want to see a piece of legislation that they felt represented a right-to-life position being derailed, for the Pregnancy Disability bill would go a long way towards reducing the financial pressures that often led women to terminate their pregnancies. At this time, members of ACCL seemed to believe that it was more important to offer protection and options to pregnant women than to follow a doctrinaire right-to-life position that sought only to prohibit abortion. This stance was even more clearly enunciated in ACCL’s attitude towards the CHAP bill. When the CHAP legislation was introduced, it was intended to “broaden Medicaid eligibility for children and pregnant women and improve the delivery of preventive and other health care services to children under Medicaid.” ACCL thus considered the bill one of its “legislative priorities,” describing it as:

38 ACCL’s opinions on the Pregnancy Disability bill were outlined in a letter that was written to correct several inaccurate reports that claimed that ACCL opposed the abortion amendment. This was not true, but Mecklenburg’s tone makes it clear that although they did not oppose the amendment, it was of secondary importance when compared to the rights it was creating. Letter to Pro-Life Leaders and News Media Representatives from Marjory Mecklenburg, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, ACCL Position on Pregnancy Disability bill, 8 March 1978, GFPL. 39 Ibid.

97 Serving as an alternative to abortion for women who otherwise could not afford the prenatal care necessary to ensure not only the healthy delivery of their unborn children, but the preservation of their own health as well.40

The CHAP bill was representative of a vision of government that aimed to increase the obligations of the state, in this instance working to enshrine certain rights for all pregnant women and to broaden the reach of federal welfare programs. However, in the Senate the CHAP bill was altered so as to exclude coverage for low-income women pregnant with their first child. This new form of the bill was anathema to members of ACCL, and they quickly rallied behind Senator Cranston’s Medicaid Eligibility of Pregnant Women amendment that was introduced to ensure that first pregnancies were covered by CHAP. ACCL called on the right-to-life movement to make it clear that support for the CHAP legislation was contingent on passage of Senator Cranston’s amendment, and the group reminded anti-abortionists that this coverage was necessary both during and after a pregnancy. Ostensibly, this was not a bill about abortion, and yet because ACCL gave equal weight to providing alternatives to abortion, the group threw all its energies into ensuring the passage of the legislation. The group also emphasized to right-to-lifers who may not have been convinced of the benefits of CHAP that this bill provided them with an opportunity to counter some of the criticisms made of the movement. One call to action ended by pointing out that “pro-lifers are often attacked for being against abortion but being uninterested or negative about providing the necessary care should a woman with an unwanted pregnancy carry the child to term.” This did not mean, however, that ACCL viewed support for legislation such as CHAP as a cynical means of countering the criticisms made by their opponents, and nor did the group want other anti-abortionists to think in such a way. Rather, ACCL wanted right-to-lifers to broaden their focus and to see that working for the kinds of protections offered by the CHAP legislation was “essential if we are truly concerned about the future of individual human beings as well as about their existence.”41 ACCL’s work for the CHAP bill stemmed from its desire to ensure that pregnant women and their unborn children were afforded basic protections. While the group cared deeply about the

40 Action Alert: Congress Considers Medicaid Eligibility of Pregnant Women, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, Action Alert—August 1979, GFPL. 41 Ibid.

98 right-to-life of the unborn, it also felt that a certain quality of life needed to be guaranteed for pregnant women and their children. The CHAP bill fitted these goals because it established a right to a level of medical care during pregnancy. The third major piece of legislation that ACCL supported and rallied behind was the Adolescent Pregnancy Services bill, a measure that was proposed in the late 1970s in response to the dramatic increase in rates of teenage pregnancy.42 Vinovskis goes so far as to suggest that despite the fact that the bill had “numerous and obvious weaknesses,” it had a relatively easy passage through both houses of Congress “because of a general feeling that something had to be done about this new problem.”43 This bill was intended to help assist in primary prevention efforts as well as offering services for teenagers who had already fallen pregnant. It was envisaged as a piece of legislation that would help coordinate and provide government support for sex education courses, family life programs, and care projects. Supporters of the measure argued that there was a need to offer assistance to teenagers who chose not to abort their pregnancies, especially when some states continued to fund abortions for indigent women but had few services in place to encourage women to choose life. ACCL’s work for this legislation thus neatly tallied with Mecklenburg’s own long-running interest in helping pregnant teenagers. Indeed, many of her ideas about offering alternatives to abortion were squarely aimed at adolescents for she felt that they were especially vulnerable to economic and social pressures when it came to their pregnancies. Passage of this bill would no doubt have been viewed as a success for ACCL if it were not for the subsequent treatment of Mecklenburg by HEW. In November 1978, the bill was enacted as the Adolescent Health, Services and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act and put under the control of HEW. The head of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP), Dr. Lula Mae Nix, an African American Republican, quickly approached Mecklenburg to work as a paid consultant on behalf of the program so as to have someone with suitable expertise who would be available to disseminate information and advice at a community and state level.44 This represented another triumph for ACCL and Mecklenburg, for it served as formal recognition of the group’s role in working for passage of the bill. It also seemed to be an acknowledgement of

42 Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? 54–70. 43 Ibid., 23. 44 Marjory Mecklenburg to David Winston, 3 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL.

99 ACCL’s advocacy work with regard to “alternatives” and of the group’s long-standing interest in issues pertaining to adolescent pregnancy. However, Mecklenburg was never able to formally begin her work for the program. In February 1979, approximately one week after she was notified that she had been accepted as a consultant, an aide for Dr. Julius Richmond, HEW’s Assistant Secretary for Health, informed her that her ties to a national right-to-life organization made her an unacceptable candidate. This turn of events upset Mecklenburg immensely. She had never tried to disguise her ties to ACCL, and presumably Nix had been aware of them when she had made the initial offer. At heart, this rebuff seemed to be aimed not only at Mecklenburg but at all prominent anti-abortionists who hoped to influence policy or work for change at a federal level. Indeed, some supporters of Mecklenburg explicitly stated that this move was indicative of the “pro-abortion tendencies” within HEW itself, and was clear “evidence of official government bias against those who [held] opinions opposed to abortion.”45 Others assumed that HEW was attempting to refashion the program so as to downplay its implicit right-to- life values and focus instead on the various privacy rights that had been strengthened by the Roe v. Wade decision. Given Mecklenburg’s status as a national figure and the rather public nature of the rebuff, it is hard not to assume that Richmond was making a statement about the anti-abortion movement as a whole rather than about just one individual. This perception was not helped by the fact that Dr. Irvin Cushner and Sarah Weddington, two figures that right-to-lifers understood as being clearly engaged in “pro-abortion activities,” had been given appointments in both the Carter administration and within HEW itself.46 While some saw her rejection as being a snub aimed at the movement in general, Mecklenburg herself seemed to be insistent that she and ACCL should not be understood as representing all anti-abortionists. In a letter written in early March she emphasized that past actions demonstrated that she could “work effectively with people and groups who have differing views on abortion.”47 This was a theme that Mecklenburg and ACCL often reiterated. Although they did not explicitly contrast themselves with others in the movement, it was hard to miss the inference. Members of ACCL prided themselves on their ability to

45 Michael McDonald to Hon. Thomas Kindness, 13 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL 46 Marjory Mecklenburg to Jack Anderson, 14 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL. 47 Marjory Mecklenburg to David Winston, 3 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL.

100 build coalitions both amongst right-to-lifers and between the movement and other segments of society, and they obviously considered themselves as being rather unique in this respect. In fact, in the same month that Mecklenburg had been rejected by HEW, ACCL had taken part in a remarkable summit between prominent activists on both sides of the abortion question. Those in attendance included Eleanor Smeal (president of NOW), Karen Mulhauser (president of NARAL), Fay Wattleton (president of PPFA), Virginia De Marce (representing ACCL), and Mildred Jefferson (former president of the NRLC). The meeting did not end well, but members of ACCL still understood their participation as a positive endeavor.48 In letters regarding her cursory treatment by the OAPP, Mecklenburg specifically cited this meeting as indicative of her unique approach to the abortion issue.49 She was rather isolated within the movement by this stance, with Judie Brown chiding those who had expected the meeting to be successful by declaring that, “the reality of the issue is death—the answer is a HUMAN LIFE AMENDMENT. Nothing less will suffice.”50 Clearly not everyone felt that compromise and coalition building were positive attributes. Mecklenburg strongly believed that the knowledge and skills she had developed within the anti-abortion movement would be beneficial to a federal agency such as HEW. She was stunned that heading a national anti-abortion organization disqualified her from working as a consultant, noting that the very breadth of her experience was likely to make her more qualified and more effective as an employee. Indeed, she was so passionate about ensuring the success of the Adolescent Pregnancy Program that she had already begun unofficially doing her consultancy work by appearing as a speaker before several organizations interested in the new legislation. This was a continuation of the work she had

48 This unique meeting occurred on 15 February 1979 in Washington, D.C. Notably, Nellie Gray refused to attend because she would not “sit down and negotiate with baby killers,” and nor did Carolyn Gerster, then president of the NRLC, participate. It was intended to be a forum for discussion of issues of mutual interest such as contraception, sex education, and support for pregnant women, and in advance it had been decided that abortion was not to be discussed. People on both sides of the issue described the meeting as “amicable” and “productive,” until, at the end of the day, three women from People Expressing a Concern for Everyone (PEACE) disrupted the meeting by displaying two fetuses to the television cameras that were there to record the press conference that concluded the gathering. For a further description, see “Birth Control Parley Shaken as Protesters Display Two Fetuses,” New York Times, 16 February 1979, B7; Paige, The Right to Lifers, 106–9. For correspondence with ACCL’s representative at the meeting see Marjory Mecklenburg to Virginia De Marce, 23 February 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Correspondence 1979, Folder 1, GFPL. 49 Marjory Mecklenburg to David Winston, 3 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL. 50 Gerster also declared her full support for the actions of the women from PEACE. “Birth Control Parley Shaken as Protesters Display Two Fetuses,” New York Times, 16 February 1979, B7. For quote from Brown see National Right to Life Committee press release, 15 February 1979, as cited in Paige, The Right to Lifers, 108.

101 been doing prior to being contacted by Dr. Nix, and the topics and issues discussed fitted neatly with her existing interests and beliefs. If Mecklenburg, who had worked so hard to see the bill pass and who had long been a passionate exponent of providing pregnancy-related services was not suitable for a consultancy position, who would help move the program forward in its formative years? The answer to this question, at least as interpreted by Mecklenburg and her supporters, was that HEW did not want the program to provide genuine alternatives to abortion. She commented, “It seems obvious that some people do not want the program to be identified (‘misinterpreted’) as implementing a new policy on adolescent pregnancy which stresses supportive services and education rather than abortion.”51 Mecklenburg attempted to reverse Richmond’s decision by contacting her supporters both within the broader and movement and at a federal level, but she was ultimately unable either to influence his ruling or to keep the publicity about it out of the news media. The story appeared in major publications such as the New York Times and in a variety of smaller newsletters such as the Child Protection Report. Richmond’s rebuff of Mecklenburg was repeatedly linked to her prominence within a right-to-life organization, with little attention paid to her role in supporting a variety of legislative initiatives that were not specifically anti- abortion in intent. As it became increasingly apparent that Richmond’s decision was final, Mecklenburg began to worry about the future of the Adolescent Pregnancy Program. She informed one supporter that it was very important that everyone understand that “people on both sides of the abortion issue testified for the adolescent pregnancy bill and supported it, at least publicly.”52 She did not want the program to be undermined because it was supposedly a right-to-life measure, for although she might not be able to work for HEW, it was still a legislative initiative that she and ACCL had lobbied to see enacted. Although she had been deemed unacceptable by Richmond, she still strongly believed in the necessity of such work. It is perhaps further testimony to her moderation that she continued to express deep concern about the future of the program even as it became evident that there would be no role for her within it.

51 Marjory Mecklenburg to David Winston, 3 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL. 52 Marjory Mecklenburg to Jack Anderson, 14 March 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Marjory Mecklenburg Correspondence 1977–79, GFPL.

102 The very public rejection of Marjory Mecklenburg by HEW did not bring ACCL’s federal legislative efforts to an end, but they did offer a stark message to those who practiced her form of activism. Despite ACCL’s attempts to foster initiatives that went beyond a doctrinaire right-to-life position, Mecklenburg was rebuffed because she ultimately opposed abortion. Her attempts at coalition building and her rejection of extremes were invisible to the federal government, and perhaps also to the majority of abortion rights advocates. Mecklenburg’s long-standing efforts for bills that supported pregnant women, an ethos that in several ways mirrored the demands of second-wave feminists, did not stop her being understood as a social conservative, as someone on the political Right.

CONCLUSION

To categorize all anti-abortionists as socially conservatives is problematic. They opposed unrestricted abortion, which necessarily pitted them against both reproductive rights advocates and second-wave feminists. They thus often found themselves excluded from the Left. Nevertheless, they did not all agree with the values espoused by the “New Right,” particularly when those values were related to sex. In short, the types of activism that Marjory Mecklenburg and others in ACCL engaged in cannot be easily categorized in terms of political orientation. At a time when many would assume that right-to-lifers would be espousing the divisive ideas of the “New Right,” Mecklenburg and ACCL deliberately pursued a policy of compromise. They worked with their supposed enemies, defended ideas attacked by social conservatives, and lobbied for programs that served to increase the obligations of the State. Despite the negative reactions that these stances prompted from both sides of politics, ACCL continued to pioneer its own form of activism. Mecklenburg was confident in her status as an anti-abortion leader, even as she sided with liberals in a debate over sex education or supported legislation that served to increase the burdens of the federal government. She may not always have had the support of all in the movement, but nor was she precluded from speaking. At this moment in time, there was no one clear ideology that dominated right-to-life organizations.

103

104 CHAPTER 4

THE “BABY KILLER” APPROACH: THE ANTI-ABORTION

MOVEMENT AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “NEW RIGHT”

Abortion means killing a living baby, a tiny human being with a beating heart and little fingers … killing a baby boy or baby girl with burning deadly chemicals or a powerful machine that sucks and tears the little infant from its mother’s womb. And to my way of thinking that’s just plain murder. As I write you this letter, the Baby Killers are already working frantically for their 1980 political goal. Stop the Baby Killers mailing.1

In early August 1979, 50,000 voters in South Dakota, Indiana, Idaho, California, and Iowa opened their letter boxes to find a mass mailing that informed them that their federal representatives were “political baby killers” who “apparently think it’s perfectly O.K. to slaughter unborn infants by abortion.” These letters targeted five Democratic Senators who were up for re-election in 1980, and asked those who sympathized with the cause to donate to an “anti-abortion political war chest” that would work to turn the men out of office. The mailing adopted a grisly and confrontational tone, and it relied on provocative rhetoric to rally opponents of abortion to political action, at one stage asking voters to “abort [these members of Congress] at the ballot box.”2 The letter immediately attracted national attention to its authors, the newly formed Americans for Life, and earned the ire of both the Senators who found themselves under attack and from the Left in general. At the behest of Senators Birch Bayh (D-IN) and George McGovern (D-SD), two of the targeted Congress members,

1 Although this copy of the mailing is held in a folder dated September 1979, I believe it is the first letter sent by the group because it includes a copy of a NARAL fundraising appeal which has negative comments written on it. In August 1979, Stop the Baby Killers was threatened with legal action by NARAL for including the group’s letterhead, which led Ohio State Senator Donald Luken, the author of the letter, to declare that he would not be including the NARAL letter in the second mailing. Vera Glaser, “Postal Service Probes Anti- Abortion Letter,” Washington Post, 22 August 1979, A3. For the mailing see “Stop the Baby Killers” letter, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 42, Americans for Life, September 1979, GFPL. 2 The five men targeted by the mailing were Senator Frank Church (D-ID), Senator George McGovern (D- SD), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Alan Cranston (D-CA), and Senator John Culver (D-IO).

105 the United States Postal Service quickly launched an investigation to determine whether the claims of the letter misled voters. 3 While the opposition of Democrats to the “Stop the Baby Killers” campaign was hardly surprising, even prominent figures within the national anti-abortion movement questioned the methods of the group. Paul Brown, whose organization LAPAC was known for its aggressive approach and whose actions frequently enraged abortion rights activists, bluntly declared that the letter was “stupid.” The campaign was certainly not particularly profitable for, by the end of the month, donations exceeded the initial costs by only two thousand dollars.4 Nevertheless, it fulfilled its primary purpose, in that it drew the attention of voters and the media to the abortion records of key Democratic senators well over a year before voting was to commence. The “Stop the Baby Killers” mailing was routinely cited in the many news media articles that charted the impact of single-issue groups in the 1980 campaign, but this letter should not be understood as being representative of the activities and beliefs of the broader right-to-life movement.5 Rather, it was a prime example of a moment when an organization affiliated with the “New Right” intervened and shaped the debate surrounding legalized abortion in the United States. The mailing exemplified the tactics and tone taken by “New Right” groups when they lobbied on social and political issues, and indeed the Democratic Congressmen targeted were opposed by conservatives for reasons that extended well beyond their stance on abortion. Despite the fact that Americans for Life was hardly an organization that was part of the mainstream anti-abortion movement either in terms of its political makeup or its track record, this mailing has also featured prominently in historical accounts of the activities of right-to-lifers in the 1980 elections.6 This focus on a particularly extreme example of anti-abortion activism has helped contribute to a distorted image of the influence that the “New Right” had on the movement. When historians have examined the relationship between anti-abortionists and the “New Right” in the late 1970s, they have tended to assume that the two groups had a natural

3 Glaser, “Postal Service Probes Anti-Abortion Letter,” Washington Post, 22 August 1979, A3. 4 Ibid. 5 See “The New Right Takes Aim,” Time, 20 August 1979, 20–1. 6 The group had almost no links with the established anti-abortion movement and had only been formed in 1979. At the time that the first letter was sent out it had only six members, and it sank into obscurity after the 1980 election had finished. For texts that mention the mailing see McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 24–5; Paige, The Right to Lifers, 199–201.

106 and easy alliance. In Karen O’Connor’s brief account of Reagan’s bid for the presidency, she sums up the role of right-to-lifers by declaring that, “capitalizing on its new base in the southern, conservative tradition, the pro-life movement, with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and the Christian [R]ight … at its helm, made its power known in the 1980 elections.”7 She goes on to refer only to the actions of two socially conservative groups, LAPAC and Moral Majority, which thus reinforces the impression that the anti-abortion movement was an early and exuberant promoter of the social agenda of the “New Right.” Similarly, when McKeegan discusses the election of Ronald Reagan, she explains that “the coalition of hard right, fundamentalist, and anti-abortion groups worked in close concert throughout the [1980] campaign, targeting almost identical candidates and coordinating strategy.”8 Although there certainly were numerous instances when right-to-lifers and social conservatives were in political agreement, this was not the only reaction that anti-abortion organizations had towards the activities of the Right. The attempts by the “New Right” to define what it meant politically and socially to be a right-to-lifer were deeply troubling to some of those it claimed to represent, and this chapter explores how ACCL responded both publicly and privately to the growing prominence of conservatives in the abortion debate. Rather than embracing the increased attention given to the abortion issue in national politics, ACCL repeatedly attempted to distance itself from the absolutism of social conservatives and argued for the necessity of building coalitions and forming alliances on both sides of politics. It did not shy away from critiquing the interest of the “New Right” in abortion, and throughout the 1980 election it worked hard to alert right-to-lifers to the danger of having a close association with such a polarizing political force. Furthermore, ACCL and Marjory Mecklenburg also attempted to shape the broader debate over abortion by reaching out to the media and to federal politicians and challenging the authority of the “New Right” to speak on behalf of anti- abortionists. When Connie Paige discusses the conflicts that occurred between right-to-lifers and social conservatives, she suggests that it was essentially a clash between the Catholic hierarchy, who represented the anti-abortion establishment, and the “New Right,” who

7 O’Connor, No Neutral Ground? 86. 8 McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 35.

107 brought an influx of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians into the movement. 9 Although ACCL echoed some of the Catholic hierarchy’s criticisms of the “New Right,” the group emphasized that its position was informed by both its ecumenical nature and its status as a representative of the long-standing movement. Throughout the 1970s, ACCL had worked diligently to articulate its own vision of right-to-life activism. It resisted the advances of the “New Right” because its members believed that too close an association with conservatism would transform and ultimately narrow the range and scope of the overall movement. ACCL prided itself on pursuing goals that were neither politically Left nor Right, a type of activism that it feared would not be able to survive if the anti-abortion movement were absorbed into the “New Right.”

THE “NEW RIGHT” AND THE ISSUE OF ABORTION

In the late 1970s, conservatism in the United States experienced a dramatic resurgence thanks to the efforts of a group who described themselves as the “New Right.” Although the ideologues of the “New Right” aimed to unite a variety of single-issue groups, they were especially active in their interventions into the abortion debate. Paul Weyrich initiated these efforts by approaching Paul and Judie Brown, a socially-conservative married couple who were active in the national anti-abortion movement. The Browns were Catholic and had first become alarmed at the specter of legalized abortion in 1970 when they lived in Seattle, Washington.10 As they moved around the country in the intervening years, Judie participated more and more in local anti-abortion activities. After the relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1976, Judie began working as a volunteer for the NRLC. This work quickly turned into paid employment, and she became the NRLC’s public relations director. Troubled by the constant fighting that plagued the group and disappointed by its refusal to comment on birth control and issues other than abortion, Judie quickly became dissatisfied by the limitations of the NRLC. While Paul shared his wife’s sentiments regarding abortion and had, to a lesser

9 Paige, The Right to Lifers. 10 For Judie Brown’s account of the decades she has spent working for the anti-abortion cause see Judie Brown, It is I Who Have Chosen You (Virginia: American Life League, 1997).

108 extent been involved in the right-to-life movement, it was only in 1977 that he devoted himself to the cause full time.11 Weyrich approached the Browns during this period and invited them to begin attending the weekly meetings of the Library Court, a group that was an offshoot of Weyrich’s Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress and that was a place where conservative groups could discuss and strategize specifically on the “social issues.”12 Judie subsequently left the NRLC and Paul quit his job at K-Mart to found, respectively, LAPAC and American Life League (ALL). Both groups developed because of the active involvement of key “New Right” figures, receiving advice on electoral campaigns and strategy from Weyrich and fundraising assistance from Viguerie.13 Weyrich also served as a board member of LAPAC during its early years. These links with the “New Right” were happily acknowledged, for in 1980, Sean Morton Downey Jr. of LAPAC explained the key distinction between his group and the NRLC as being that:

[The NRLC] are afraid of being called a tool of the New Right. We are a tool of the New Right, and [the New Right] is a tool of ours.14

ALL and LAPAC quickly began to depict themselves as speaking on behalf of the broader anti-abortion movement, and by the early 1980s they claimed to represent thousands of subscribers and to have links with hundreds of organizations.15 They were absolutist in their outlook, and they tended to use aggressive tactics and rhetoric in their interventions into the abortion debate. Actively nurtured by the “New Right,” LAPAC and ALL played an important role in changing the public face of right-to-life politics. Interestingly, although the Browns had formally left the NRLC, they initially maintained quite close ties with the organization. Paige goes so far as to suggest that Mildred Jefferson had encouraged the alliance between the Browns and the “New Right,” essentially setting “up Judie Brown so that she could be a conservative fifth column within the right-to-

11 Merton, Enemies of Choice, 160–1. 12 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 149. 13 Indeed, Paul Brown would later claim that he founded LAPAC after receiving a call from a prominent member of the Right “who was interested in starting a conservative right-to-life organization.” Ibid., 150 [emphasis added]. 14 Merton, Enemies of Choice, 164 [emphasis in original]. 15 As noted in the Introduction, it is difficult to know whether these claims should be taken seriously, as Judie Brown freely admitted that she made up the NRLC’s membership numbers during the 1970s.

109 life movement.”16 The “New Right,” with its access to donors and its web of interconnected lobby groups and think tanks, no doubt seemed to Jefferson like a powerful new ally, able to advance the anti-abortion cause to a whole new constituency. The NRLC’s links with LAPAC extended beyond Jefferson, and during LAPAC’s early years Dr. Carolyn Gerster, Dr. Jack Willke, and Jefferson all served as board members and lent their time and reputations to fundraising initiatives.17 This alliance did not last very long, however, as some members of the NRLC accused the Browns of illegally using their membership lists. For their part, the Browns claimed that Willke attempted to hijack the board of LAPAC.18 Although the relationship between the Browns and the NRLC grew increasingly strained as the 1970 drew to an end, the NRLC’s interest in the tactics of the “New Right” only grew. While the Browns worked to shift the focus of the existing anti-abortion movement, the “New Right” also made sophisticated use of multi-issue forums to expound its specific ideas about the right-to-life. Many of the most effective “New Right” and “Christian Right” groups such as Eagle Forum, Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Religious Roundtable, Christian Voice, and the Christian Action Council (CAC), were founded with broad aims and worked to enact a vision of society that extended beyond social issues such as abortion.19 Of these groups, Moral Majority, founded by Falwell in 1979, is perhaps the most notable, for it quickly gained a national profile. It saw the world through a morally traditionalist Christian framework, and had positions on topics that ranged from promiscuity and abortion to foreign affairs and the federal income tax. Although the group was active on a variety of issues, ending legalized abortion was central to its mission. At the meeting that resulted in the formation of Moral Majority and the emergence of Reverend Falwell as a political

16 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 149. 17 In 1977, when LAPAC was launched, the NRLC sent out a press release to all its members announcing the new organization and the fact that it had been endorsed by Jefferson and Willke and that Gerster was the Vice- Chairman of the new group. A lengthy fundraising letter that accompanied this release was sent out over Jefferson’s signature where she was described as an Honorary Chairperson. See Judie Brown to Pro-Life Chapter, 25 October 1977, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 11, 1977, Folder 4, GFPL; Mildred Jefferson to Friend of Life, undated, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 17, Letters to Prospective Members, GFPL. After Gerster became president of the NRLC she was described in a press release as a board member of LAPAC and was listed, along with Willke, as participating in a walk through Death Valley to raise funds for the organization. Sean Morton Downey Jr. to Friends of Life, 7 August 1978, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 17, Letters to Prospective Members, GFPL. 18 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 152–3. 19 Although Eagle Forum predates the emergence of the “New Right,” I have listed it here because of Phyllis Schlafly’s long ties with the conservative movement in the United States and the important role that this group, as well as her other organization, STOP-ERA, played in helping to mobilize women around a conservative agenda throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

110 activist, all the participants (including the four ideologues of the “New Right” and the founder of Religious Roundtable, Ed McAteer) agreed that getting a strongly-worded anti- abortion plank in the Republican Party Platform was one of the major goals for both Falwell’s group and the “New Right” in general. According to some accounts, this emphasis on abortion occurred in part because it would help attract Catholics who normally voted for the Democrats.20 Until the late 1970s, right-to-lifers had made little effort to link opposition to abortion to a broader vision of American society. The multi-issue groups that were connected to the “New Right” helped offer adherents a worldview that united the concerns of a variety of single-issue groups and alerted them to the links between a broad range of topics. By framing legalized abortion as tied to an intrusive federal government and an activist judiciary, the “New Right” argued that all attempts to regulate the activities of the State and the Supreme Court would help change the environment that had led to Roe v. Wade. Members of the “Christian Right” went so far as to suggest that legalized abortion was part of an attempt to force America away from its Christian heritage, an event that was of Biblical significance because of the role that these conservatives presumed that America would play in the struggle against the anti-Christ.21 Rather than mobilizing a constituency around one issue such as busing or abortion, the “New Right” aimed to rally its supporters around every question that was of concern to the broader movement. Another key way that the “New Right” started to shape the debate around legalized abortion was through its lobbying efforts during political campaigns. In the early 1970s, changes to the laws surrounding campaign finance had placed limits on the amount individuals were permitted to give to candidates and on how much PACs could contribute per candidate, but no limit had been placed on the amount a PAC could spend on independent lobbying. PACs thus gained an unprecedented amount of influence in the late 1970s, able to both donate funds and run advertisements as long as their actions were independent of the official campaigns of politicians. Abortion was an extremely successful issue for “New Right” PACs as it helped them raise money while also allowing them to run

20 Martin, With God On Our Side, 200. 21 Jerry Falwell was one of several prominent evangelical Christians who believed that legalized abortion was linked to the Armageddon, writing in 1987 that Satan was “mobiliz[ing] his own forces to destroy America by negating the Judeo-Christian ethic, secularizing our society, and devaluing human life through the legalization of abortion and infanticide.” Jerry Falwell, Strength for the Journey (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), as cited in McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 17.

111 negative campaigns against standing members of Congress. Some groups, such as LAPAC, developed “hit lists” of Senators and Representatives who had voting records that were deemed to be supportive of legalized abortion. These PACs used aggressive tactics that garnered a great deal of media attention, perhaps best exemplified by the “Stop the Baby Killers” mailing discussed earlier and the “Dirty Dozen” campaign conducted by LAPAC during the 1982 elections. Their reliance on provocative rhetoric also helped link the anti- abortion cause with the kind of language used by social conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly in her fight against the ERA and Anita Bryant in her campaign against homosexual rights. Furthermore, socially conservative right-to-life activists explicitly linked support for abortion rights with support for the goals of second-wave feminism. Although earlier anti- abortionists had acknowledged that the increased acceptance of abortion was tied to the changes wrought by women’s liberationists, they also suggested that this was one of only several causes that had led to the liberalization of the law. While anti-abortionists certainly did not support the second-wave feminist goal of abortion-on-demand, in the 1970s, the rhetoric of the national movement was not primarily directed against women’s liberationists as an enemy in and of themselves. Second-wave feminists were deplored for ignoring the rights of the unborn, but right-to-lifers did not generally accuse women’s liberationists of trying to undermine the very structure of American society. In short, the “backlash” rhetoric of anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly did not dominate the movement until after the intervention of the “New Right” into abortion politics.22 Interestingly, socially conservative anti-abortion groups relied heavily on the idea that they were a beleaguered minority, a worldview that Sara Diamond suggests has been central to the longevity of the “Christian Right” but that can be also understood as applying to the broader conservative movement. She argues that “the perception among evangelicals that they are underdogs, ignored if not abused by the establishment, is part of a mindset that keeps activists from becoming complacent.” 23 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, socially conservative anti-abortion groups also relied heavily on the rhetoric of exclusion. In April

22 For further accounts of the history of second-wave feminism see Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America Since 1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Alice Echolls, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Knopf, 1979); Myra Marx Ferree and Beth B. Hess, Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000); Rosen, The World Split Open; Barbara Ryan, Feminism and the Women’s Movement: Dynamics of Change in Social Movement, Ideology and Activism (New York: Routledge, 1992). 23 Diamond, Not by Politics Alone, 5.

112 1980, LAPAC devoted an entire issue of its newsletter to outlining the powerful and shadowy forces that groups like itself struggled against. Thoroughly sketching what it dubbed the “anti-life establishment,” the newsletter discussed a series of interlinked individuals and groups who donated funds, resources, and time to keeping abortion legal. It ended with an “alphabet maze” that listed the abbreviations of groups who were “versus life.” Ultimately, this ten-page newsletter was explicitly premised on the idea that although anti-abortionists had greater political strength and more grassroots backing, the fame, wealth and “clout” of those who supported abortion were “major weapons” that meant that vigilance must be maintained.24 This idea that right-to-lifers were a minority fighting against a hostile majority became increasingly predominant within the movement during the 1980s. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the “New Right” spoke about abortion in two different ways. Single-issue groups such as LAPAC and ALL acted as part of the right-to-life movement while articulating a worldview that mirrored the rhetoric and ideas of social conservatives. General interest groups such as Moral Majority linked opposition to abortion to other topics that concerned the Right, and also worked to recruit new members by disseminating right-to-life materials amongst those who were not already active on the issue. These two approaches, both of which received a great deal of attention from the media and from politicians, helped create a situation in which conservatism and opposition to abortion came to seem synonymous. This was not the case.

THE “NEW RIGHT” AND THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT

I, too, am fed up with the extremism of the political right and seek an alternative mode of involvement in the pro-life movement than that offered by LAPAC and American Life Lobby which I supported in the past. Ron Gori, 28 November 1980.25

24 This twelve-page newsletter included numerous abortion rights leaders, second-wave feminists, liberal activists such as Norman Lear, federal politicians, and individuals as disparate as John Kenneth Galbraith, Christie Heffner, Abigail van Buren (“Dear Abby”), and Isaac Asimov. “Know Your Enemy—America’s Anti- Life Establishment,” LAPAC Reports 2 no. 4 (April 1980), 1–12. 25 Ron Gori to Fellow Pro-Lifers, 28 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, General Request File, Folder 2, GFPL.

113 The relationship between the “New Right” and anti-abortionists has dominated many of the scholarly accounts of these two groups, and while there certainly were shared concerns, not all right-to-lifers viewed the growing influence of social conservatives as beneficial to the broader movement. ACCL was troubled by the tactics of the “New Right,” and from 1977 onwards it attempted to offer a form of anti-abortion politics that relied on ideas of unity rather than on division. By the time of the 1980 presidential election, it openly distanced itself from socially conservative organizations, and it repeatedly questioned the effect that an alliance with these groups would have on the broader anti-abortion movement. Although ACCL was unusual in that it critiqued both the socially conservative organizations active on abortion and the type of legislative agenda it believed would be offered by the Reagan administration, its members clearly believed that as well-established anti-abortion activists they had a right and an obligation to voice these concerns. While not hostile to working with conservatives, ACCL saw itself as a group that could transcend political differences, and the rhetoric and absolutist ideas espoused by social conservatives troubled its members. In June 1977, as the “New Right” was gaining influence and beginning to make its overtures toward the anti-abortion movement, Mecklenburg organized a meeting with influential conservatives at a national level. The purpose of this gathering was to gain insight into the goals and concerns of prominent members of the Right with regard to the abortion issue, and also to learn how they thought ACCL should best advance. Those in attendance represented both the established conservative movement and the groups specifically associated with the “New Right.” While ACCL clearly hoped to forge alliances with the conservatives it had invited, this did not mean that the group planned to compromise its long-held belief in the necessity for coalition building. In a draft letter to attendees, Mecklenburg outlined ACCL’s “legislative style” and emphasized that the group moved “both left and right to work cooperatively on specific bills.” Rather than shying away from the ramifications of such a position, she noted that ACCL had, on occasion, “worked toward passage of legislation which you do not support,” and that the group would continue its efforts on behalf of issues that it had already committed itself to.26 While ACCL was

26 Those in attendance at the meeting included Larry Uzzell of the Heritage Foundation, Mike Baroody of the Republican National Committee, and aides speaking on behalf of Representative Phillip Crane (R-IL), Representative Thomas Kindness (R-OH), Representative Dan Quayle (R-IN), Senator Richard Schweiker (R- PA), and Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC). See Draft letter from Marjory Mecklenburg, 29 June 1977, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 43, Conservatives, GFPL.

114 clearly hoping to build stronger alliances with national right-wing figures, it was not willing to limit its scope by working only for legislation that had their approval. By seeking out those that Mecklenburg described as “thoughtful conservatives,” ACCL was attempting to establish links that were not defined by the “New Right.” Throughout the late 1970s the group continued to posit itself as an intermediary between both sides of politics, but as the decade progressed ACCL became more and more concerned about the influence that the “New Right” had on the broader anti-abortion movement. The “New Right” first exercised its political clout in the 1978 midterm elections, when liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans were defeated by an “avalanche” that saw three new conservatives elected to the Senate and several more enter the House.27 After this dramatic demonstration of strength, ACCL began to more actively express its disquiet about the interventions made by the “New Right” into the abortion issue. In November 1978, Mecklenburg wrote a letter to Representative Richard Nolan (D-MN) alerting him both to ACCL’s anxiety about the sudden growth in anti-abortion PACs and to the suspect use of his name in a direct-mailing campaign. Nolan was a long-standing ally of ACCL and the right-to-life movement in general, and in 1978 he was listed in mailings as a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Fund to Defeat Abortion Candidates, a subsidiary of Lee Edward’s LIFE-PAC.28 Mecklenburg wrote to Nolan because she was “concerned that you might not have realized how your name would be used or in what company you would appear.”29 Mecklenburg was worried that anti-abortion allies were lending their names to groups without understanding the kinds of tactics or rhetoric that would be employed. She described the anti-abortionists involved in the group in question as “very conservative,” an aside of interest because the Committee included Paul Brown, Randy Engel, and the Reverend Charles Fiore, three activists who became increasingly prominent within the national movement during the 1980s. To alert Nolan to the suspect origin of some of these

27 After the congressional elections, CBS Network News declared that “pro-life voters were probably ‘the most powerful political force in America today.’” LAPAC took credit for this assessment of anti-abortion strength, claiming that CBS had made its comment after examining political contests that LAPAC had been involved in, particularly the Iowa campaign between Roger Jepsen and Richard Clark. Sean Morton Downey, Jr. and Paul Brown to Chapter President, 13 November 1978, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 42, NRL-PAC, GFPL. For discussion of the 1978 mid-term elections, see Berman, America’s Right Turn, 50, 64. 28 The specific mailing that Mecklenburg forwarded to Nolan was both a fundraising missive for anti-abortion candidates and a call to stop state funding of abortions. 29 Marjory Mecklenburg to Richard Nolan, 16 November 1978, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 42, NRL-PAC, GFPL.

115 groups, she included a recently published article on “New Right” ideologue and fundraising impresario Viguerie. Mecklenburg was not suggesting that the LIFE-PAC mailing was connected to Viguerie. Indeed, she thought it was probably linked to William F. Buckley’s National Review via Jim McFadden. Rather, she sent the article to alert Nolan to the changing way that abortion was being used as a political issue, a warning that would prove increasingly relevant to federal politicians. Furthermore, several of these PACs seemed simply to ask for money to attack specific politicians, a role that was at odds with ACCL’s goal of working for meaningful change. In fact, in writing about Viguerie, Mecklenburg bluntly informed Nolan that “the right-wing fundraisers are seizing on abortion to build their lists and coffers.”30 Throughout 1979 and 1980, Mecklenburg continued to imply that the sudden dedication of the “New Right” the anti-abortion cause was primarily a tactical one, a means of gaining publicity and the support of right-to-lifers who were unaware of the way the issue was being manipulated. To combat such groups, she believed that existing anti-abortion organizations needed to offer a moderate approach that would allow them to draw members from across the political spectrum, a role that ACCL was clearly in a position to occupy. As the “New Right” gained influence, members of ACCL began to articulate their concerns about its approach to abortion in increasingly public forums. In early 1979, Joseph Lampe, the Executive Director of ACCL, wrote a letter of support to Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy to express his dismay at what he dubbed “the ‘baby killer’ approach to the issue.”31 In the original article, McCarthy assessed the hostilities that had been evident between abortion rights supporters and anti-abortionists on 22 January, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. He argued that both sides should offer meaningful support to pregnant women in need, but he offered especial criticism of the slant that anti-abortion politics had taken, noting that while “the right-to-life movement [has] its political side … it is beyond me to figure out the politics of crying out ‘baby killer!’ on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.”32 Lampe wrote his letter of support as a means of alerting McCarthy to the existence of an anti-abortion group that concentrated on helping pregnant

30 Ibid. 31 Although Lampe’s letter is dated January 1979, this is an error as the article in question was not published until 14 February 1979. Joseph Lampe to Colman McCarthy, 30 January 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Letters to the Editor 1976–84, Folder 1, GFPL. 32 Colman McCarthy, “Abortion: Tempers and Dialogue,” Washington Post, 14 February 1979, A23.

116 women as well as the unborn, but he also wished to emphasize that ACCL was unique within the right-to-life movement. Lampe claimed that ACCL had always “tried to avoid polarized rhetoric,” a direct acknowledgement of McCarthy’s concern about the increasingly divisive language and tactics of prominent anti-abortion groups. Lampe offered ACCL as one of the only national right-to-life groups that lobbied for supportive services for pregnant women, and suggested that if McCarthy wished to encounter an anti-abortionist who shared his concerns he might consider meeting Mecklenburg on her next visit to Washington.33 Later in 1979, ACCL again used the media as a means of presenting itself as an alternative to the anti-abortion groups associated with the “New Right.” In July, Mecklenburg wrote to the Catholic Bulletin to protest at the newspaper’s depiction of a program on teenage pregnancy that had been sponsored by the National Conference of Catholic Charities. Andrew Scholberg, the author of the original article and an associate of the conservative Catholic organization Human Life Center, deplored the fact that few at the session had promoted chastity as a means of combating teenage pregnancy.34 He singled out Mecklenburg for especial criticism, dryly noting that “Ms. Mecklenburg, as usual, did not hide her birth control light under a bushel, but put it on a stand.” While her belief in birth control made her an easy target for socially conservative anti-abortionists, it was her espousal of cooperation with groups that supported abortion rights that attracted most of Scholberg’s ire. He scathingly noted that she emphasized the need to build “a level of trust and respect with groups who favor abortion,” retorting that he did not see “how pro-life people [could] accept her call to collaborate with abortion promoters.”35 Although Mecklenburg contested Scholberg’s assessment of the forum, she did not shy away from answering his charges. Instead, she reiterated ACCL’s belief that it was “necessary and desirable to work with groups and individuals who may not share all of our values and concerns, but may share

33 Joseph Lampe to Colman McCarthy, 30 January 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Letters to the Editor 1976–84, Folder 1, GFPL. 34 Father Paul Marx, a conservative Benedictine who has staunchly opposed legalized birth control and abortion for over thirty years, founded the Human Life Center in 1972. He was an early proponent of the “contraceptive mentality” thesis that became increasingly popular as the anti-abortion movement shifted rightwards in its political orientation. He has founded many groups, but of these the most well known is Human Life International (HLI), an organization that was started in 1981 and that continues to combat family planning efforts at an international level. For a discussion of the “contraceptive mentality thesis,” which the Browns also subscribe to, see Cuneo, “Life Battles,” 278–82. 35 Andrew Scholberg, “Pregnant Teen Forum Ignores Role of Chastity,” The Catholic Bulletin Magazine, 6 July 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, Editorials 1976–84, GFPL.

117 some of them.”36 While this exchange was not specifically about the “New Right,” it should be understood in light of the broader changes occurring within the realm of abortion politics. Groups such as PPFA and NOW were increasingly coming under attack from socially conservative organizations such as LAPAC, and yet, according to Scholberg, these were the very groups that Mecklenburg believed anti-abortionists should work with. Mecklenburg responded to Scholberg’s article by clarifying and defending ACCL’s belief in the necessity of coalition building, an approach that ultimately depended on moderation rather than absolutism and that required ACCL to avoid the polarizing tactics of the “New Right.” As the 1980 presidential campaign began ACCL started to respond actively to the challenge posed by social conservatives, and it worked hard to differentiate itself from anti- abortion groups that echoed their stance on abortion. Rather than reacting to the political climate by downplaying its moderation, ACCL instead operated on the assumption that the provocative tactics of the “New Right” were of questionable benefit. In mailings sent in June to the subscribers of National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonwealth, ACCL asked potential new members if they were “bothered by over 1 million abortions a year but turned off by hard-line, single issue pro-life politics?” It offered itself as a group that could represent mainstream anti-abortionists, and suggested that it functioned more effectively as a lobby group not in spite of but because of its distance from the “New Right.” Describing itself as an organization that was responsive to the desires of the general population, this membership drive emphasized that ACCL was “ecumenical, bipartisan, reasonable and visionary … and [worked] just as hard to improve the quality of life as it does to protect the existence of life.”37 Later in the year, they developed a pamphlet that articulated a similar message and that opened with the slogan, “so many bandwagon—no other vehicle quite like ours.” This pamphlet clearly stated ACCL’s refusal to be “co-opted by the left or right,” and emphasized that the group did not engage in partisan politics. It also declared that ACCL was premised on the assumption that “people of good conscience can hold views not

36 Marjory Mecklenburg to the Editor of the Catholic Bulletin, 11 July 1979, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 15, Letters to the Editor 1976–84, Folder 1, GFPL. 37 “Are you bothered by over 1 million abortions a year but turned off by hard-line, single issue pro-life politics?” mailing, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 28, NCR, America, Commonwealth Prospect Mailing, June 1980, GFPL.

118 identical to our own” and that it prized “diversity in our membership.”38 Throughout 1980, ACCL produced subscription drives and pamphlets that repeatedly emphasized the ways in which the group differed from the “New Right,” and it did so with the assumption that such moderation would help the group attract new members. ACCL’s activities in this regard stand in marked contrast to the efforts of other national right-to-life groups during the campaign. According to Barbara Craig and David O’Brien, “with the exception of Ronald Reagan … presidential aspirants in both parties generally tried to downplay the abortion controversy.”39 Reagan’s opposition to abortion, coupled with his support for a “Human Life Amendment,” made him a clear choice for many anti-abortionists, and he actively courted movement leaders through correspondence and personal meetings. Movement figures such as Dr. Carolyn Gerster of the NRLC and Nellie Gray of March for Life were quick to support his candidacy, but Gerster also fostered more general links with “New Right” groups and Republican candidates. At this stage, the NRLC was the largest and most well known group opposed to abortion, claiming to have approximately eighteen hundred affiliates and eleven million members. It had a budget of $1.3 million and employed five full-time and four part-time workers.40 Early in Gerster’s time as head of the group, she had initiated a three-year plan that had as its ultimate goal the election of enough allies in Congress so as enact a constitutional amendment.41 This plan emphasized a “sensible, pragmatic, and nonvindicitive approach to the political game,” but the viability of this approach was never put to the test, for the tactics of the “New Right” quickly began to dominate how politicians and the public viewed anti-abortion activism.42 Rather than criticizing their new allies, however, the NRLC “watched Viguerie and his associates prepare for the election … [and] began to copy the New Right, occasionally working right along side them.”43 Although the NRLC believed that its relationship with

38 “Respect for Life: So Many Bandwagons—No Other Vehicle Quite Like Ours” pamphlet, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, America, December 1980, GFPL. 39 Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics, 165. 40 McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 23; Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 210. 41 This plan included the formation of a National Right to Life Political Action Committee, a voter identification survey to find and mobilize opponents of abortion as a political constituency, and a citizens’ lobby to ensure that elected representatives remembered their obligations to the movement. 42 Paige, The Right to Lifers, 118. For a discussion of Gerster and the NRLC’s activities during the 1980 campaign see Helen Epstein, “Abortion: An Issue That Won’t Go Away,” New York Times, 30 March 1980, Sunday Magazine, 48–50, 54, 64–6. 43 For quote and for a further discussion of the NRLC’s activities during the election see Paige, The Right to Lifers, 182–4.

119 “New Right” groups and conservative candidates was justified in part because all alliances would ultimately help in the fights against abortion, its tacit support for the activities of social conservatives helped lend legitimacy to the subsequent claims made by the “New Right” on behalf of the broader movement. ACCL’s efforts in the 1980 election were thus not only in response to the specific activities of “New Right” groups but also against the increasing conflation of opposition to abortion with absolutist and conservative ideas. One month before the 1980 elections, ACCL moved beyond voicing its concerns in subscription letters and private correspondence and offered its most significant critique of the “New Right” in the form of an editorial by Mecklenburg that was published in the October edition of ACCL Update and reproduced in the Congressional Record. This piece deplored the fact that in the current climate, if an individual was opposed to abortion “many persons will automatically label you [an] ‘arch conservative’ and assume that you are aligned with the Moral Majority or some other coalition of the ‘New Right.’” This conflation of the two groups had occurred because “radical conservatives seeking political advantage have identified with the anti-abortion cause and co-opted those activists who are impatient for political clout.”44 This scathing assessment of the sudden interest of the “New Right” in the abortion issue was also a plea for anti-abortionists to consider the ramifications of such an association. ACCL believed that the right-to-life cause would falter unless it was able to attract people from across the political spectrum. The tactics and worldview of the “New Right” would alienate potential allies, and the editorial warned readers that there were “risks in identifying closely with an agenda of political goals which is too narrow or too extreme to appeal to large segments of the population.”45 This editorial also called into question the criteria used in the hit lists developed by the “New Right.” It noted that, of the candidates targeted because of their voting record on abortion, “prominent liberals appear most often in the pro-abortion column [while] pro- abortion conservatives are conspicuously absent.”46 This accusation of bias, a common complaint made by second-wave feminists and abortion rights activists, is particularly notable in that it was made in a public forum rather than in a personal exchange. In a letter to the ACCL Board of Directors and the ACCL Congressional Advisory Committee,

44 Editorial, October 1980, ACCL Update, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 5, GFPL. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

120 Mecklenburg explained the editorial by simply stating that “in light of the growing identification of the pro-life movement with far right political groups … I felt a responsibility to articulate our viewpoint.”47 Ultimately, ACCL was attempting to offer an alternative perspective on what it meant to be opposed to abortion, and this move was certainly appreciated by some of its members. On 4 November, the day of the presidential election, John D. Prior wrote to ACCL to let them know that he was “much encouraged” by the editorial, and that he hoped the group might offer a “home” for his views on abortion. Describing himself as a trade unionist, he noted that he had been “really unwelcome at an R- T-L conference [in Michigan] that turn[ed] into a Reagan Rally.”48 In the days following Reagan’s election to the Presidency, ACCL repeatedly stated its disquiet about the outlook for the anti-abortion movement, despite the fact that Reagan’s victory was supposedly a triumph for their cause. The group sent letters to several right-to- life Congressmen who had been victorious, and while all of these letters were congratulatory, they expressed this support in a manner that reflected ACCL’s broader concerns about the future, for ACCL was quite apprehensive about the types of initiatives that would be backed by the Reagan administration. In letters to Representatives and Senators sent in the middle of November, Mecklenburg referred variously to the prospect of “difficult times,” to the potential for an “uphill battle,” and to the “challenging session ahead.”49 In letters to those with whom she had worked before, she praised their “balanced, pro-life leadership” and emphasized that their “moderation and reasoned leadership in abortion and other population issues [would be] even more critical given the current pressures.”50 To those newly elected to Congress, she commended the general trend that had seen strong opponents of abortion win their campaigns, while simultaneously stressing that there was a critical need “to carefully

47 Marjory Mecklenburg to the ACCL Congressional Advisory Committee and ACCL Board of Directors, 3 October 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 17, Editorial Statement October 1980 Update, GFPL. 48 John D. Prior to ACCL, 4 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 5, GFPL. 49 See Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 2, GFPL, with specific reference to Marjory Mecklenburg to Congressman Morris Udall, 12 November 1980; Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative John Erlenborn, 13 November 1980; Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative Charles Grassley, 13 November 1980; Marjory Mecklenburg to Senator Alan Cranston, 12 November 1980; and Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative James Oberstar, 13 November 1980. 50 Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative James Oberstar, 13 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 2, GFPL; Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative John Erlenborn, 13 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 2, GFPL.

121 weigh pro-life legislative strategy.”51 ACCL’s hesitance about the Reagan administration stemmed from its belief in the need for a “social justice legislative perspective,” a position that had been enunciated by the Catholic hierarchy during the 1980 campaign but that the “New Right” did not share. This outlook meant that ACCL worked not only for an end to legalized abortion but also for measures that provided support for pregnant women and their children. ACCL also expressed this apprehension about the future to journalists and members. On 12 November, Mecklenburg wrote to thank Mary Papa of the National Catholic Reporter for an article written about ACCL. As an aside, she mentioned that the group had “been preaching moderation and the need for a balanced approach to all of the Republican leadership that we have contact with [but that] only time will tell whether we can make an impact.”52 In a letter to John D. Prior, the member who had been extremely supportive of the editorial run by ACCL in the October edition of Update, Mecklenburg noted that the group was planning a drive to increase both membership levels and to raise the profile of ACCL. This move was in direct reaction to the increasing prominence of the “New Right” amongst anti-abortion groups. She concluded by noting that “right-wing pro-life political involvement is so predominant today that a real challenge is presented to moderate, constructive pro-life organizations and individuals.”53 One month after the election, ACCL distributed a mass mailing that was its final challenge to the forces that had led to the election of Reagan. This communication included excerpts from a piece published in September by Monsignor George Higgins in the Catholic magazine America, an article that warned Catholic right-to-lifers of the dangers that lay in cultivating too close an association with the “New Right.” Higgins, who had recently retired as a member of staff of the NCCB, warned that “those of us concerned about the prolife cause would do well to scrutinize more closely this apparent attempt to transform prolife sentiment into a right-wing political movement.”54 He echoed the Catholic hierarchy in his belief that anti-abortionists needed to address a range of issues not specifically concerned

51 Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative Charles Grassley, 13 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 2, GFPL [emphasis added]. 52 Marjory Mecklenburg to Mary Papa, 12 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 5, GFPL. 53 Marjory Mecklenburg to John D. Prior, 11 November 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 5, GFPL. 54 George G. Higgins, “The Prolife Movement and the New Right,” America, 13 September 1980, 109, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, America, December 1980, GFPL.

122 with abortion, a stance commonly referred to as a “social justice agenda.” Higgins ultimately believed that an alliance with the “New Right” would mean that Catholic right-to-lifers would have to abandon their “commitment to the social teachings of the church.” While he and the Catholic hierarchy advocated respect for life, they defined this goal in terms far broader than the vision put forth by the “New Right.”55 He felt that abortion was one of many issues relating to human life, and while it was extremely serious, it could not be dealt with in isolation from the problems of “massive poverty and starvation, of high unemployment and severely inadequate housing.”56 Although the “New Right” opposed legalized abortion, many of its other policies were at odds with this conception of what it meant to have respect for life. Indeed, these divisions between the Catholic Church and the “New Right” became increasingly evident in the early 1980s as the Reagan Administration clashed with the Catholic hierarchy over its support for a nuclear freeze.57 Higgins’ article was concerned, however, with more than just the distinctions between social conservatives and the Catholic Church on matters pertaining to life. Higgins’ ultimate argument was that the leadership of “several of the major national prolife political action committees are controlled, dominated, or heavily influenced by the New Right.”58 These charges were emphasized in the ACCL mailing, which prominently featured excerpts where Higgins’ rued the influence of the “New Right” over major anti-abortion groups. He believed that several national right-to-life PACs channeled funds directly into the campaigns of conservative political candidates. Furthermore, he suggested that anti-abortion grassroots activists were increasingly being instructed and trained by key members of the “New Right, “a comment that can be understood as a direct criticism of individuals like the Browns and their involvement in the weekly strategy sessions directed by the Heritage Foundation. Higgins did not see the increasing association of the right-to-life cause with social conservatism as an inevitable political development. Rather, he seemed to believe that this recent alliance had resulted from the direct intervention of “New Right” into the

55 After the USCC issued a statement declaring that “abortion alone should not be the deciding factor when a person votes” but instead should be considered alongside several other equally important issues, LAPAC described itself as “outraged … and disappointed.” See “United States Catholic Conference,” LAPAC Reports 1, no. 8, (November/December 1979), 1, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 42, LAPAC, Folder 2, GFPL [emphasis in original]. 56 George G. Higgins, “The Prolife Movement and the New Right,” America, 13 September 1980, 109, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, America, December 1980, GFPL. 57 For a discussion of the Catholic hierarchies call to stop developing and deploying nuclear weapons see Byrnes, The Politics of the American Catholic Hierarchy, 505–11. 58 Ibid.

123 development and organization of anti-abortion groups. He deplored the tactics that they had introduced to anti-abortionists, and warned:

While a temporary sense of political gratification may result from compiling hit lists and targeting candidates for defeat in collaboration with the far right, the association of right to life with the right wing will ultimately undermine and not broaden support for prolife positions.59

At heart, Higgins was challenging the idea that an alliance with the “New Right” was the only way for anti-abortionists to “play political hardball,” and in doing so he was directly criticizing one of the key arguments advanced by groups such as the NRLC to explain their increasing association with social conservatives. ACCL and Mecklenburg believed that Higgins brought “wisdom and calm reasoning” to his assessment of the dilemmas facing the anti-abortion movement. Mecklenburg quickly wrote to America magazine supporting his overall conclusions, and reiterated her belief in the need to be “wary of the hidden agenda of any new coalition that would exploit anti-abortion sentiments to its political agenda.”60 It is even more significant, however, that ACCL chose to circulate excerpts from Higgins’ article after Reagan had been elected. ACCL was explicitly tying itself to Higgins’ critique of both the “New Right” and of the anti-abortion groups that acted on its behalf. Moreover, in the letter that accompanied the article, ACCL essentially issued a call to arms to all those who shared Higgins’ concerns. While claiming that it would not be easy “in the present climate to capture the leadership and direct pro-life energies toward positive activities,” it nevertheless argued that by working towards goals that were attractive to most people it would be possible to “reframe the pro- life position so that it appeal[ed] to a broad majority.”61 Mecklenburg and ACCL were articulating a vision of society that believed that “respect for life can eventually be reinstated in American society, but only if we persuade—not pressure; educate—not intimidate;

59 Ibid. 60 Marjory Mecklenburg to America Press, Inc., 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 5, GFPL. 61 Marjory Mecklenburg to Dear Friend, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, America, December 1980, GFPL.

124 gather—not divide.”62 By inference, the “New Right” and socially conservative anti-abortion groups assumed that the only way to outlaw abortion was to coerce and manipulate the general population and its elected representatives, an approach at odds with ACCL’s desire to create a “caring society.” ACCL was attempting to recruit new members by directly positioning itself as an alternative to the kinds of anti-abortion politics offered by groups such as ALL and LAPAC and by the “New Right” in general. Although ACCL was repeatedly critical of the influence of social conservatives within the anti-abortion movement, this did not mean that it was not willing to work with the Reagan administration as it had worked with the Ford and Carter administrations. Indeed, ACCL understood the importance of providing input as soon as possible, particularly with regard to appointments within the various federal Departments. In September 1980, as news leaked about the existence of an already functioning Reagan transition team, the group suggested to Representative John Erlenborn (R-IL), a long- standing ally on population issues, that “attempts should be made to discuss our concerns with the existing team” with the aim of submitting a list of “suggested appointees” to the administration.63 After Reagan’s victory, Mecklenburg offered herself as a potential member of his Administration, sending a resume to the transition team.64 In March 1981, she was appointed to be the Director of OAPP in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS), formerly known as HEW. Prior to the finalization of Mecklenburg’s role, she emphasized to journalist Mary Papa that she would:

Cooperate with people and organizations who differ in their attitudes about abortion … [and that] whether or not a constitutional amendment restricting abortions is enacted there will be a great need to reduce adolescent pregnancies and improve their outcome.65

62 Ibid. 63 Marjory Mecklenburg to Representative John Erlenborn, 22 September 1980, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 14, General Correspondence 1980, Folder 2, GFPL. 64 William E. Timmons to Marjory Mecklenburg, 6 January 1981, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 35, OAPP-HEW, March 1 1981, Folder 1, GFPL. 65 Mary Papa, “‘Abortion Alternatives’ Leader up for U.S. Job,” National Catholic Reporter, 27 February 1981, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, America, 19 May 1981, GFPL.

125 Evidently, she initially envisaged her job with the OAPP as simply being an extension of her long-running interest in working with both sides of politics in combating the rising teenage birthrate. However, during her time with the Reagan administration, Mecklenburg began to articulate an increasingly limited vision of what it meant to be opposed to abortion, and eventually initiated the infamous “squeal rule” that required federally-funded family planning clinics to notify the parents of teenage girls who received contraceptives.66 This was a remarkable shift from the kinds of ideas she had advocated in the late 1970s, and differed dramatically from the legislative goals that she and ACCL had worked for. Mecklenburg’s moderation had been ignored by HEW under a Democratic president, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that she supported more extreme ideas under a conservative Republican president. The squeal rule was deplored by family planning advocates and ultimately was not enacted. Despite her seeming embrace of an absolutist approach to abortion, scholars such as Maris Vinovskis have suggested that she was still essentially a “moderate” force amongst the anti-abortion leadership, for she did not work towards goals such as ending “all federal involvement in providing contraceptives for adolescents and low income women,” an approach advocated by social conservatives within the movement such as Judie Brown.67 Although Mecklenburg’s own political philosophy seems to have been shaped by her role as a member of the Reagan administration, the group that she had founded continued to distance itself from the philosophy and tactics of the “New Right.” In a list of objectives for the 1981–82 periods, the group declared:

ACCL does not promote civil demonstrations or civil disobedience, does not rate political candidates, compile “hit lists,” or engage in similar political action. We do not believe in questioning the sincerity of those who disagree, nor in cultivating fear and hatred of alleged “enemies.”68

In this statement of principles, ACCL proudly proclaimed the ways that it differed from the “New Right,” even as its style of activism was increasingly overlooked by a White House

66 For accounts of the controversy surrounding the parental notification requirement, or “squeal rule,” see McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 69–72; Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 99–123. 67 Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 127–8. 68 “American Citizens Concerned for Life: 1981–1982 Campaign for Human Life Objectives,” Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 26, Campaign for Human Life, GFPL.

126 that favoured socially conservative anti-abortion groups. The group became less and less influential in shaping federal policy and ended its efforts at lobbying Washington in the middle of the 1980s, concentrating thereafter on distributing education materials from its base in Minnesota.69

CONCLUSION

The activities of groups associated with the “New Right” helped push the issue of abortion into the limelight, but the types of tactics and rhetoric employed also worked to alienate sections of American society. Many anti-abortionists were aware of the problem posed by this association and some, such as ACCL, explicitly challenged the legitimacy and authority of socially conservative interventions in the abortion debate. ACCL’s critique of the “New Right” can be understood as supporting a kind of activism that was inclusive rather than divisive, but it was also a defense of a movement that embraced groups with competing political and social visions. During the Reagan presidency there was less and less room within the anti-abortion movement for groups like ACCL, and this was in part because of the conflation of the anti-abortion movement with the “New Right.” This chapter has attempted to explore the difficult relationship between anti-abortionists and the social conservatives of the “New Right.” Ultimately, the association of right-to-lifers with the “New Right” required anti-abortionists to be subsumed into the greater conservative project, and this meant that not all opponents of abortion viewed the “New Right” as political saviors. Although the anti-abortion movement was only one of several single-issue groups that the “New Right” claimed to unite, it was an extremely important ally in that it allowed conservatives to depict its enemies as destroyers of sacred human life. Abortion also played a key role in the Pro-Family Coalition promoted by the Right in the early 1980s, which solidified the links between anti-feminists, right-to-lifers, opponents of homosexuality, and members of the “Christian Right.” Of all the groups brought under the umbrella of the “New Right,” anti-abortionists have proved to be some of its longest-standing allies and its most dedicated political actors. If the right-to-life movement of the 1970s did not fit

69 Cassidy, “The Right to Life Movement,” 141.

127 comfortably within this coalition, it suggests that the “New Right” did not simply bring together vast swathes of American society but instead actively shaped or rejected the single- issue groups it wished to work with. Rather than being the result of wide-spread dissatisfaction with the political Left, the emergence of the “New Right” in the late 1970s could well be understood as the result of a cultivated perception of unity that helped paper over the cracks in the Reagan Revolution.

128 CHAPTER 5

“A MOVEMENT IN DISARRAY”1: OPPONENTS OF ABORTION,

THE “NEW RIGHT,” AND PRESIDENT REAGAN’S FIRST TERM

IN OFFICE

On 22 January 1981, one day after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, leaders of the major anti-abortion organizations went to the White House to talk to the President. This meeting, which took place after the annual March for Life was, in Reagan’s own words, an “unprecedented demonstration of support from the White House” for the efforts of anti- abortion activists.2 Writing to Senator Roger Jepsen (R-IA) the next day to tell him about the gathering, Reagan ended by declaring that he felt that “the prospects are good for fulfilling the pledges contained in our Republican platform concerning the protection of innocent human life.”3 Jepsen forwarded this letter to anti-abortion activists, which helped reinforce the perception within the right-to-life movement that the President was a firm supporter of the fight to end legalized abortion. It also fostered the impression that national right-to-life figures had an ear in the White House. In early 1981, most leaders and grassroots activists expected that the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency would herald significant gains in the battle against abortion. While national organizations knew that it would not be possible to outlaw abortion immediately, they assumed that Reagan would support the efforts of the movement and heed any concerns voiced by activists. Furthermore, they expected him to make right-to-life appointments and to generally help foster a political climate that respected the sanctity of human life. Despite these high hopes, the right-to-life movement was confronted with a series of upsets during Reagan’s first term as President. By the time the 1982 congressional

1 Paul Brown, quoted in Leslie Bennetts, “Antiabortion Forces in Disarray Less than a Year After Victories in Election,” New York Times, 22 September 1981, B5. 2 Ronald Reagan to Roger Jepsen, 23 January 1981, Papers of Dee Jepsen, Box 1, Abortion, Folder 4, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter referred to as RRPL). 3 Ibid.

129 elections drew near, anti-abortion forces had suffered a series of disappointments that led many of them to despair both in public and in private over their relationship with Reagan.4 The work of scholars of conservatism such as Kenneth Heineman, Lee Edwards, and William Berman is underpinned by an assumption that the single-issue groups that the “New Right” claimed to unite meshed well with the Reagan-era Republican Party.5 Historians of the anti-abortion movement such as McKeegan have also tended to focus on the right-to-life groups that were linked to the “New Right,” and while this has helped contribute to our understandings of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, it has necessarily meant that little attention has been paid to how the more moderate elements within the movement responded to the intervention of social conservatives.6 Social conservatives shared the concerns of the right-to-life movement with regard to abortion, but this did not mean that the relationship between the two groups was an easy one. While attention has been paid to how the “New Right” came to “discover” right-to-lifers and the effect that this had on the campaign of Ronald Reagan, little attention has been paid to the aftermath of this union. The “New Right” claimed that it heralded a massive shift in terms of electoral politics and the policies of the Republican Party, but there were few instances of meaningful action on socially conservative issues during Reagan’s first term in office. Speeches were made and meetings were held, but the White House did not push for the kind of changes expected of a “pro-life President.” In this chapter, I contribute to historical understanding of this topic by examining in detail two moments when the uneasy nature of the alliance between the anti-abortion forces, the “New Right,” and the Republican Party spilled out into the public domain. I explore the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court and the split over the Hatch amendment and the Helms bill, two moments that prompted the right-to-life movement to critically examine its relationship with the “New Right.” This thesis has argued that the anti-abortion movement in the years after Roe v. Wade prided itself on moderation. Although opposition to abortion united all activists, there was no other overarching philosophical stance that right-to-lifers subscribed to in the 1970s. This

4 For discussions of Reagan as president see Edwards, The Conservative Revolution; Paul Kengor and Peter Schweizer, eds., The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 5 Berman, America’s Right Turn; Edwards, The Conservative Revolution; Heineman, God is a Conservative. 6 McKeegan, Abortion Politics.

130 openness to different social worldviews allowed some flexibility in terms of who was active and who could speak out on behalf of the unborn. Although it was a single-issue movement, there were areas of slippage and nuance that allowed people of different political persuasions and religious and social convictions to work together (although not always in harmony) in opposition to abortion. These conditions, however, were changed by the arrival of the “New Right” on the political scene and by the types of interventions that socially conservative activists made into the abortion debate in the United States. While it is true that many right- to-lifers supported Reagan in his bid for the presidency, the entire movement found itself increasingly associated with the goals and rhetoric of both the Republican Party and the “New Right” after his inauguration. In 1980, Reagan was the only serious contender for the presidency who articulated a position on abortion that was acceptable to right-to-lifers, and he presented himself as an ally of both the cause and the anti-abortion movement. During the campaign, he repeatedly assured both grassroots activists and movement leaders of his commitment to end legalized abortion. In January, Reagan met twice with Gerster, the then head of the NRLC, and promised to “appoint pro-life jurists … in exchange [for] the NRLC’s endorsement.”7 One month later, he wrote to Gray and declared that he hoped “that future Marches for Life will be addressed by a President of the United States who shares the historic respect for life embodied in the Hippocratic oath.”8 This statement was widely understood by anti- abortionists as a veiled promise that he would attend the March for Life if elected President, but this never eventuated. Gerster and Gray had been active in the anti-abortion movement throughout the 1970s, and during the 1980 campaign they were the leaders of two nationally significant right-to-life groups that spoke on behalf of hundreds of thousands of activists. His overtures towards these women thus helped assure the broader movement of his respect for the political power of anti-abortion organizations and of their importance as a single- issue group. Most right-to-lifers assumed that his administration would continue to heed their demands and that he would be active on the abortion issue. The two events discussed helps cast light on the fragile nature of the union that had formed between the movement, the “New Right,” and President Reagan. The nomination of a candidate to the Supreme Court who did not clearly oppose abortion mobilized both

7 Human Events, 29 August 1981, 4–5, as cited in McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 133. 8 Ronald Reagan to Nellie Gray, 7 February 1980, Papers of Dee Jepsen, Box 1, Abortion, Folder 4, RRPL.

131 traditional right-to-lifers and social conservatives against the Reagan administration, and offers fresh insights into the expectations that these two groups held with regard to their new President. The second issue discussed is the fight that pitted the Helms bill against the Hatch amendment, a clash that was ostensibly about how best to outlaw abortion. By exploring this schism I hope to demonstrate that the falling out that occurred was ultimately reflective of the instability of the alliance between right-to-lifers and the “New Right.” The fight was about more than just the specifics of the measures, but was also a means of debating the nature of the movement and the future political face that it would have. Together, these two examples allow me to tease out the dynamics that existed within the movement and to explore the concerns and dilemmas that plagued right-to-lifers during President Reagan’s first term in office.

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION AND THE NOMINATION OF

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR

Today I am having difficulty believing that you meant the words of a letter you sent to National Right to Life Convention on June 18, 1981 … By this appointment, you have betrayed pro-life. Mrs Marie Craven to Ronald Reagan, 7 July 1981.9

In July 1981, history was made when President Reagan announced that he was nominating Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. For the first time, a woman had been selected to serve on the highest bench in the land, and Reagan was heralded by both friend and foe alike for this momentous decision.10 O’Connor was a fifty-one year old native of Arizona, had been a member of the state senate, and was a long-time Republican. She was recommended to Reagan by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and Justice William Rehnquist, and thus had the imprimatur of the godfather of the conservative movement as well as the

9 Marie Craven to Ronald Reagan, 7 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court, Folder 2, RRPL. 10 For a more detailed discussion of the selection of O’Connor see Henry Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 338–44. For a discussion of the Reagan administration’s approach to judicial appointments in general see Sheldon Goldman, Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt through Reagan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 285–345.

132 backing of the most conservative member of the Supreme Court. Although she may well have been the most suitable candidate offered to him, in choosing O’Connor, Reagan was also fulfilling an important promise that he had made during his bid for the presidency. In October 1980, responding to accusations that he “opposed full and equal opportunities for women in America,” Reagan vowed that “one of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman I can possibly find.”11 Although he deplored tokenism, it was clear that Reagan’s selection of O’Connor occurred in part so as to make good on this promise. In the three months before Associate Justice Potter Stewart publicly announced his intention to retire, the White House had time to carefully compile a list of twenty-five candidates, approximately half of whom were women. While Reagan was clearly keen to fulfill his campaign promise, he was also adamant that any candidate needed to share his “political ideological criteria,” and thus the Reagan team searched for a female candidate who had “demonstrable conservative political and judicial views.” As O’Connor emerged as the front runner, the Reagan administration conducted intensive research into her background, and found her to have a history of “mainstream pragmatic Republicanism.”12 On 1 July O’Connor was flown to Washington to be the only potential nominee that “was interviewed personally by the president and his top aides.”13 It was this amicable meeting with Reagan that, in the words of his assistant Michael Deaver, “all but clinched her nomination.”14 When asked about her stance on abortion O’Connor replied that she was “personally opposed” to the procedure, a response that evidently satisfied Reagan. After an interview that lasted approximately an hour, Reagan was confident that O’Connor would make a worthy Supreme Court justice, and he officially announced his choice six days later. As newspaper commentators held forth about the historic significance of Reagan’s nomination, anger and disappointment swept through the anti-abortion movement. For activists, the O’Connor nomination was compelling evidence that the Reagan White House did not care about the right-to-life cause and did not respect the demands of one segment of “the winning coalition.” Although Reagan had committed himself to nominating a woman to

11 “Statement by Governor Ronald Reagan,” 14 October 1980, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court Nomination, Folder 1, RRPL. 12 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 342. 13 Ibid., 338–9. 14 Mark Tushnet, A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 52.

133 the Supreme Court, the 1980 Republican Party Platform had two other key planks with regard to judicial appointment. On a broad note, the platform promised the appointment of judges who “understood” the role of the courts and were not “judicial activists.” The other notable part of the plank was the call for “the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respected traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.” When confronted with the retirement of Stewart, Reagan thus had two very different constituencies to consider—the “New Right” and women’s rights advocates. Although Stewart officially announced his retirement on 18 June, the Reagan administration was notified of his plans in March and Reagan had been informed on 21 April while recovering from the attempt against his life. This advance warning allowed Attorney General William French Smith and White House counsel Fred F. Fielding time to compile an extensive list of nominees, a great number of whom were women.15 As speculation raged in the print media as to whether Reagan would fulfill his campaign promise and appoint the first female Supreme Court justice, anti-abortion activists and “New Right” leaders worked hard to remind the Reagan administration that it had also committed itself to other criteria for judicial selection. On 23 June Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), a leading anti-abortion politician at the federal level, respectfully submitted Judge Howard Markey’s name as a potential Supreme Court nominee. After listing Markey’s many qualifications, Hyde added another inducement by noting:

And need I say, [he] is intellectually committed to the pro-life position which you and I share. He fully meets the requirements as set forth in our Republican Party Platform.16

On 25 June, Nellie Gray sent a telegram that noted her pleasure at the news of a Supreme Court vacancy but that also requested assurance that “any nominee have a positive on record pro-life stance.”17 In a lengthy telegram sent on 2 July, representatives from anti-abortion and “New Right” groups praised Reagan for implementing the specifics of the Republican

15 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 338–9. 16 Henry Hyde to Ronald Reagan, 23 June 1981, WHORM FG 051, #030044, RRPL. 17 Nellie Gray to Ronald Reagan, 25 June 1981, WHORM FG 051, #030119, RRPL [emphasis added].

134 Party Platform and expressed their confidence that he would propose an individual for the Supreme Court who respected family values and the sanctity of human life.18 Right-to-life activists did not seem to doubt that Reagan would fulfill his commitment towards them, for although “New Right” leaders were displeased by the influence of moderate Republicans within the Reagan administration, the anti-abortion movement had little tangible cause for concern prior to the appointment of O’Connor. This equanimity was shattered when leaks to the media indicated that O’Connor was a serious contender for the vacancy. Although it is not clear exactly how the information began to surface, by 1 July the new head of the NRLC, Dr. Jack Willke, was concerned enough to write a letter to the President specifically outlining why the appointment of O’Connor would be “a prolife disaster.” Indeed, the NRLC had already declared O’Connor to be unacceptable as a candidate in a list delivered to the White House on 26 June.19 On 2 July, an article in the Washington Post revealed that O’Connor’s name was at the top of a list of five female candidates under consideration for the Court, and Willke quickly dashed off another letter to Reagan that expanded on the basic charges leveled against her. O’Connor had never had an opportunity to rule on the issue of abortion during her short time serving as an Arizona Appeals Court judge, and thus most of the general opposition towards her was centered on votes that she had made while she was in the Arizona State Senate. The primary reason that anti-abortionists gave for their opposition to O’Connor was that during this time she had allegedly cast votes that were either “pro-abortion” or that had helped to kill measures that had the support of anti-abortionists.20 In addition, she also stood accused of being a feminist, or at least a supporter of feminist causes. In the first letter from Willke listing specific grievances against O’Connor equal weight was given to her 1974 vote regarding a “Human Life Amendment,” the personal testimony of Arizona native Gerster, and O’Connor’s involvement with the state delegation to the International Women’s Year Conference (IWY). Within the context of

18 Indeed, the telegram reads like a veritable “Who’s Who’ list of anti-abortion and social conservative organizations, with 25 groups represented, of whom the most notable are the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, National Pro-Life PAC, Fund for Conservative Majority, National Pro-Family Coalition, Eagle Forum, ALL, The Round Table, LAPAC, and Moral Majority. Interestingly, although the Gun Owners of America and the American Association of Christian Schools also pledged their support, older national groups such as the NRLC, March for Life, ACCL, and the NCCB were not signatories. Telegram to Ronald Reagan, 2 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 21, Supreme Court, Folder 2, RRPL. 19 Jack Willke to Ronald Reagan, 1 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #019837, RRPL. 20 Jack Willke to Ronald Reagan, 3 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court, Folder 4, RRPL.

135 “New Right” concerns about and hostility towards the IWY Conference, this was not a neutral charge to make. For social conservatives, the conference stood as a short hand for all that was wrong with both the Carter administration and second-wave feminism in general.21 In expanding on why her involvement was problematic Willke noted that the majority of states, including Arizona, “sent delegations composed almost exclusively of people who were pro-abortion, pro-ERA, and pro-lesbian.” In charging O’Connor with keynoting a preliminary state meeting for the IWY Conference Willke indicated that the NRLC’s concerns about O’Connor went beyond her stance on abortion. If O’Connor had supported an event that had such “anti-family” goals she could not possibly be the kind of nominee intended by the Republican Party Platform when it called for justices who respected “traditional family values.” 22 As further proof of O’Connor’s “feminist” leanings, another important accusation surfaced against her in the days prior to the official announcement of her nomination. Gerster claimed that O’Connor had been an early supporter of the ERA. Interestingly, she specified that this championing of the ERA alienated pro-family advocates rather than explicitly explaining why support for the ERA was problematic for right-to-lifers.23 Her choice of wording here is telling. Gerster did not consider these phrases to be interchangeable, calling later in her letter for a judicial candidate who was both opposed to abortion and who had a pro-family worldview. Although conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly began to link the ERA with liberalized abortion laws in the late 1970s, for many anti-abortion leaders there was not a clear connection between the amendment and the issue of abortion. When Gerster raised O’Connor’s support for the ERA as a negative trait, she was linking opposition to abortion to the broader backlash against feminism. Indeed, by

21 In a letter to members of the Eagle Forum Phyllis Schlafly, the leading anti-feminist of the 1970s and 1980s, declared that some of the goals second-wave feminists wanted to advance at the IWY Conference included ratification of the ERA, government-funded abortion, “pro-lesbian privileges including teaching and adopting children, Federal child-care to replace mother-care, reverse discrimination to put women in jobs in place of men … [to] dismantle national defense, abolish veterans preference, and introduce wages for housewives (so the tax collector can get two bites out of the same income).” Eagle Forum letter, October 1977. 22 Jack Willke to Ronald Reagan, 1 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #019837, RRPL. A letter sent at the same time also warned Reagan that O’Connor was “active in the liberal, pro-ERA International Women’s Year.” Interestingly, the author of the letter did not tie her role with the IWY Conference to her alleged support for abortion rights, which indicates that for many social conservatives, support for the IWY Convention was inherently problematic even without an overt link to the issue of abortion. See Representative Mark Siljander to President Reagan, 2 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #030839, RRPL. 23 Dr. Carolyn Gerster to President Reagan, received 6 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court Nomination, Folder 5, RRPL.

136 1981, as Schlafly jubilantly counted down the days until the defeat of the ERA, early support for the amendment was understood by many social conservatives as being synonymous with opposition to traditional values. Furthering this perspective, Reagan himself was quite clear that while he espoused “equal rights for women [he did] not support the Equal Rights Amendment.”24 Although he claimed that his opposition was linked to fears about federalism rather than to the idea of female equality, his rejection of the ERA was an important symbolic victory for both Schlafly and the “New Right,” as it forced the Republican Party to heed the demands of social conservatives.25 Gerster’s initial concerns about O’Connor and the ERA were quickly taken up by other anti-abortion and “New Right” groups. The Council for National Policy (CNP) claimed in a confidential letter that she was not just a supporter of the ERA, but had in fact been the main sponsor of the amendment when it was introduced in Arizona. Indeed, although the CNP offered seven key reasons to oppose O’Connor, it provided detailed examples of her past record only when discussing her votes on abortion and the ERA.26 Similarly, a telegram from Moral Majority, signed by the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Ronald Godwin, informed Reagan that they found it “incredible that the White House would nominate a person who was pro-abortion before ‘Roe versus Wade’ and who spoke at the I.W.Y. Rally in Phoenix on behalf of ERA and abortion.”27 These social conservatives were explicitly charging O’Connor with being a supporter of the women’s liberation movement, which effectively meant that she was an unacceptable nominee on two counts. The timing of Reagan’s announcement puzzled and angered many anti-abortion activists. When rumours first began circulating that O’Connor was a strong contender for the Supreme Court the White House received letters, telegrams, and telephone calls warning that she was not an advocate of the values that Reagan espoused. Prior to the official

24 Mary Quint to Elizabeth Dole, 18 September 1981, Papers of Mary Quint, Box 1, Equal Rights Amendment, RRPL. 25 The 1980 Republican Party platform perfectly encapsulated the new meaning of the ERA. In 1940 Republicans were the first party to support ratification of the amendment and continued to do so in increasingly strong language until the 1980 campaign, when a bitterly fought series of Platform meetings led to the removal of the plank. 26 Louis (Woody) Jenkins to Board of Governors of Council for National Policy, 8 July 1981, Papers of William H. Rusher, Box 148, Council for National Policy—Correspondence and Memoranda, 1981, LC. 27 Moral Majority to Edwin Meese, 2 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #032502, RRPL. Interestingly, Falwell and Godwin accused O’Connor of having a “long public record supporting ERA, abortion and other such related issues,” a choice of phrasing that hints that O’Connor had a long history of supporting the goals of women’s liberationists.

137 nomination most of the correspondence seems to assume that Reagan and his aides simply had not been informed about O’Connor’s record. While the writers of these letters were willing to give Reagan the benefit of the doubt, they also included strongly-worded warnings about how such an appointment would be received by anti-abortion activists. In Willke’s 3 July letter, he bluntly informed Reagan that the nomination of O’Connor “would produce a firestorm reaction across the nation.”28 For Willke, the selection of such a candidate was tantamount to a negation both of the Republican Party Platform and of Reagan’s own oft- stated opposition to abortion, and he told the White House this in no uncertain terms. As the head of the oldest and most influential anti-abortion organization, Willke would have expected his words to carry weight with a President who proudly proclaimed his opposition to abortion, but as the days passed he, and many other anti-abortion activists, began to interpret the silence from the White House as confirmation of their worst fears. On 6 July, Willke telephoned the White House to inform them that the NRLC was getting ready to issue a press release that might embarrass the President, because the group had heard from a variety of sources that the announcement of Reagan’s choice was imminent. However, Willke still obviously believed that the nomination could be averted if only Reagan were provided with sufficient proof as to O’Connor’s past support for abortion rights, for he ended his letter by asking to speak to or see counselor Edwin Meese within the next twenty- four hours.29 In the days prior to the official announcement, the White House received phone calls and letters opposing O’Connor from anti-abortion representatives in Congress, including Senator Donald Nickles (R-OK), Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), Senator Steven Symms (R- ID), Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), and Representative Mark Siljander (R-MI).30 Of these, Helms and Hyde had both authored right-to-life legislation and were generally the most prominent anti-abortion activists within Congress.31 The leading right-to-life theologian Dr. Harold O. J. Brown of the Christian Action Council (CAC), telephoned the

28 Jack Willke to President Reagan, 3 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court, Folder 4, RRPL. 29 Marilee Melvin to Edwin Meese, 6 July 1981, Papers of Edwin Meese, Box 3, Appointments—Supreme Court—O’Connor, Folder 2, RRPL. 30 Max Friedersdorf to Edwin Meese, 6 July 1981, Papers of Edwin R. Meese, Box 3, Appointments—Supreme Court—O’Connor, Folder 2, RRPL; Representative Mark Siljander to President Reagan, 2 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #030839, RRPL. 31 In a White House memo sent after the official announcement Henry Hyde was described by an administration aide as “Mr Anti-Abortion in the House.” Max Friedersdorf to President Reagan, 18 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #019961, RRPL.

138 Reagan administration to warn about the effect the O’Connor nomination would have on the evangelical community, and Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia sent the Attorney General information on O’Connor’s abortion record. By 7 July, she had been condemned by both the past and current leaders of the NRLC, by the president of the Moral Majority, by the founder of the CAC, and by five right-to-life figures within the Senate and the House. In addition, the White House had received numerous letters from both the grassroots and from national organizations reminding President Reagan of his commitment to appoint judges who respected traditional values and who were opposed to abortion. Socially conservative and right-to-life leaders felt that they had clearly stated their position, and thus when O’Connor was announced as Reagan’s choice they interpreted this as an explicit rejection of both their political value and of the issues that had helped mobilize them as a new constituency. From the available records, it seems clear that key members of the Reagan administration were well aware of the kind of reaction O’Connor would provoke amongst social conservatives and anti-abortionists. In a 6 July memo regarding the game plan for making the announcement, White House counsel Fielding advised James Baker, Reagan’s Chief of Staff, that the initial leaks had “probably surfaced all potential problems (pro-lifers, etc.)”32 In another 6 July memo, Michael Uhlmann noted the number of calls he had been fielding from anti-abortionists, and then went on to remind Meese that whatever one might think of their ideas about abortion and the federal courts, “the intensity of right-to-lifers on the issue of judicial power should not be underestimated.”33 Two of the three most senior advisers to President Reagan were clearly warned prior to the announcement of both the “special significance that right-to-lifers attach[ed] to Supreme Court nominations” and of O’Connor’s problematic record.34 Both in private and in public, “New Right” groups explicitly linked the selection of O’Connor to their lack of influence within the White House. On 8 July, CNP sent a confidential memo to its board of governors explaining why they must oppose her nomination. Despite acknowledging that there was only a limited chance of defeating

32 Fred Fielding to James A. Baker III, 6 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court Nomination, Folder 1, RRPL. 33 Michael Uhlmann to Edwin Meese, 6 July 1981, Papers of Edwin Meese, Box 3, Appointments—Supreme Court—O’Connor, Folder 1, RRPL. 34 Ibid.

139 O’Connor, the memo called on members of the Right to throw their considerable energies into protesting against her appointment because “there is strong evidence that the White House is not taking conservatives seriously and that key White House advisors believe they can run over conservative leaders without political loss.”35 The August edition of Conservative Digest quoted a letter written by Gray after the nomination that warned that Reagan that, “pro-lifers find it offensive that we must picket the White House to bring your attention to this matter.”36 Indeed, the entire August edition of Conservative Digest was devoted to the O’Connor nomination, and time and again the selection of O’Connor was explained as reflecting White House attitudes towards “New Right” and anti-abortion leaders. If national figures felt as though they were not being taken seriously, grassroots activists felt personally betrayed. In a letter that prompted a personal response from the President, Mrs Marie Craven, a former Democrat who worked in the 1980 election for Reagan, told him that in choosing O’Connor she knew “that the power of your office has taken precidence [sic] over your party platform and your campaign promises.”37 Abortion dominated the reporting of the O’Connor nomination from the moment she was officially announced. In the New York Times transcript of remarks made by Reagan, the only questions asked about the candidate related to her position on abortion and whether or not the right-to-life people would oppose the selection.38 The newspaper accounts the next day ran the negative comments of anti-abortion leaders such as Paul Brown and Peter Gemma, both of whom had been signatories of the 2 July telegram to the President that expressed delight about his opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice. Gemma, the executive director of National Pro Life Political Action Committee (NPLPAC), forcefully declared that the nomination was an insult and that anti-abortion opposition to O’Connor was a way of sending a message to the President that “his next court appointment had better be pro-life.”39 Although social conservatives were outraged at the selection of O’Connor, Barry Goldwater, doyen of the Right prior to Reagan’s election, had been an early supporter of

35 Louis (Woody) Jenkins to Board of Governors of Council for National Policy, 8 July 1981, Papers of William H. Rusher, Box 148, Council for National Policy—Correspondence and Memoranda, 1981, LC. 36 “Conservatives Criticize Choice,” Conservative Digest 7, no. 8 (August 1981), 9, BMS 479/1, Folder 4, Papers of George Hunston Williams, A-HDL. 37 Marie Craven to Ronald Reagan, 7 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court, Folder 2, RRPL. 38 “Transcript of Remarks by Reagan and Nominee to High Court,” New York Times, 8 July 1981, A12. 39 Francis Clines, “Baker Vows Support for Nominee,” New York Times, 8 July 1981, A12.

140 her.40 This breach within the conservative movement spilled out into the press when Goldwater tersely declared that “every good Christian ought to kick [Jerry] Falwell right in the ass,” a comment made after Moral Majority leader Falwell allegedly questioned the nomination.41 As further indication of the split, conservative newspaper Human Events noted with outrage that Goldwater reported declared that, “this abortion issue has gotten to be the biggest humbug issue in the United States … Abortion is not a conservative issue. ERA is not a conservative issue.”42 While this statement is of questionable provenance, the context in which it was published is indicative of how angry many social conservatives were with Goldwater. In the 1960s, Human Events had been a key supporter of Goldwater’s bid for the Presidency, and yet now it dismissed his defense of O’Connor by declaring that he had “all but tuned out of relevant conservative politics for many years now.”43 In 1981, long-standing allies now considered Goldwater to be out of touch for he did not support the social issues that increasingly dominated the Right.44 Unfortunately for these new conservatives, the alliance that had proved to be so successful during the 1980 presidential campaign did not translate very well when it came to the actual shaping of domestic policy. Although the figure of O’Connor had provided the catalyst for this outpouring of opposition, the underlying problem was the manner in which the Reagan administration had gone about choosing Stewart’s replacement. Anti-abortion and “New Right” leaders felt that this was an appointment that they should have been

40 In mid-June Goldwater co-signed a letter with Representative John Rhodes (R-AZ) that recommended O’Connor as a candidate, and that declared that she was an individual “with the highest moral and ethical values.” Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes to President Reagan, 23 June 1981, WHORM FG 051, #029858, RRPL. 41 Goldwater’s choice of phrasing was simply a rewording of Falwell’s original exhortation that “every good Christian ought to express concern over O’Connor’s nomination.” See Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 340–1. Intriguingly, Falwell later claimed in an interview that, at the personal behest of President Reagan, he never made any public statements regarding the O’Connor nomination, and that Moral Majority never worked against the nomination. See Martin, With God On Our Side, 228–9. 42 This quote is not referred to in the major news releases for this period but is mentioned in two conservative publications. See “High Court Nominee Disturbs Conservatives,” Human Events, 18 July 1981, 1, 8 Papers of William H. Rusher, Box 148, Council for National Policy—Correspondence and Memoranda, 1981, LC; “O’Connor Critics ‘Fascists’—Goldwater,” Conservative Digest 7, no. 8 (August 1981), 23, Papers of George Hunston Williams papers, BMS 479/1, Folder 4, A-HDL. 43 Human Events was founded in 1944 by anti-interventionists as a forum for conservative debates on foreign policy, and it quickly established itself as a “major right-wing newspaper” that supported Cold War foreign policy. Diamond, Roads to Dominion, 25. In its heyday it was a “hard-edged” “mass-circulation conservative newspaper” that largely spoke to “the anti-Communist grassroots.” Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 22. 44 For a further discussion of Goldwater’s role in the history of post-World War II conservatism see Brennan, “Winning the War/Losing the Battle”; Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy; Edwards, The Conservative Revolution; McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism.

141 explicitly consulted about. In his 3 July letter to Reagan, Willke asked that he or another member of the NRLC be allowed to review names being considered before the administration reached its final states of deliberation. He then declared that “such an almost catastrophe as this could easily have been prevented if this opportunity had been provided.”45 In a telephone call to the White House made towards the end of the month fundamentalist preacher James Robison expressed similar sentiments, noting that one way to redeem the White House in the eyes of social conservatives would be to allow them to speak directly to the President and to hear in his own words why he selected O’Connor.46 Despite the disappointment and public accusations of betrayal that came from social conservatives and anti-abortionists, Reagan and his aides did a poor job of assuaging their fears. In an attempt to rebut some of the specific charges concerning O’Connor’s voting record, the White House released a Justice Department memorandum composed by Kenneth Starr that detailed her votes in the Arizona legislature and rebutted many of the claims made by anti-abortionists. This attempt to appease the right-to-life movement was not particularly successful, in part because anti-abortionists felt that there were several inaccurate statements or deliberate misrepresentations of events.47 In addition to the Starr memorandum, the President also dictated a personal response to Mrs Marie Craven of Chicago. Reagan attempted to deflect criticism of the selection by declaring that most of the attacks on O’Connor had come from an Arizona right-to-life leader who he had discovered had “a record of being vindictive.”48 This thinly veiled (and widely circulated) attack on Gerster served to further alienate anti-abortion leaders like Willke, for it seemed to be a direct repudiation of Gerster’s assistance and support for Reagan during the 1980 campaign while she was president of the NRLC. Despite Gerster’s requests to meet with Reagan

45 Jack Willke to President Reagan, 3 July 1981, Papers of Fred F. Fielding, Box 18, Supreme Court, Folder 4, RRPL. 46 James Robison was an evangelical Baptist preacher from Dallas who started his Christian television program at the behest of Dr. Billy Graham. His weekly program James Robison: Man with a Message proved immensely popular, and by the late 1970s he, along with more well-known televangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, were extremely influential amongst Christian conservatives. For a discussion of his telephone call to the White House see Ed Thomas to Edwin Meese, 27 July 1981, Papers of Edwin Meese, Box 3, Appointments—Supreme Court —O’Connor, Folder 1, RRPL. 47 “The Kenneth Starr Memorandum—And The Important Data It Omitted,” Conservative Digest 7, no. 8 (August 1981), 12–13, Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 479/1, Folder 4, A-HDL. 48 President Reagan to Mrs Craven, 3 August 1981, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 8, [Pro-Life/Continued— #2], Folder 1, RRPL.

142 during this fraught time, the President refused because of “his schedule.”49 At the heart of the White House response to anti-abortion protests was an assumption that the personal assurances of the President should be enough. Rather than acknowledging that O’Connor did not have a clear record, the administration emphasized that Reagan was “fully satisfied” with O’Connor’s position. While these assurances may have sufficed for some, they did not quiet those who felt it would have been better to have a candidate who had a clear ideological or philosophical position with regard to the issues at stake. The National Right to Life News summed up anti-abortion sentiment by declaring that even if O’Connor really was opposed to abortion, only President Reagan could really know why “a prolife president would choose such [an] ambiguous, lukewarm prolifer as his first selection to the court.”50 Although anti-abortionists and members of the “New Right” privately acknowledged that they had little to no chance of defeating O’Connor, this did not stop them from working actively against her nomination. Essentially they were ensuring that the issue was kept in the public eye, and they did this by holding rallies, campaigning and picketing against O’Connor, and producing newsletters instructing people how to protest about her. “New Right” financier Viguerie began issuing a special bulletin titled The O’Connor Report (a reference to his long-running The Right Report) that not only gave grassroots activists advice as to how to ensure that they were represented in the media but that also accused O’Connor of actively working “to clear the way for women in combat,” another indication of her alleged “feminism.”51 Prominent anti-abortion leaders also went to Washington for the confirmation hearings, even though most of them realized that the nomination was practically a fait accompli. Gray organized anti-abortion pickets of the Senate and the White House on the opening day of the hearings, and she publicized these protests in The O’Connor Report. Gerster and Willke testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of the NRLC, not because they seriously thought they might persuade some Senators to vote

49 Tricia Rodgers to Anne Higgins, as cited in Donald Critchlow, “Mobilizing Women: The ‘Social Issues,’” in The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and its Consequences, eds. W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham (Kansas: Kansas University Press, 2003), 308. 50 “Walking Softly,” National Right to Life News 8, no. 18 (28 September 1981), 8, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL. 51 See The O’Connor Report undated, The O’Connor Report August 1981, The O’Connor Report September 1981, all found in Papers of George Hunston Williams, BMS 479/1, Folder 4, A-HDL.

143 against O’Connor but because, “whatever else happened, the confirmation hearings gave [them] a national forum for two hours to champion the rights of the unborn.”52 In the end, all these activities by anti-abortionists and social conservatives came to naught. O’Connor was confirmed 99–0 by the Senate. Although she did not indicate her position on Roe v. Wade except to say that she personally found abortion repugnant, anti- abortion stalwarts such as Helms and Hyde voted with the majority to send O’Connor to the highest court in the country. Indeed, it was clear to members of the Reagan administration that the anti-abortion senators would fall into line a month before the hearings began. Less than two weeks after the nomination Reagan was presented with a memorandum that detailed Hyde’s meeting with officials at the Justice Department. Hyde informed the Department that he thought the protests against O’Connor were damaging to anti-abortion groups and then “agreed to call on the eight ‘problem’ Senators with the following line: Mrs. O’Connor is going on the Court, she cannot be defeated, so why make an enemy.”53 In the opinion of Sheldon Goldman, Reagan also ensured that he provided “cover” for those Republicans who needed to defend their actions to anti-abortionists. On 15 September 1981, Reagan wrote to one senator to assure him that:

Support for the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O’Connor … will not in any way be inconsistent with the [anti-abortion] commitments both of us made during our successful campaigns in 1980 … I am satisfied with her views on judicial philosophy and with her position on the right-to-life issue.54

Evidently the courtesy calls from the White House, the reassuring letters, and the pressures exerted by Hyde were effective. Despite the fact that O’Connor refused to answer any questions about how she might rule on the abortion issue, only Jeremiah Denton abstained from voting, and he did so because he was not assured of her position.55 The other anti- abortionists in the Senate instead provided lengthy statements justifying their positions, and they repeatedly linked their votes to their faith in Reagan. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)

52 Jack Willke, “So Now What?” National Right to Life News 8, no. 18 (28 September 1981), 1, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL. 53 Max Friedersdorf to President Reagan, 18 July 1981, WHORM FG 051, #019961, RRPL. 54 Ronald Reagan to Alfonse D’Amato, 15 September 1981, WHORM FG 51, #033433, RRPL, as cited in Goldman, Picking Federal Judges, 316. 55 New York Times, 12 September 1981, 6, as cited in McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 133.

144 noted that he had personally spoken to Reagan about the nomination the week before the vote, and that he was satisfied “in his own mind that the President feels as I do on the subject of abortion.” He went on to explain that he only mentioned this meeting in the hope that he “might satisfy some doubts [that] the leaders of the prolife forces in this country may have that the President is not honoring statements he made in the election.”56 Although no new information had come to light on O’Connor’s record, these Senators, several of whom had personally opposed her nomination in early July, fell into line behind the President. During her time on the bench, O’Connor’s role was that of an “independent, moderately conservative centrist.”57 In her first few years she was often aligned with Chief Justice Burger and Associate Justice William Rehnquist, but this did not preclude her from casting votes with the more liberal members of the court. For right-to-lifers, the most important early test of her convictions came in her decision in City of Akron v. Akron Reproductive Health, Inc. 462 U.S. 416 (1983). O’Connor authored the dissenting opinion, in which she claimed that the trimester framework established in Roe v. Wade was on a “collision course with itself.” When abortion came before the court again, her vote proved to be the decisive factor in determining whether legalized abortion remained the law of the land, and she ultimately proved that the fears of right-to-lifers about her nomination had some merit. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services Services 492 U.S. 490 (1989) she refused to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade because she believed that doing so would violate judicial restraint. For this, she earned a scathing attack from another Reagan appointee, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who declared that her views could not “be taken seriously.” The vehemence of his reaction did not persuade O’Connor to change her position, and in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey 505 U.S. 833 (1992) she formed a plurality with Associate Justices David Souter and Anthony Kennedy. They upheld the basic right to legalized

56 “Chronology of a Confirmation,” National Right to Life News 8, no. 18 (28 September 1981), 11, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL. Grassley spoke to Reagan before casting his vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and this annoyed other Senators who wished to speak to Reagan before they voted on O’Connor. Reagan made at least one courtesy call prior to the general Senate vote to calm these ruffled feathers, and he was prompted to do this by his advisors who felt that “a unanimous vote would be beneficial to [him] politically.” See Memo from Edwin Meese, 16 September 1981, Papers of Edwin Meese, Box 3, Appointments—Supreme Court—O’Connor, Folder 2, RRPL. 57 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 346.

145 abortion and declared that “liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.”58 Although legalized abortion remained the law of the land, the Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey decision allowed earlier and more intense regulation of abortion by the State, and O’Connor introduced the idea that proposed measures must be assessed for whether they placed an “undue burden” on the woman. This was the last major abortion case that O’Connor ruled on, but during her remaining time on the bench she was often an important swing vote on controversial matters. She retired in January 2006. The O’Connor nomination and its effect on the right-to-life movement offer telling insights into the inherent instability of the new alliance between single-issue groups and the conservative movement. Leaders of the “New Right” such as Weyrich and Viguerie understood the selection of O’Connor as reflective of their lack of status within the Reagan administration. They were disappointed but not necessarily surprised at what had happened, and since they represented a variety of concerns it was easier for them to overcome their anger when other opportunities for political influence were offered. In contrast, anti- abortionists at both the national and grassroots level tended to interpret the selection of O’Connor as a distressing example of “politics in action.” Reagan’s choice effectively declared at a federal level that the abortion issue was no more or less important than his need to satisfy the moderate wing of the Republican Party or to appease feminist interest groups. For individuals like Marie Craven, what was upsetting about the selection of O’Connor was that someone would play politics with an issue as serious as abortion. Despite these different expectations, the two social groups shared a sense of misgiving about their treatment at the hands of the Reagan administration. This could have led anti-abortionists and social conservatives to share a sense of purpose and conviction that helped them present a unified front to the White House that brooked no compromise. Instead, the right-to-life cause suffered a setback that had ramifications that were far more damaging to the health of the movement than the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor.

58 See “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania et al. v. Robert P. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania, 505 U.S. 833 (1992),” in Hull, Hoffer, and Hoffer, eds., The Abortion Rights Controversy in America, 250–65.

146 HATCH, HELMS, AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE

Political reality has come home to the prolife movement, and it has been totally unpleasant. Paul Brown, September 1981.59

The nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court came as a shock to anti- abortionists, but in many ways it would prove a minor setback when compared with the enmity and suspicion that plagued the movement in the year that followed. For the first time since 1973, right-to-lifers seemed to have a genuine opportunity to outlaw abortion, and yet 1981 and 1982 were marked by public bickering while Reagan stood by and waited for the movement to overcome its differences. Throughout the 1970s, right-to-lifers believed that the federal government offered the most effective means of ending legalized abortion. Although they strongly wanted the appointment of Supreme Court jurists who opposed Roe v. Wade, an amendment to the constitution was their primary goal. Indeed, within less than one year after the legalization of abortion, the board of the NRLC declared that it saw its first priority as “the development and implementation of a political campaign to effect passage of a Human Life constitutional Amendment.”60 Anti-abortion members of Congress certainly expended a great deal of energy on this approach, for within a year of the Supreme Court’s decision, eighteen right- to-life amendments came to the floor in Congress. Initially, these efforts met with some success. Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) held sixteen days of hearings on a proposed amendment in 1974 and 1975, but the amendment did not have the votes to be reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hearings held in the House of Representatives in 1976 ended with a similar result. Although there was media coverage of the testimony at the hearings, which helped expand the profile of the movement, no concrete gains were made.61 This setback did not reduce right-to-life enthusiasm for amending the constitution, however, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s an amendment was proposed in nearly every Congressional

59 Paul Brown, quoted in Bennetts, “Antiabortion Forces in Disarray Less than a Year After Victories in Election,” New York Times, 22 September 1981, B5. 60 Carolyn Gerster, as quoted in Cassidy, “The Right to Life Movement,” 144. 61 For examples of the coverage afforded to the hearings see “4 Cardinals Urge U.S. Abortion Ban; But They Refuse to Endorse Amendment by Buckley,” New York Times, 8 March 1974, 40; Linda Charlton, “Start of Life Debated at Abortion Hearing; Strident Lobbying,” New York Times, 21 May 1974, 87.

147 session. It was not until 1981, however, that a measure moved beyond even subcommittee review. 62 The two main constitutional approaches pursued by anti-abortionists can be roughly categorized as either “States’ Rights Amendments” (also known as “Federalism Amendments”) or “Human Life Amendments.” A “States’ Rights Amendment” essentially returned the issue of whether or not abortion should be illegal to the state legislatures, and thus was generally not very popular among anti-abortionists. Most right-to-lifers preferred “Human Life Amendments,” which were generally phrased to extend legal definitions of personhood so as to include fetal life. The amendment repeatedly introduced by Senator James Buckley (C-NY) was typical of this approach, for it declared simply that the term person applied “to all human beings, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their biological development, irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency.” While this suggestion was also problematic since right-to-lifers never fully resolved whether “development” referred to “fertilization” or “implantation,” Buckley’s amendment exemplified the basic goals of the movement.63 The other language that was commonly used in “Human Life Amendments” declared that the unborn were to be considered “persons” under the existing language of the Constitution, which thus afforded them protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. In addition to the internal confusion about whether a “Human Life Amendment” or a “States’ Rights Amendment” should be pursued, anti-abortionists also struggled with those instances when an abortion should be legally justifiable. This conflict over exceptions proved to be as divisive for the movement after Roe v. Wade as it had been for groups like AUL that had fought over the issue prior to the Supreme Court’s decision. Political advisors in Congress emphasized that right-to-lifers needed to respond to the realities of the day and consider instances when abortion would be permitted. Thus, some proposed amendments were willing to accept that abortion should be legal when a woman’s life was endangered if she continued with her pregnancy. Other measures included this basic scenario but also allowed abortions for instances where the fetus was abnormal, or where the woman had

62 For further details on anti-abortion activity with regards to a constitutional amendment see Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics, 109–110; Neal Devins, Shaping Constitutional Values: Elected Government, the Supreme Court, and the Abortion Debate (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996), 86; Tribe, Abortion, 144–5. 63 This was quite a significant debate, for if life were considered to begin at fertilization such an amendment would effectively outlaw contraceptive devices such as the pill and the IUD. Paige, The Right to Lifers, 119.

148 fallen pregnant as a result of rape or incest. While these concessions might seem relatively minor, they provoked outrage among absolutists, who staunchly argued that abortion was never morally permissible. Indeed, at the 1974 Senate hearings four Catholic cardinals testified to that effect. This lack of agreement about both the wording of a potential amendment and the approach it should take would contribute greatly to the schism that occurred over the legislation introduced by Hatch and Helms. Although a vast array of right-to-life amendments were offered to Congress after Roe v. Wade, anti-abortionists simply did not have the numbers to ensure these proposals even managed to be voted out of subcommittee. Thus, in the mid-1970s, many right-to-lifers became temporarily interested in working towards a constitutional convention, also referred to as a “Con Con.” This approach required three quarters of the state legislatures to pass bills calling for a convention, and once the convention was called right-to-lifers would introduce an amendment that ended legalized abortion. The Senate, the House of Representatives, and the states were still required to ratify the proposed amendment, but a “Con Con” seemed to allow right-to-lifers to bypass the political maneuverings of Congress and instead focus their energies and expertise on state legislatures. Interestingly, the quest for a “Con Con” emerged during Ellen McCormack’s campaign in the 1976 presidential election, and Dan Buckley, the brains behind the approach, relied heavily on the right-to-life networks that were supporting her. Thus, in the public mind, the two efforts were often linked. Anti-abortionists had several quick victories pursuing this approach, but these positive responses belied the incredible difficulty of getting a “Con Con” called. Thirty-four state legislatures needed to pass resolutions calling for the convention, and while right-to- lifers had positive relationships with some state governments this process still required an incredible amount of work. According to Paige, the drive for a “Con Con” was occasionally hampered because it was confused with a similar effort to ensure a balanced budget. An additional obstacle was that there were numerous opponents who feared that a “Con Con” would “open the way to abrogation of controversial parts of the Bill of Rights.”64 Despite these many attempts to force Congress to end legalized abortion, the most successful piece of anti-abortion legislation that was enacted in the 1970s was the attachment of the Hyde amendment to the HEW appropriations bill. While this limited the effect of Roe v. Wade, it was not the outright ban on abortion that right-to-lifers longed for. The fortunes

64 Ibid., 114.

149 of the anti-abortion movement finally seemed to have changed, however, after the 1980 elections. Finally, activists faced favourable conditions at a federal level, with a President in the White House who was clear in his opposition to legalized abortion and a new Republican majority in the Senate. Right-to-lifers thus believed that they had a serious chance to end legalized abortion, and they aggressively pursued the issue in both houses of Congress. Unfortunately, in 1981 the movement had not one but two measures being championed in the nation’s capital. Known informally as the Helms bill and the Hatch amendment, these two pieces of legislation prompted intense and at times acrimonious exchanges between supposed allies of the right to life. In early 1981, Jesse Helms introduced two major pieces of anti-abortion legislation, one of which was an amendment (S. J. Res 19) and one of which was a statute (S. 158).65 The amendment, often referred to as the “paramount amendment” because of its wording, was the most forceful of the legislative attempts to ban abortion in the ninety-seventh Congress, but it was not the approach that was given the most attention by either Helms or the anti- abortion movement. Social conservatives were well aware of the inherent difficulties in amending the constitution, for they were just successfully coming to the end of their own battle to defeat the ERA. Despite the zealous enthusiasm of grassroots activists, most anti- abortionists in Congress were forced to confront the fact that their side did not have the two-thirds majority needed. Furthermore, even when an amendment had enough support at the federal level to be voted out of Congress, it took only a handful of opposing states to derail the ratification process. To counter these obstacles, on 19 January, Helms introduced a statute that declared that a “fetus was a human being from the moment of conception,” a statement that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade. As Helms was offering a bill and not an amendment, the legislation required only a simple majority vote. Helms’ supporters thus argued that it stood a genuine chance of being passed in both houses. Although Helms’ bill ostensibly offered an easier approach to banning abortion, it was viewed as problematic by some segments of the right-to-life movement and by legal scholars more generally. His approach, also known as the “Human Life Bill,” was one of a number of measures referred to more generally as “court-stripping bills.” The overall

65 For the history of congressional approaches to abortion and more specific legal interpretations of the Helms bill and the Hatch amendment see Devins, Shaping Constitutional Values; Edward Keynes, The Courts vs. Congress: Prayer, Busing, and Abortion (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).

150 intention of these pieces of legislation was to remove a controversial area from the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. These bills tended to focus on the issues of abortion, busing, and school prayer, issues that mobilized key segments of the “New Right” and that for many conservatives symbolized all that was wrong with the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren and his successor Chief Justice Warren Burger.66 These attempts to amend the constitution by legislation were generally met with condemnation from members of the legal community, even from scholars such as Robert Bork who generally agreed with conservative criticisms of the Supreme Court.67 David Brink, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), went so far as to declare that such measures might lead to “a possible constitutional crisis that could prove the most serious since our great Civil War.”68 Although Attorney General William Smith neither endorsed nor condemned the court- stripping bills, he did enter into the fray in October 1981 by criticizing the Federal courts for their “constitutionally dubious and unwise intrusions on the legislative domain.”69 This attack was widely understood as endorsing the motivation, if not explicitly the means, of members of Congress like Helms. Throughout the early part of 1981, a public furor thus existed not just over the content of Helms’ bill but also over the approach itself. While this did not trouble members of the “New Right,” moderates opposed to abortion were increasingly perturbed by this attempt to bypass the checks and balances of the constitution. As right-to-life stalwart Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) pointed out:

Congress is doing far more in this bill than simply stating Congressional findings of fact and attempting to call these to the attention of the Court … It is

66 This is not to imply that the “New Right” conflated the two courts or regarded the Burger court as merely continuing the Warren agenda. The Warren court was disliked by conservatives primarily because of its judgments in cases relating to prayer in school, segregation, and criminal rights. The Right generally felt that the Burger Court had a better record on matters relating to law and order, but was equally disappointing for its rulings on the social issues. When members of the “New Right” criticized the Supreme Court, however, they primarily focused on the judicial activism that they felt had been exercised under both Warren and Burger, a charge echoed by President Reagan when he promised to nominate only those who had a proper understanding of the court’s role. 67 Stuart Taylor, “The Bar Weighs In as a Friend of Courts,” New York Times, 16 August 1981, E7. For a discussion of the later defeat of Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court see Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 356-8. 68 For condemning these court-stripping measures the American Bar Association earned the ire of Viguerie, who retaliated by adding them to Conservative Digest’s list of leftist groups, see McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 43. For quote, see Stuart Taylor, “Bar Leaders Fear Crisis Over Curbs on Courts,” New York Times, 12 November 1981, A24. 69 Stuart Taylor, “Attorney General Outlines Campaign to Rein in Courts,” New York Times, 20 October 1981, A1.

151 attempting to enact a law in the face of an absolutely contrary Supreme Court decision.70

In September 1981, after months of public debate about the legality of court-stripping bills, Hatch proposed an anti-abortion measure of his own. S. J. Res 110 was a constitutional amendment that, if enacted, would have returned authority over abortion to Congress and to the state legislatures. This approach was ultimately a concession to the political realities that limited the actions of the right-to-life movement. While its supporters recognized that the final goal would eventually be to pass an amendment completely outlawing abortion, passage of the more moderate “human life federalism amendment” would help limit abortion by allowing Congress and the states to rule on the issue. As an MCCL pamphlet explained, “slavery was abolished through one amendment and citizenship granted in another.”71 Interestingly, even Hatch’s approach was controversial amongst legal scholars, for S. J. Res 110 reversed the traditional logic that afforded Congress the supreme power to legislate. If the anti-abortion measures introduced by Congress were less restrictive than those passed in individual states, the states’ laws would be upheld. Hatch’s amendment was designed to appeal to those legislators who were not already allied with the right-to-life movement. It did not discuss the morality behind abortion, nor did it enter into debates about personhood. If ratified, it would simply allow state legislatures and Congress to pass laws on abortion without the restrictions imposed by the Roe v. Wade decision. If they decided to pass prohibitive measures it would obviously be a victory for the anti-abortion movement. However, there was no guarantee that such legislation would be passed. Opponents of the Hatch amendment thus declared that it was essentially a “States’ Rights Amendment,” an approach that had led many anti-abortionists to condemn President Ford during the 1976 campaign. The two approaches that were pursued by Congress in 1981 differed dramatically from the amendments that most activists had supported in the 1970s. At heart, neither Helm’s bill nor Hatch’s amendment was completely satisfactory to the anti-abortion movement, but this often seems to have been overlooked in the struggle that occurred over

70 Senate Judiciary Committee, Human Life Bill, 36, as cited in Devins, Shaping Constitutional Values, 87–8. 71 “The Hatch Human Life Amendment” pamphlet, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL.

152 which was the best measure. Supporters of Helms perceived Hatch as needlessly shattering the anti-abortion alliance, and backers of Hatch depicted his amendment as the only possible means of banning abortion. Indeed, in newsletters published in September by the NCHLA and MCCL, no room was afforded at all for discussion of Helm’s approach. Both these groups went into great detail about why a two-step approach best served the movement, and when discussing alternatives they considered only the possibility of a single amendment to the constitution that outlawed abortion and acknowledged the humanity of the fetus.72 These organizations, both of which were representative of the older elements within the movement, appeared to have never considered Helms’ bill as a legitimate avenue for anti- abortion ambitions. Unfortunately for the unity of the anti-abortionists, several socially conservative groups and their allies in the “New Right” had pinned their hopes on the “Human Life Bill,” and they were equally adamant that they were pursuing the only option that had a chance of success. Historians such as McKeegan and Critchlow have provided accounts of this split in the movement, but their analysis tends to assume it was solely a rift over which was the best approach.73 Although Michael Cuneo’s reading focuses on the objections of conservative Catholics to the pragmatic politics of the NRLC, he does not mention the Helms bill at all and implies that the two pieces of legislation that were debated were the Hatch amendment and S. J. Res 19, the amendment Helms offered early in the 97th Congress.74 This undermines his analysis of the positions taken by Judie Brown and Father Paul Marx for he focuses solely on the Hatch amendment and not on the role that these individuals played in supporting Helms’ bill. Although the NRLC and the USCC may well have been pursuing pragmatic politics in supporting Hatch, they were not choosing his option over a more conventional right-to-life amendment. Rather, they were supporting Hatch’s federalist approach over a bill that many activists felt was legally dubious and unlikely to be of long- term value to the movement. However, this was not the only reason behind their support for Hatch. Paige suggests that the split over how to ban abortion was ultimately a fight between the Catholic Church and the “New Right,” but this struggle was over more than just the role of the Catholic Church within the right-to-life movement (for after all, the Browns were

72 NCHLA Newsletter, 21 September 1981, and MCCL Newsletter, September 1981, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL. 73 See McKeegan, Abortion Politics, 43–45; Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 211–2. 74 Cuneo, “Life Battles,” 282–4.

153 staunch Catholics as well as allies of the “New Right”). Rather, this battle over how the movement should proceed was representative of the tensions that existed between the older, more moderate elements within the movement and the newcomers who had come to dominate perceptions of what it meant to be opposed to abortion in the public imagination. Of the major anti-abortion groups, NPLPAC, ACCL, AUL, and the NCHLA all supported the Hatch amendment.75 Opponents included March for Life, LAPAC, CAC, and ALL, with LAPAC going so far as to describe the Hatch amendment as “a sellout of the principles that have motivated the pro-life movement.”76 The largest national organization, the NRLC, originally supported Helms’ bill but by December 1981 had lent its official support to the Hatch amendment. The organizations headed by the Browns were amongst the most vehement opponents of the Hatch amendment. One of the significant sources of the rift seems to have been the role played by the NCCB and the USCC. The NCCB were vocal supporters of the Hatch amendment and were apparently even consulted about the wording that was to be used. For social conservatives, this was further evidence that the Bishops were willing to engage in pragmatic politics. The support of the Catholic hierarchy for the Hatch amendment was not understood in isolation, and for many members of the Right this was further evidence of a liberal bias, particularly in light of the stands subsequently taken by the hierarchy on El Salvador and on nuclear weapons. Indeed, in December 1981 William Rusher, editor of the conservative National Review, wrote an apologetic letter to Hatch after a promised editorial praising the Catholic Bishops’ support for his amendment had instead resulted in a “highly critical editorial” by Bill Buckley after the Bishops had taken positions on several issues that were dear to the hearts of the Right.77 Although social conservatives were opposed to the actions of the Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic hierarchy was also opposed to the actions of the “New Right.” The USCC understood Helms’ bill to be an attempt to “link the pro-life effort with various ‘New Right’ concerns (such as the court-stripping measure on school prayer).” According to a report in the conservative Catholic newspaper The Wanderer, the Bishops also explicitly stated that the

75 Roger Mall, “The Hatch-Ashbrook Federalism Amendment” handout published by Iowa NRLC, Papers of Dee Jepsen, Box 1, Abortion, Folder 2, RRPL. 76 Critchlow, “Mobilizing Women,” 303. 77 William Rusher to Orrin Hatch, 8 December 1981, Papers of William A. Rusher, Box 38, Hatch, Orin 1976– 87, LC.

154 opposition of “New Right” figures to the Hatch amendment worked to their advantage. At a top secret meeting Mark Gallagher, a lobbyist for the Bishops’ Committee for a Human Life Amendment, allegedly declared that Gray was “a far right figure, and moderate members of Congress would not want to identify with anything she supports.”78 One year later, after both the Helms bill and the Hatch amendment had failed, the Bishops suggested that Helms’ measure had blurred the issues, prevented unified anti-abortion support, and opened the movement up to accusations that it was attacking the separation of powers. 79 During this struggle over the best way to ban abortion, the Reagan administration stayed resolutely silent, ostensibly because the President was waiting for anti-abortionists to unite behind an approach. Interestingly, White House aides began to urge active support for the Helms bill just as the two measures were coming to a head in the Senate, claiming that unity of purpose existed where there was none. In August 1982, Morton Blackwell stressed the need for Reagan to be seen to be doing something to support Helms’ bill, declaring:

Politically the President has benefited greatly by the efforts of the pro-life activists. Reluctantly they have accepted kind words but few actions from this Administration because they were divided as to abortion remedy priorities. Now that they are united, their attention is riveted on the White House to see if the President’s actions speak as loudly as his words.80

In this instance, Reagan seems to have followed Blackwell’s advice. On 8 September 1982, he sent a letter to the NRLC that declared, “one can tiptoe around principles only so long.”81 He simultaneously wrote to nine Republican senators encouraging them to vote for cloture on Helms’ bill so as to end the filibuster that was led by Senator Robert Packwood (R-OR).

78 Paul A. Fisher, “Hatch Hints Defeat of Bishops-Backed Amendment,” The Wanderer, 10 December 1981, 9, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 44, Hatch Amendment clippings, Folder 4, GFPL. 79 Richard Doerflinger to Pro-Life and Respect Life Coordinators, 17 September 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 8, Pro-Life, Folder 1, RRPL. 80 Morton Blackwell to Elizabeth Dole, 20 August 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, Pro-Family Activists, Folder 3, RRPL [emphasis added]. 81 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 4 September 1982, 2202, quoted in Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and American Politics, 145.

155 In doing so, he was heeding Blackwell’s advice and demonstrating to the broader right-to-life movement that he was “keeping faith with them.”82 In the end, the President intervened only after intense pressure from both grassroots activists and members of his administration, and in many ways, Reagan’s actions can be understood as stemming directly from concerns about political repercussions. As Blackwell explicitly stated in a memorandum that was sent in August, if Reagan were seen to be lobbying Senators to vote for cloture on the Helms bill, the “political fallout both for the President, and, in net, for Republican candidates this year, would be very beneficial.”83 For those who had watched Reagan force his economic policies through both houses of Congress, this focus on the cloture vote was perplexing, for he did not emphasize the importance of passing the actual bill. The Catholic hierarchy was certainly not very impressed by the President’s work on behalf of the Helms bill, for in a memo that the USCC sent to its coordinators the efforts of the administration on behalf of cloture were not even mentioned, a point that drew scorn in a cover note sent to White House aide Morton Blackwell.84 Ultimately, the fight over the two approaches came to a sudden and rather unimpressive end. Even with Reagan’s efforts the cloture vote failed three times and Helms’ bill was eventually tabled without further debate. One day before the Senate killed Helms’ legislation, Hatch withdrew S. J. Res. 110 from consideration and promised to reintroduce it in 1983.85 Thus ended one of the few chances that the right-to-life movement had to ban abortion via an amendment to the constitution. As Neal Devins notes, although right-to-life legislation and constitutional amendments were repeatedly introduced in the 1980s, none “met with even the limited success” of the Hatch and Helms measures.86

82 Morton Blackwell to Elizabeth Dole, 20 August 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, Pro-Family Activists, Folder 3, RRPL. 83 Ibid. 84 Memo to Morton Blackwell, undated, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 8, Pro-Life, Folder 1, RRPL. 85 The Hatch amendment was reintroduced in the next session of congress, but it had been modified so that it stated simply that “a right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution.” This wording was even less satisfactory for the right-to-life movement. In the end, it failed in the senate, falling eighteen votes short of the two-thirds majority required. Craig and O’Brien, Abortion and Politics, 146–7. 86 Devins, Shaping Constitutional Values, 89.

156 CONCLUSION

The events of 1981 and 1982 challenged the anti-abortion movement in unexpected ways. Although they had not initiated their alliance with the “New Right” some of them had welcomed its ability to transform a social issue into political dynamite. They were thus extremely disappointed by the priorities of the White House in Reagan’s first term in office. In a scathing article subtitled “Reagan Goofs,” NPLPAC summed up the sentiments of many right-to-lifers about the actions, or lack thereof, of the Reagan administration, noting:

Since his election, at least—in his “mis-speak” about the HLB [“Human Life Bill”] as a possible substitute for a Human Life Amendment, and in this nomination of O’Connor—pro-life considerations seem to have become afterthoughts to other, more orthodox, political soundings.87

Although these events did not end the working alliance between the “New Right,” the Reagan administration, and right-to-lifers, they brought into the open some of the tensions that existed between these groups and also revealed to the general public the problematic nature of this union. Ultimately, anti-abortionists and social conservatives did not share the same vision of American society, and perhaps as a result of these conflicting views the anti- abortion movement was generally not drawn into advocating the positions that the “New Right” took on broader topics. By the time Helms’ bill was defeated, the 1982 congressional elections were about to begin and right-to-lifers were faced with a losing proposition. Having been convinced in the 1980 election that abortion was a make-or-break issue for politicians, they had come to realize that their movement had no more claim on the White House than any other interest group. Their only meaningful choices in the mid-term elections was to work for Republican candidates or to abstain from voting. The anti-abortion constituency that had rallied behind Reagan had reaped few rewards during his first two years in office, and yet there was no other party for them to move to. While members of the “New Right” had numerous social

87 “O’Connor … ‘A Symbol For All Seasons?’: Reagan Goofs,” Pro-Life Political Reporter 3, no. 3 (August 1981), 3, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, NPLPAC/POTUS—Pro-Life Coalition—Cabinet Room—January 23, 1984, Folder 2, RRPL.

157 and economic goals to pursue, the anti-abortion movement could choose only between a “pro-life President” who seemed unwilling to act and a Democratic Party that increasingly supported “the right to choose.” These disappointments ultimately meant that the focus and goals of anti-abortionists changed. Some consoled themselves by emphasizing the appointments that Reagan had made. Others stressed the importance of having a President who had strong moral values, even if circumstances had combined to mean that he did not (or could not) act in the way that the movement had hoped. These changes in the movement were a dramatic anti-climax after the heady days of the 1980 presidential campaign, but for historians they are further evidence of the complicated alliance that helped elect Reagan and that still shapes electoral politics today.

158 CHAPTER 6

THE RIGHT-TO-LIFE MOVEMENT AND THE REAGAN

ADMINISTRATION: NEGOTIATING THE POLITICS OF ABORTION

Over the course of the 1980s, the anti-abortion movement underwent a fundamental shift in its political orientation and legislative goals, and this stemmed in no small part from the difficulties the movement had in negotiating its relationship with both the “New Right” and the Reagan administration. Right-to-lifers had quickly been confronted by the limits of federal action on the abortion issue during Reagan’s first term in office, but this did not mean that they abandoned their efforts to shape policy or to influence the White House. Instead, the 1980s were a decade when the anti-abortion movement responded to the relative inaction on the part of the Reagan administration by negotiating and tempering its requests, and its leaders did this so as to be able to make meaningful suggestions without alienating the President. Although the movement never compromised its basic principles, during Reagan’s time in office it was forced to respond to the realities of national politics by limiting the scope of its demands and by accepting that even an ally in the White House was no guarantee of victory in the battle against abortion. As the 1980s progressed, right-to-life leaders increasingly articulated an absolutist vision of abortion politics, and the legislative and policy remedies that they proposed were tailored to match the agenda of the Reagan administration. The anti-abortion movement was not simply absorbed into the alliance of social conservatives that comprised the “New Right” and the “Christian Right,” but it had less and less room for moderate or centrist ideas. This was a period in time when the focus of the movement narrowed, and the space for divergent political and philosophical approaches to the abortion issue contracted. These shifts occurred for a variety of reasons, but they can in part be understood as occurring in reaction to the pressures placed on the movement by both the Right and Left. As the debate over abortion became more polarized, the possibility for compromise and conciliation diminished, and so too did the space for leaders who wished to articulate a more moderate vision of abortion politics.

159 Scholars of the anti-abortion movement in the 1980s have tended to focus on either the movement’s clout within the federal bureaucracy or on the increasing militancy of grassroots activists. McKeegan’s text exemplifies the former trend, and is premised on the idea that right-to-life relations with the White House were negligible during the 1980s, which led anti-abortionists to focus on the administrative realm rather than on the executive branch.1 This assumption is misleading, for movement leaders maintained a strong faith in the centrality of political lobbying and participation in the democratic process, even if their efforts did not always produce notable results. They placed a great deal of value on their relationship with the White House, and viewed themselves as an important political lobby group. The other key approach to the history of the movement during this period has been to focus on the emergence of civil disobedience and violence. Scholars such as Marian Faux, Carol Mason, James Risen, and Judy Thomas have concentrated on activists and leaders like Joseph Scheidler and Randall Terry who best exemplified the new militancy against abortion and who seemed to reject traditional forms of political activity.2 Although this shift towards extremism understandably concerns Americans on both sides of the abortion debate, it is not the only possible account of right-to-life activity in the 1980s. While Terry and his group Operation Rescue dominated the headlines and clogged up the legal system, many right-to- life organizations continued to register voters, lobby politicians, support legislation, and engage with the executive branch. Far from the headlines generated by clinic bombings and the Army of God kidnappings were movement leaders who participated in the democratic process and who attempted to shape federal policy by legitimate means. This chapter argues that the changes that occurred within the anti-abortion movement during the 1980s were intimately tied to its relationship with the “New Right” and, more generally, with the Reagan Administration itself. As the “New Right” and the “Christian Right” became an increasingly dominant force within American society, anti- abortion organizations often found themselves trying to maintain an identity that was distinct from that of social conservatives. During Reagan’s time in office, this was extremely difficult, as right-to-life groups found themselves under a great deal of pressure to broaden

1 McKeegan, Abortion Politics. 2 Marian Faux, Crusaders: Voices from the Abortion Front (New York: A Birch Lane Press Book, 1990); Mason, Killing for Life; Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels. For explanations and justification of this more militant form of anti-abortion protest see Joseph Scheidler, Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1985); Randall Terry, Operation Rescue (Whittaker House: Springdale, 1988).

160 their scope and engage in the “culture wars” of the 1980s.3 The first section of this chapter focuses on an instance where a right-to-life organization attempted to remain neutral on an issue dear to the hearts of the “New Right.” It highlights the way that abortion was used to rally social conservatives via a discussion of the struggle over a civil rights measure known as the “Grove City bill.” It also charts the pressure that anti-abortion organizations were subjected to when they refused to be drawn into the struggle between the Left and the Right. The second section of this chapter examines the strong symbolic relationship that the White House maintained with right-to-life leaders, and argue that although this affiliation was not necessarily a successful one for anti-abortionists, it demonstrates the movement’s commitment to the democratic process and its repeated efforts to influence and shape federal abortion policy. While the Reagan administration often seemed to overlook the concerns of right-to-lifers, it managed to harness their energies via a strong connection between movement leaders and White House staff. Anti-abortionists accumulated a great deal of symbolic capital, and this led eventually to a conviction amongst activists that the future of the movement lay with the Republican Party. Both the anti-abortion movement’s association with the “New Right” and its links with the Reagan administration helped limit the types of policies and politics that right-to-lifers advocated, a shift that has contributed to the increasingly conservative character of the contemporary anti-abortion movement.

THE RIGHT-TO-LIFE MOVEMENT AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS

OF THE “NEW RIGHT”

The disappointments suffered by right-to-lifers during Reagan’s first term in office subtly changed the focus of the movement. The defeat of the Hatch and Helms’ measures essentially ended the dream of a Human Life Amendment, for although anti-abortionists continued to speak of amending the constitution, most national leaders and organizations realized that this could no longer be their primary goal. In Reagan’s second term, therefore, right-to-lifers increasingly became involved in fights that were about more than just ending

3 For the “culture wars” thesis with regard to the United States in the 1980s and 1990, see James Hunter, Culture Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1991); James Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture Wars (New York: Free Press, 1994). For scholarly reactions and engagement with Hunter’s ideas, see James L. Nolan, ed., The American Culture War: Current Contests and Future Prospects (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996).

161 legalized abortion. Often the resources of the movement were dedicated to ensuring that new bills did not contain provisions that could be used to provide funding for abortion, either in the United States or abroad. At other times, the movement vigilantly policed new legislation to ensure that it did not contain language that established the abortion right, and the example discussed in this chapter was one such battle. The Grove City bill, also known as the Civil Rights Restoration Act, was ostensibly a civil rights measure. It prompted a pitched battle between liberals and conservatives in Congress, and remained contentious for several years before finally coming to a head in early 1988. Anti-abortionists were drawn into the fray after they became concerned that the legislation would establish the abortion right, and their role in this fight offers historians an instance where the divisions between the goals of the older right-to-life movement and more socially conservative organizations were exposed at a federal level. Within this fight over government regulation of discrimination, we can also find evidence of the struggle for a distinct identity and politics that was being waged by anti-abortionists against the “New Right.” Proposed in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grove City College v. Bell 465 U.S. 555 (1984), the Grove City bill was a bipartisan piece of legislation that “triggered a four-year battle in Congress between the civil rights coalition and the Reagan administration.” Grove City College was a private, liberal arts college that “accepted no federal grants and contracts and rejected [government] attempts … to regulate its internal affairs.” The Supreme Court’s ruling essentially concerned the relationship between financial aid and the enforcement of civil rights regulations, with the Court finding that although “indirect aid” such as student tuition grants triggered institutional coverage, the entire school was not brought under federal regulation. Instead, only the specific program that received assistance was covered, and in the case of Grove City College this was the admissions office.4 Members of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which represented 165 organizations, believed that the Supreme Court’s ruling would essentially make it impossible to stop sexual or racial discrimination in educational institutions, instead allowing

4 For a more detailed discussion of the implication of this ruling on federal civil rights regulations, the history of the Congressional attempts to pass the bill, and also for the above quote, see Hugh Davis Graham, “The Storm over Grove City College: Civil Rights Regulation, Higher Education, and the Reagan Administration.” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 4 (Winter 1998), 407–49. For a discussion of the bill that locates it within the context of other Reagan administration policies see Critchlow, “Mobilizing Women,” 311–2.

162 the government to stop discrimination only in specific programs or sections of the college. These concerns were not without merit, for “within weeks of the Supreme Court’s February 28, 1984, decision on Grove City College, the Reagan Administration began closing civil rights investigations under the program-specific statutes.”5 The implications of this ruling were of intense concern for those groups protected by federal regulations against discrimination, and thus the Grove City bill became a top priority for organizations that represented African Americans, women, Latinos, the disabled, and the elderly. Although the primary aim of the bill was to ensure that any educational institution that received federal aid was required to comply with government regulations against discrimination, opponents argued that it was essentially a power grab on the part of the political Left. There were several reasons why the “New Right” was so staunchly opposed to the legislation, but perhaps the most important one was its belief that the bill represented an attempt by members of Congress to expand the reach of the federal bureaucracy and to further intrude into the private realm. As Moral Majority President Jerry Nims darkly warned, the idea that the Grove City bill was restoring the status quo was simply an attempt to “con the American voter [into accepting] a major and massive shift of power to the federal government.”6 These criticisms of the bill thus offered an extremely effective means of uniting both economic and social conservatives against the measure. However, opposition to the Grove City bill was not simply tied to the effect that it would have on the federal bureaucracy or the fact that the government was attempting to enforce uniform social policy. Members of the “Christian Right” argued that the language of the bill would mean that any church that received government aid for one program would find that all its activities automatically fell under the reach of the federal bureaucracy. Dubbing the bill the “Federal Intrusion Act,” Moral Majority warned its followers that this piece of legislation placed “awesome power in the hands of the federal government to regulate and control [the] activities of religious organizations.”7 Prominent “Christian Right” groups such as Intercessors for America and the Committee to Protect the Family declared that the bill deliberately undermined their freedom of religion and was thus effectively an

5 Four months after the ruling was passed, the Department of Education had closed 23 civil rights investigations, narrowed the reach of 18, and reviewed 31 others. The investigations were closed because the Department of Education believed it no longer had jurisdiction. Ibid., 418. 6 Jerry C. Nims, “Federal Intrusion Act: Fact or Fiction,” Moral Majority Inc., Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 7 Ibid.

163 attack on the First Amendment.8 In this rather dramatic line of reasoning, the “Christian Right” had the support of Reagan Administration figures such as White House aide Michael Horowitz, who notably claimed:

Under the proposed civil rights restoration act of 1984, farmers and ranchers receiving agricultural subsidies, churches and synagogues running day care centers, “mom and pop” grocers participating in the food stamp program, all would fall under the boot heel of Washington’s civil rights bureaucrats.9

Social conservatives repeatedly warned their followers that if the bill were passed the federal government could “force religious groups to repudiate their own basic moral and religious principles.”10 The “Christian Right” believed that the Grove City bill could be used to extend federal protection against discrimination to homosexuals, alcoholics, drug addicts, transvestites, and AIDS sufferers.11 A forty-page study conducted by the Rutherford Institute outlined the logic behind these concerns by arguing that the definition of what constituted a “disease” was increasingly broad and that compulsions such as kleptomania and overeating were routinely “recognized—and treated medically—as diseases, rather than moral choices.”12 Opponents of the Grove City bill believed that this type of legislation was intended to compel society to accept types of morality that were opposed by Christian conservatives. Prominent conservative figures such as Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Beverly LaHaye warned members of Congress that they had been informed

8 See Lawrence D. Pratt to Representative, 23 February 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL; Gary Berger to Representative, undated, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL; Jerry C. Nims, “Federal Intrusion Act: Fact or Fiction,” Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 9 Mike Horowitz to David Stockman et al., 4 May 1984, Papers of Christena Bach, RRPL, as cited in Graham, “The Storm over Grove City,” 422. 10 Jerry C. Nims, “Federal Intrusion Act: Fact or Fiction,” Moral Majority Inc., Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 11 For examples of conservative concerns about who would be covered by the Grove City Bill, see Petition signed by Jerry C. Nims, Beverly LaHaye, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. James Dobson, Paul Weyrich, Dr. Jerry Falwell, and Reverend Cleveland Sparrow, 22 February 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL; “Moral Majority Releases Grove City Study,” 26 February 1988, Moral Majority Inc., Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL; Liberty Federation announcement on Civil Rights Restoration Act, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 12 The Rutherford Institute is a conservative evangelical organization that specializes in defense of religious and civil liberties. “Moral Majority Releases Grove City Study,” 26 February 1988, Moral Majority Inc., Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL.

164 that if amendments were not made to restrict the scope of the bill, religious institutions would be subject to “a massive number of lawsuits from radical elements intent upon the destruction of traditional morality.”13 The “New Right” was staunchly opposed to the Grove City bill, but the attitudes of the broader anti-abortion movement towards this legislation demonstrate that right-to-lifers did not always share the concerns of social conservatives. In early 1985, the USCC, a key organization within the civil rights coalition and an initial proponent of the bill, withdrew its support for the legislation. According to Hugh Davis Graham, the USCC’s opposition to the bill stemmed from its general hostility “to much of the feminist agenda” as well as its long- standing refusal to support any legislation that “might extend abortion rights coverage to Catholic hospitals and education institutions.”14 More generally, many anti-abortion groups feared that the bill might be interpreted so as to require “recipient[s] of federal aid … to provide or pay for abortions or abortion-related services as a condition of the receipt of such federal aid.” This concern stemmed from their belief that Title IX regulations concerning sexual discrimination required educational institutions to “treat abortion like any other temporary disability “with respect to any medical or hospital benefit, service, plan or policy” for its students.”15 Right-to-lifers feared that if the Grove City bill were passed with its original language, any educational institution, and perhaps even any institution that received federal assistance, would be forced to both provide abortions and potentially pay for abortions via insurance plans, a scenario that they felt rendered the bill a “pro-abortion” measure. Essentially they feared that this legislation would ensure that even if Roe v. Wade were overturned, the federal bureaucracy would have tied legalized abortion to regulations that prohibited sexual and racial discrimination. The USCC’s opposition to the Grove City bill effectively meant that the legislation could not claim to have the full support of the civil rights coalition, and neither chamber of Congress passed the measure in 1985 or 1986. During this period, national right-to-life organizations opposed the measure, but groups such as the NRLC emphasized that this opposition related solely to their concerns about the legislations effect on abortion. The

13 Petition signed by Jerry C. Nims, Beverly LaHaye, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. James Dobson, Paul Weyrich, Dr. Jerry Falwell, and Reverend Cleveland Sparrow, 22 February 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL 14 Graham, “The Storm over Grove City College,” 419. 15 “Abortion-Neutrality and Grove City Legislation,” U.S. Department of Justice, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 8, Grove City Legislation, Folder 2, RRPL.

165 NRLC consciously did not engage in the broader criticisms of the bill offered by socially conservative and “Christian Right” groups. In 1986, the Democrats won a significant victory in the congressional elections and regained power in the Senate, and this meant that the fortunes of the Grove City bill in Congress changed. This electoral shift, coupled with Republican concerns about being attacked by the LCCR during the 1988 election, led to an environment that was far more conducive to compromise. Although members of the “New Right” and the “Christian Right” were implacably opposed to the legislation, many senior Republicans had acted as co- sponsors of the Grove City bill in 1984, including Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R- TN) and Senate Majority Whip Ted Stevens (R-AK).16 The renewed efforts of some Republicans can thus be understood not so much an about face as a recommitment. Even with this friendlier environment, however, the question of the effect that the bill would have on abortion was still a major stumbling block. After much negotiation with Senate leaders and members of the USCC, the LCCR reluctantly accepted the necessity of making the bill “abortion neutral,” despite the vigorous protests of NOW. In January 1988, the Senate approved an amendment proposed by Senator John Danforth (R-MI) that met with the approval of most anti-abortionists. Danforth’s amendment “nullified existing regulations requiring educational institutions to provide abortions as well as pregnancy and childbirth services under health insurance and leave policies.”17 Once the Danforth amendment was passed, however, divisions arose amongst opponents of the Grove City bill. Abortion had been one of the chief issues that social conservatives had used to attack the legislation, and it had proved to be an effective means of arguing that liberal members of congress were attempting to expand rights rather than simply protect the existing status quo. It is thus interesting to note that some conservative opponents of the bill were not willing to accept the Danforth amendment, even when mainstream anti-abortion groups were willing to concede that it made the bill “abortion neutral.” Concerns about AIDS and abortion helped rally opponents against the Grove City bill, and these social issues were clearly understood and presented as a means of polarizing public sentiment and thus halting passage of the legislation. In a memo received by the Library Court, a conservative organization that helped shape the national agenda of most

16 Graham, “The Storm over Grove City College,” 421. 17 Ibid., 419.

166 prominent “New Right” groups, a run down of targeted states was offered with notes on how the legislation was being attacked in specific states and suggestions as to how Senators and constituents would react to some of the threats posed by the bill. To rally potential foes, it was suggested stressing such horrors as “transvestite affirmative action,” elderly persons being forced to share “hospitals with homosexual AIDS patients,” “homosexuals in schools,” and “AIDS in school cafeterias.”18 The memo also proposed that social conservatives should stress that unwilling medical staff would be forced to perform abortions, as would hospitals that were opposed to the procedure. This type of approach essentially used abortion and AIDS as a means of scaring voters into opposing the measure. It thus mirrored the way that the “New Right” had used confrontational and provocative rhetoric about abortion to attack opponents during prior congressional and presidential elections. This memo, which was intended for use prior to the passage of the Danforth amendment, demonstrates why socially conservative groups were so reluctant to see the issue of abortion neutralized. Unlike the right-wing groups that opposed the Grove City bill, the NRLC had always taken great pains to emphasize that its opposition to the legislation was solely related to the possibility that it might be used as a basis for expanding abortion rights. After the Danforth amendment had been passed, the group sent a letter to every member of Congress and clearly stated that since a “satisfactory abortion amendment” had been added to the bill, the organization “would withdraw its opposition to the [Grove City bill], and would therefore maintain a posture of neutrality with respect to the overall legislation.” It did this because, once the abortion question had been settled, its leaders believed that the bill dealt “with issues outside of our organizational purview.”19 In making this statement, the group was, perhaps unknowingly, pitting itself against the social conservatives who continued to oppose the bill and who argued that the Danforth amendment did not resolve the abortion issue. On 3 March, William B. Allen of the United States Commission on Civil Rights sent a letter to President Reagan declaring that it was of the “utmost importance to the continued civil liberties of all Americans” for the President to veto the Grove City bill. Allen had been an opponent of the legislation almost from its inception, and thus he raised several criticisms

18 Memo from Senate Steering Committee to Library Court, “The Grove City Bill,” undated, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 8, Grove City Legislation, Folder 11, RRPL. 19 Douglas Johnson to Member of Congress, 26 February 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL [emphasis added].

167 of the bill that were in keeping with the general arguments made by social conservatives about the measure. This particular letter to Reagan is of note, however, because it specifically called into question the efficacy of the Danforth amendment. Allen argued that the current state of the law meant that any court in the nation would be obliged to overturn that portion of the bill that rendered it “abortion neutral,” and he went so far as to suggest that the “architects of this act, along with some of its supposed opponents on abortion grounds” were well aware of this potential outcome.20 By Allen’s logic, the passage of the Danforth amendment was disingenuous, as it was simply an attempt by supporters of the bill to circumvent the anti-abortion opposition that was the primary obstacle to enactment of the legislation. This letter, with its provocative claims about the legitimacy of the Danforth amendment and its critique of the Grove City bill rooted in abortion politics, might have been simply another piece of presidential mail if it were not for the actions of staff members in the Office of Domestic Affairs. According to Critchlow, the White House had a “carefully outlined strategy” that aimed to “rally conservative opposition to the bill,” and Allen’s letter became a part of this plan.21 Less than a week after the missive was sent to President Reagan, Juanita Duggan, the Special Assistant to the President, sent copies of the letter to “pro-life activists across the nation,” presumably in an attempt to rally them to continue to oppose the bill.22 Duggan’s action was not appreciated by the NRLC. The day after Allen’s letter was circulated, Douglas Johnson, the Legislative Director of the NRLC, had a sharply worded letter hand delivered to Rebecca Range, the Director of Public Liaison in the Office of Domestic Affairs. In this three-page communication, Johnson accused Duggan of attempting to “manufacture a synthetic abortion problem to take the place of the genuine abortion problem which was resolved in Congress,” a move that Johnson believed was “contrary to the interests of the pro-life movement.” In his eyes, Duggan was attempting to deceive anti-abortionists so that they would continue to oppose the Grove City bill, a stance that would have allied them squarely with the numerous socially conservative organizations that were still hostile towards the legislation despite the passage of the Danforth amendment.

20 Commissioner William B. Allen to President Ronald Reagan, 3 March 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 21 Dinesh D’Sousa to Gary Bauer, “Civil Rights Restoration Act” as cited in Critchlow, “Mobilizing Women,” 311. 22 Douglas Johnson to Rebecca Range, 10 March 1988, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 1, Abortion, RRPL.

168 Johnson also informed Range that this was not the only time that his organization had been pressured by Duggan, claiming that the group had received “repeated telephone communications … in which she demanded that NRLC oppose the Senate-passed bill.” Perhaps most tellingly, when he called Duggan after learning of her plan to distribute Allen’s letter, she defended her actions by claiming that, “we are going to do whatever is necessary to sustain the President’s veto of the bill.”23 Furthermore, Duggan had not acted alone in her attempts to manipulate right-to-lifers, for Johnson noted that “other attempts [had been made] by the Public Liaison staff to engender pro-life opposition” to the abortion-neutral Grove City bill. Despite this pressure from White House staff, the NRLC was firmly committed to maintaining its “posture of strict neutrality” on the bill. Johnson asked Range to instruct her staff to stop disseminating Allen’s letter and to contact every organization and activist that had received the letter to “disassociate the White House from Commissioner Allen’s statement that ‘the law … would require any court in the country’ to declare the Danforth amendment unconstitutional.” If anti-abortion groups wished to oppose the Grove City bill, they should do so based on their own assessment of the merits of the legislation rather than as a result of manipulation. In circulating Allen’s letter, Johnson believed that Duggan was contradicting both President Reagan’s prior statement of support for the abortion-neutral provision and the stance taken by the Justice Department on the Danforth amendment.24 Duggan’s efforts to ensure that the President vetoed the bill were unnecessary, for despite the fact that the legislation had been made neutral on abortion, Reagan was still firmly committed to opposing it. On 1 March 1988, just before the House of Representatives was due to consider the bill, he issued a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives that warned that he would “veto the bill if it is presented to me in its current form.” Echoing the arguments made by socially conservative organizations and “Christian Right” groups, he claimed that the Grove City bill dramatically expanded “the scope of Federal jurisdiction over State and local governments and the private sector, from churches and synagogues to farmers, grocery stores, and businesses of all sizes.”25 He kept his word

23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ronald Reagan to the Speaker of the House of Representatives et. al., 1 March 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL.

169 and vetoed the legislation, but by 1988 it had enough congressional support to ensure that Congress was able to override his veto. In the end, it seems that the efforts of socially conservative organizations and members of the Reagan administration did not persuade most right-to-life groups. Interestingly, in a White House list of opponents of the Grove City bill dated 18 March 1988, only one specifically anti-abortion group was noted, while nearly every key “New Right” and “Christian Right” group was on record against the legislation.26 Although this incident might seem to indicate a victory for anti-abortion organizations that demanded the right to remain neutral, it also indicates the immense amount of pressure that opponents of abortion faced from both conservatives and the Reagan administration. As the abortion debate became more polarized in the 1980s, it is normally assumed that anti-abortionists defined themselves against the politics of the Left. In this instance, however, one of the oldest anti-abortion groups was forced to protect itself from its supposed allies on the Right. Tellingly, in its attempts to define itself against the political agenda of socially conservative groups, the NRLC offered, not a new vision or approach to right-to-life politics, but instead a policy of neutrality.

THE SYMBOLIC POLITICS OF THE WHITE HOUSE

During the debate over the Grove City bill, NRLC declared that the passage of the Danforth amendment represented “a landmark victory for pro-life forces.”27 While this was clearly an overstatement, this comment tacitly acknowledges the fact that during President Reagan’s time in office, the anti-abortion movement experienced extremely few tangible advances at a federal level. An amendment to outlaw abortion, which had been a goal of the movement ever since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, came before Congress only once and

26 The right-to-life group was the Ad Hoc Committee in Defense of Life. Amongst the many “New Right” and “Christian Right” organizations listed were American Conservative Union, Committee to Protect the Family, Concerned Women for America, Conservative Digest, Council for National Policy, Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Free Congress, Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, National Association of Evangelicals, and the National Black Coalition for Traditional Values. See memorandum titled Groups in Opposition to Grove City, 18 March 1988, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 9, Grove City Legislation, Folder 3, RRPL. 27 “National Right to Life Committee Proclaims Landmark Victory as House Joins Senate in Stripping ‘Abortion Rights’ from ‘Title IX’ Sex Discrimination Law,” 2 March 1988, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 1, Abortion, RRPL.

170 was quickly defeated. The Reagan administration did not issue any official statements deploring abortion as a procedure, and nor did it move to end Title X funding. By the end of his time in office, relatively minor achievements had come to seem like dramatic advances, and this has led historians such as McKeegan to downplay the anti-abortion movement’s contact with the White House. This belies the complex relationship that right-to-lifers maintained with the Reagan administration, for although opponents of abortion ostensibly achieved very little during Reagan’s time in office, the movement did not falter and nor did grassroots activists turn away from the Republican Party in droves. Although the Reagan administration might seem to have ignored the demands of right-to-lifers in the arena of practical politics, it did not disregard the importance of the movement as a key element of the coalition that made the “Reagan Revolution” possible. One of the primary means by which the White House demonstrated its esteem for the anti- abortion cause was by granting key right-to-life figures access both to members of the administration and, on some occasions, to the President himself. This form of “symbolic politics” was an extremely important means for the White House to acknowledge its “special relationship” with anti-abortionists while securing few tangible gains for the movement. The Reagan administration was quick to acknowledge events that were of significance to right-to- lifers, and perhaps its most notable symbolic gesture was the esteem it afforded the movement each year on the anniversary of the day that abortion was legalized. Every year since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, grassroots activists and anti-abortion leaders have descended on the nation’s capital on 22 January to demonstrate their commitment to ending legalized abortion. Protesters attend from around the country, often hiring buses to enable as many people as possible to come. After the rally is over, anti-abortionists visit members of Congress, lobbying on the abortion issue and distributing red roses on behalf of the “preborn,” a floral gift that represents “short life and martyrdom.”28 This annual event, known as the March for Life, has consistently been one of the most significant dates in the anti-abortion calendar, as it is the only time when right-to- lifers of all denominational and political persuasions publicly unite in their opposition to abortion. Other key national events are generally tied to specific organizations and programs, and thus the unity of purpose that is displayed at each March for Life is a means of

28 March for Life Pamphlet, December 1981, Papers of American Citizens Concerned for Life, Box 31, March for Life, January 22, Folder 1, GFPL.

171 demonstrating the political clout and dedication of anti-abortion voters. During President Reagan’s time in office, this protest was also an important opportunity for movement leaders to reinforce their political credentials by meeting with key members of his administration. Each year, prominent anti-abortionists were received at the White House, sometimes even granted a personal audience with the President. These meetings offered an opportunity for movement leaders to discuss their concerns with high-level figures in the administration and to hear about initiatives that were planned for the forthcoming session of Congress. They also served as means for right-to-lifers to receive the personal assurances of the President that he had not forgotten their political loyalty, even when legislative policy might indicate otherwise. Although many of the meetings between right-to-life leaders and the President were extremely short and could cynically be understood as simply representing photo opportunities, anti-abortionists exercised enviable levels of access when compared with other social groups. In a November 1982 memo on the need for an “Ethnic Strategy,” Elizabeth Dole commented on the high levels of dissatisfaction amongst ethnic groups with regard to the lack of recognition afforded them by the White House. Dole argued that amongst minority groups, and presumably special interest groups, there was no substitute for “the special recognition that comes from event participation at the White House.” Furthermore, she noted that:

It is politically axiomatic that those who consider themselves in a minority place a disproportionately greater level of importance on the recognition that devolves from high-level appointments, meetings at the White House, Presidential acknowledgements, and the way community-elected leaders are treated.29

This internal memorandum demonstrates that staff members were keenly aware of the role that purely symbolic acts could play in fostering good relations between special interest groups and the Republican Party. It is thus even more noteworthy that right-to-lifers had consistent access to key staff throughout President Reagan’s two terms in office, and were

29 Memo from Elizabeth Dole to Edwin Meese, James A. Baker, Michael Deaver, and William Clark, “Proposed Action Plan for Ethnics,” 2 November 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, Catholic Strategy, Folder 1, RRPL.

172 the beneficiaries of all kinds of tokens that held little practical value but that were laden with meaning. Of the many forms of symbolic capital that right-to-lifers accumulated during Reagan’s time in office, one of the most politically powerful was the way that these meetings functioned as photo opportunities. At nearly every gathering held with anti-abortionists at the White House, staff photographers were on hand to capture individual shots of prominent leaders both one on one with the President and in group settings. Indeed, the generation of images was, at times, seen as just as important as the holding of the meeting. In reference to an event planned in January 1988, Rebecca Range explicitly noted to Reagan that the photo opportunity itself would “provide recognition and thanks” to grassroots right- to-lifers.30 The images generated at such meetings were not generally intended for release to the mainstream media, but instead served as a private acknowledgement of appreciation and support. They were widely circulated and reprinted in right-to-life letters and publications, and were understood as evidence of the significant alliance that anti-abortionists had with their nation’s leader. Interestingly, Reagan rarely met with right-to-life leaders in public settings. Despite the significance of the March for Life rally in the anti-abortion calendar and the fact that it took place literally moments from the White House, he never personally attended, instead preferring to address the crowd via telephone or loud-speaker hookup. Some might suggest that this was a means for him to avoid being photographed supporting the right-to-life movement by the mainstream media. This lack of public recognition helped increase the symbolic value of the photographs taken at White House meetings, for these images attested to the influence and power of those few movement leaders who managed to have an audience with Reagan. Even when little meaningful action came from the White House, grassroots activists still had visual evidence of the esteem with which they were held by the President. While the numerous meetings between right-to-lifers and the Reagan administration served to help smooth the relationship between the two groups, members of the White House were still extremely aware of the need to foster good working relations with movement leaders. Anti-abortionists were clearly concerned about the lack of White House action on the abortion issue, for numerous internal memos include mention of how best to counter potential problems, especially during the fight over the Hatch amendment and the

30 Memo from Rebecca Range, 21 January 1988, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 1, Abortion, RRPL.

173 Helms bill. Even after Reagan’s eleventh-hour efforts on behalf of the Human Life bill, relations with the anti-abortion movement were not completely repaired by the time of a gathering on 21 January 1983. In a memo written to Edwin Meese about the “spirited” meeting that had taken place, Dole noted that “a number of the leaders present used this opportunity to discuss specific actions which they believe are in accord with the President’s views but see as being ignored within the Administration.”31 In a later memo written about the same gathering, Dee Jepsen warned that although “pro-life leaders were very pleased with the meeting they had with the [President] and with his letter to the March for Life … they took note that there was no mention of abortion in [the State of the Union address and hence] they will be watching the Administration closely.”32 The precarious nature of the alliance between right-to-lifers and the Reagan administration was evidently of deep concern to certain members of the White House, and they were at pains to emphasize how important it was for anti-abortionists to continue to feel that the President was committed to their cause. As the 1984 elections drew nearer, members of the White House doubled their efforts to ensure that right-to-lifers continued to support the President, and they resolved to have him publish an article in Human Life Review in 1983. Interestingly, Critchlow suggests that this piece was intended to serve two purposes, firstly to “encourage supporters in the pro-life movement, but also to counter an impending pastoral letter from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops calling for a ‘nuclear freeze’ on the development of weapons.” White House staff ensured that Human Life Review published “Reagan’s article before the pastoral letter, in order … ‘to frame the pro-life issue in our terms rather than the political opposition’s.”33 During this lead up to the election, White House staff members also continued to emphasize the importance of regular meetings with opponents of abortion as a means of ensuring their political loyalty. Internal memos stressed the impact that such events were likely to have at the polls. In 1983, Dole noted that:

31 Elizabeth Dole to Edwin Meese, 24 January 1983, Papers of Dee Jepsen, Box 1, Abortion, Folder 9, RRPL 32 Dee Jepsen to Red Cavaney, 11 February 1983, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 8, [Pro-Life/Continued], Folder 1, RRPL. 33 Michael Uhlmann to Edwin Harper, as cited in Critchlow, “Mobilizing Women,” 309. The article in question was entitled “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation” and was subsequently reprinted in book form alongside essays by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Malcolm Muggeridge. See Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984).

174 The absence of such a meeting would have created an explosive situation in this important segment of the President’s coalition. Without exception, these pro-life leaders were actively involved in the 1980 defeats of Jimmy Carter, Frank Church, George McGovern, Birch Bayh, John Culver, et al. This meeting does not guarantee that they will be similarly motivated eighteen months hence, but it does keep open that opportunity.34

The frequent interaction that right-to-lifers had with members of the White House served an important political purpose for the administration. They offered a relatively easy means of gauging what sentiments the anti-abortion movement had towards Reagan and the Republican Party, and allowed a space for the administration to act quickly so as to limit the political repercussions of any grievances. Such gatherings also functioned as a means of limiting hostility and resentment, for they offered right-to-lifers that “special recognition” that was understood by members of the Reagan administration to increase levels of support.35 After Reagan’s reelection in 1984, he continued to meet with right-to-lifers, but in the internal memos written about these occasions there was generally far less emphasis placed on the importance of the anti-abortion movement as a voting block. Although the goals of the anti-abortion movement changed over the course of Reagan’s two terms in office, it is notable that movement leaders never rejected political action at a federal level. Instead, they consistently worked to negotiate the limits placed on them by the Reagan administration. Right-to-lifers had clear ideas about what they expected from the White House, and they wanted the President to vigorously pursue a right-to-life agenda. Anti-abortion leaders were always quick to let members of the White House know which areas they felt warranted presidential action. At most of the meetings with right-to-life leaders, time was provided for feedback and ideas from activists, although these exchanges normally occurred with members of the administration rather than with the President himself. After the defeat of the Hatch amendment and the Helms bill, there was no one agenda held by the right-to-life movement, but there were enough areas of common cause to allow the White House to understand the general concerns of movement leaders. Indeed,

34 Elizabeth Dole to Edwin Meese, 24 January 1983, Papers of Dee Jepsen, Box 1, Abortion, Folder 9, RRPL. 35 Memo from Elizabeth Dole to Edwin Meese, James A. Baker, Michael Deaver, and William Clark, “Proposed Action Plan for Ethnics,” 2 November 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, Catholic Strategy, Folder 1, RRPL.

175 consciously or unconsciously, anti-abortionists tempered their demands of the President after the disappointments of his first two years in office. Rather than assuming that Reagan had betrayed them, they instead attempted to be more accommodating with regard to the political realities of the day. During the 1980s, right-to-lifers placed an increasing amount of emphasis on legislative approaches that targeted abortion funding and family planning services, issues that appealed to the “New Right” because they both limited government spending and reduced the reach of the federal government. Few leaders demanded that the President compel Republican Congressmen to support anti-abortion measures, and by the time of the 1988 elections movement stalwarts such as Willke argued that right-to-lifers “could not afford to wound any of the Repub[lican]s in the primary due to [the] pro-life” issue.36 Although the suggestions made by anti-abortionists often seem to have been overlooked, White House staff members such as Blackwell, Jepsen, and Dole consistently struggled to find means by which they might implement right-to-life ideas and demonstrate that the Reagan administration was still committed to ending abortion. In 1983, Jepsen urged White House staff members to actively “develop ways in which [the President] can take a role of moral leadership on the value of life issue, especially focusing on those aspects where we enjoy broad potential support.” This call to action stemmed in no small part from her belief that abortion was an issue that was “‘hot’ right now.” Jepsen, whose ideas had the support of Blackwell, went on to list a page of possible issues that would allow the President to be perceived as implementing a right-to-life agenda as well as projecting an image of “the President as one who is for something positive, not just against abortion.”37 Her proposals included the development of regulations that prohibited the starving of unviable infants, holding Senate hearings on whether aborted fetuses experienced pain, holding Senate hearings exploring the idea of implementing informed consent laws for women seeking abortion, and a variety of laws to encourage adoption rather than abortion. Although many of these suggestions were supported in principle by right-to-lifers, it is worth noting that they

36 Notes from Pro-Life Meeting, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 1, Pro-Life Leadership Meeting, RRPL. 37 Her proposed areas of action included the development of regulations that prohibited the starving of unviable infants, holding senate hearings on whether aborted fetuses experienced pain, holding senate hearings exploring the idea of informed consent laws for women seeking abortion, and a variety of laws to encourage adoption rather than abortion. Memo from Dee Jepsen to Red Cavaney, “POTUS Efforts in Support of Human Life,” 11 February 1983, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 8, [Pro-Life/Continued], Folder 1, RRPL [emphasis in original].

176 were generally not matters that were high priorities for the movement at this time, with the exception of the issue of infanticide.38 Right-to-life leaders wanted Reagan to support their legislative efforts and respond directly to their suggestions, no doubt in part because many of them had curbed their demands by shifting their focus away from a constitutional amendment and towards remedies that tallied with the concerns of social and economic conservatives. Evidently this backing did not happen with the frequency that anti-abortionists desired, for throughout Reagan’s time in office right-to-lifers repeatedly expressed their dismay at the gap between the President’s words and actions. In a 1987 letter to Reagan, Gray sharply noted:

Each year when we speak together at the January 22 activities in the White House or at the [March for Life] rally, I ask if we can work together, and you say that we can. Then, my urgent pleas for help with legislation to save preborn babies go unanswered.39

The issue that Gray was particularly concerned by was the continued use of public monies for abortion in the District of Columbia, and in this regard she was joined by many right-to- life leaders. Throughout Reagan’s second term in office, anti-abortionists deplored the fact that Reagan continued to sign the D.C. Appropriations bill even though it meant that some two million dollars in federal funds went to subsidize abortions for low-income women. Movement leaders repeatedly alerted Reagan to the horror of this situation, and yet, as Gray pointed out, “the only response from the White House is that the D.C. Appropriations Bill is signed year-after-year by our President.” While Gray did not doubt that Reagan wanted to stop abortion, she believed that the deeds of his Executive Branch did not “follow his good words.” This lack of action stemmed, in her eyes, from the fact that during his second term in office there was no single high-ranking White House staff member whose role was to liaise with anti-abortionists and to ensure coordination between the broader movement and the Reagan administration.40

38 Right-to-lifers used the term “infanticide” to describe the practice whereby doctors or parents decided to end the life (normally through the denial of medical treatment) of a child born with severe disabilities. During Reagan’s time in office, this issue came to national prominence in 1982 with the “Baby Doe” case. 39 Nellie Gray to Ronald Reagan, 12 January 1987, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 1, Pro-Life, Folder 2, RRPL. 40 Ibid.

177 Right-to-life leaders strove to offer the President ideas and suggestions about how to foster respect for life during a period when there was no clear means of outlawing abortion. Although their primary goal of an outright ban on abortion was not likely to occur in the foreseeable future, anti-abortionists continued to suggest ways that the legal right could be eroded and societal attitudes might be changed. Interestingly, it is evident that some right-to- life leaders began to tailor their demands to the political climate in the White House quite soon after Reagan took office. In doing so, they were attempting to shape possible approaches to abortion, while also ensuring that the issue remained of pressing concern for the President. In October 1982, after a personal meeting with Blackwell, Judie Brown asked him to organize a meeting for her with David Swoap and Dave Sopper, two members of the DHHS, for she had six key areas that she believed were of interest to both anti-abortionists and the Reagan administration. Several of these agenda items were concerned specifically with Planned Parenthood, Title X funding, and state funding for Medicare abortions, and were issues that right-to-lifers increasingly focused on during Reagan’s remaining time in office. Tellingly, she prefaced her ideas by noting that these initiatives offered the opportunity for “incremental gains for the pro-life movement.”41 This preoccupation with attacking abortion providers and funding should be understood as reflecting an economically conservative approach to anti-abortion politics, and her approach also tallied neatly with the Reagan administration’s early focus on fiscal policy. Brown was suggesting ways to control abortion providers via the federal bureaucracy, but she was also suggesting areas in which funding cuts could be made that would be satisfactory to both economic and social conservatives. Rather than suggesting responses that would rely on increased federal spending, Brown and the Reagan administration focused on areas that allowed them to limit the reach of “big government” and de-fund those engaged in the provision of abortion services. Although movement leaders tempered the demands they made of the White House, they continued to suggest ways that the President might implement a right-to-life agenda, even as Reagan’s time in office was drawing to a close. At a meeting in early 1988, anti- abortion leaders offered a variety of proposals that ranged from the possibility of extending the “Just Say No to Drugs” message to include sex to creating space in the Holocaust

41 Judie Brown to Morton Blackwell, 19 October 1982, Papers of Morton Blackwell, Box 7, American Life Lobby, Folder 1, RRPL [emphasis added].

178 museum for an exhibit on the “pre-born child.” Despite these more imaginative suggestions, the leaders in attendance also reiterated their support for such long-standing ideas as the need for an end to experimentation on fetuses, the enactment of a permanent Hyde amendment, and the cessation of federal funding for abortion in Washington, D.C.42 Despite years of inaction from the Reagan administration, one participant at the 1988 meeting still held out hope that a strong statement against abortion might come from the President in his final year in office. Jack Fowler of the Ad Hoc Committee in Defense of Life inquired as to whether there was the any prospect of “an executive order to bind the federal [government] to the humanity of the unborn child,” and White House aide Gary Bauer replied that there was “still a possibility.”43 The closest that the Reagan administration came to fulfilling this desire for an executive order did eventually come in the last year of Reagan’s presidency. While it was not the stirring moral statement that leaders had hoped for at the beginning of his time in office, it was clearly understood as a victory for the right-to-life movement and as an expression of the President’s solidarity with their cause. In June 1988, Reagan sponsored a piece of legislation that was to be known as the “President’s Pro-Life Act of 1988.” In the writing of this bill the White House afforded a great deal of respect for the ideas and opinions of anti- abortion leaders. Although this legislation ended by claiming it would help to “protect [the unborn child’s] rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” its stated purpose was to enact, on a “permanent and government-wide basis,” the Hyde amendment. Reagan’s piece of legislation proposed to extend Hyde’s prohibition against using federal funds to “pay for abortions or to promote or encourage abortion” and extend it all agencies and all federal funds.44 Right-to-lifers were explicitly consulted about the wording and intent of the President’s bill during a meeting held on 19 February, and they offered numerous ideas about how to attract the broadest possible support, suggestions that the White House took under consideration.45 Furthermore, movement leaders had repeatedly pushed for the permanent enactment of the Hyde amendment as a means of guarding against the possibility that a liberal majority in Congress might reinstate government funding of abortion. When

42 Notes from Pro-Life Meeting, Papers of Mariam Bell, Box 1, Pro-Life Leadership Meeting, RRPL. 43 Ibid. 44 Ronald Reagan to The Congress of the United States, 8 June 1988, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 2, Pro Life, RRPL. 45 Memo from Alan Kranowitz to Gary Bauer, 25 February 1988, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 2, Pro Life, RRPL.

179 the Reagan administration wanted to act on abortion, it consulted and heeded the ideas of right-to-lifers and expected their enthusiastic support. Although the legislation was hardly a groundbreaking condemnation of abortion, it did represent the possibility of a strong conclusion to the relationship between the anti-abortion movement and “their” President. Throughout Reagan’s time in office right-to-lifers enjoyed an extremely strong relationship with his administration, but this connection was primarily grounded in the symbolic. Although they often met with members of the White House and were repeatedly assured of his “commitment to a strong pro-life policy,” the meetings themselves tended to function primarily as the show of support.46 Rarely were concrete policies developed or plans of action agreed on. Despite the numerous disappointments and setbacks they suffered under Reagan, movement leaders never gave up on federal lobbying or electoral politics. Instead, they subtly modified their goals so as to direct their energies towards projects that a conservative Republican such as Reagan might find appealing. This acceptance of political compromise effectively led to a closing down of the kinds of avenues open to lobbyists and activists. As the Democratic Party became closely aligned with the abortion rights movement, anti-abortionists found themselves increasingly restricted in the types of solutions that they could offer to the problem of abortion. When the Reagan administration did offer ideas about abortion, they primarily centered on funding cuts or private initiatives. The kinds of solutions that right-to-lifers offered the White House became more and more limited, and by the end of the 1980s those right-to-lifers who continued to lobby and work at a federal level tended to present ideas that neatly aligned with the views held by the White House.

CONCLUSION

By the end of the 1980s, the anti-abortion movement appeared to be defined by violence, fundamentalist Christianity, and a belief that extrajudicial means offered the only way to end the horror of legalized abortion. Leaders such as Randall Terry seemed to indicate that anti- abortionists had rejected electoral politics and the democratic process. The 1980s, however, were not simply a time of grassroots activism, localized politics, and occasional outbursts of

46 Memo from William L. Ball to Senator Baker, 28 July 1987, Papers of Gary Bauer, Box 2, Pro-Life, RRPL.

180 violence. It was a period when movement leaders struggled to define what it meant to be opposed to abortion while conducting lobbying efforts and working with the executive branch, although the political landscape of the 1980s eventually meant that the scope of the movement was increasingly restricted. In the fight over the Grove City bill, anti-abortionists were happy to oppose the legislation while it seemed that it would further establish the abortion right. Once the Danforth amendment was passed, however, they refused to participate in the debate over the bill, even though this action pitted them against socially conservative groups. As the “New Right” and the “Christian Right” attempted to further bind right-to-lifers to their brand of politics, anti-abortion groups such as the NRLC responded by vigorously proclaiming, not an alternate worldview, but simply their neutrality. Simultaneously, movement leaders found themselves subtly tempering their ideas and demands so as not to alienate the White House, an approach that effectively curtailed what it meant to be opposed to abortion. Where once the mainstream movement had included individuals who toyed with ideas of social justice and even alliances with activists who supported abortion rights, by the end of Reagan’s two terms in office many right-to-lifers were content simply to posit themselves as separate from social conservatives on all issues except for abortion. At the close of the 1980s, the anti-abortion movement had been dramatically reshaped both by its relationship with the “New Right” and the Reagan administration, and by the inevitable compromises that accompanied federal politics.

181

182 CONCLUSION

On 7 March 2006, Governor Michael Rounds of South Dakota signed into law a sweeping ban on abortion that made it a felony to terminate a pregnancy except in those rare instances where a woman’s life was endangered. In doing so, he was enacting a piece of legislation that effectively returned South Dakota’s abortion laws to the state that they had been in prior to Roe v. Wade.1 This piece of legislation was a direct challenge to the uneasy status quo that had existed after the Supreme Court decisions in Webster v. Reproductive Health and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but it was also a clear reaction to the changing political make up of the Court under President George W. Bush. The addition of Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts to the bench, sworn in within four months of each other, dramatically increased the likelihood that there would be a rightward shift in the decisions handed down by the court. Furthermore, the nomination and confirmation of Alito was claimed as a direct victory for anti-abortion forces, for he had a past record of opposing legalized abortion and was considered to bring a socially conservative outlook to the bench. In passing this piece of anti-abortion legislation, South Dakota legislators were trying to change the status of abortion not just in their own state but also in the nation as a whole, for they believed that it was “the ideal time to return the central question of Roe to the Supreme Court.”2 Over thirty-three years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion, and fourteen years after it reaffirmed the original decision, anti-abortion legislators believed that the time was ripe, yet again, to explicitly challenge the central tenet of Roe v. Wade, namely that the right to privacy encompassed the decision as to whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. Although the bill was firmly defeated after a ballot measure put the legislation to a public vote, the South Dakota legislation demonstrates that in the contemporary United States, abortion is still an issue that polarizes the nation in both the social and political realm.3 The symbolic role that abortion plays within America has grown in unexpected ways in the years since Roe v. Wade. In local and federal elections, a candidate’s stance on legalized abortion is often read as an indicator of the position that they will hold on a range of issues.

1 Monica Davey, “South Dakota Bans Abortion, Setting Up a Battle,” New York Times, 7 March 2006, 1. 2 Ibid. 3 55.6 percent of voters rejected the ban, while 44.4 percent voted to uphold it. According to commentators, this split was greater than expected. Monica Davey, “Liberals Find Rays of Hope on Ballot Measures,” New York Times, 9 November 2006, 16.

183 Within the Republican Party, a potential candidate for the Presidency must clearly oppose legalized abortion, even if that profession of anti-abortion faith sits awkwardly with statements they had made earlier, as has been the case with Mitt Romney’s campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination. As abortion has increasingly become a litmus test for Republican politicians and Supreme Court justices, the actual number of abortions and the availability of the procedure have declined. In most parts of the country, abortion services are extremely restricted, and by 2000, eighty-four per cent of counties were without an abortion provider, a figure that increased to ninety-four percent in the Midwest.4 As the number of abortion clinics and providers has steadily decreased, violence against clinic buildings and personnel have become an increasing fact of life.5 Nevertheless, in the almost two decades that have passed since President Reagan left office, although legalized abortion has been attacked on a variety of fronts and limited by legislative and judicial means, it has also been afforded a basic level of legal protection.6 In 1989, only six months after President George H.W. Bush was sworn into office, many anti- abortionists believed that their hopes and dreams were about to be fulfilled via a Supreme Court decision. On 5 July, protesters on both sides of the abortion debate waited to hear whether the highest court in the land would finally overturn the abortion right established and protected by Roe v. Wade. Although the decision handed down in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services did not go as far as right-to-lifers would have liked, it offered a clear demonstration of the changed nature of the court after eight years of conservative appointments. Reagan’s choice of nominees had not always pleased the anti-abortion movement, but in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services the combined influence of these

4 In states such as North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kentucky this figure was even higher, for 98 percent of counties were without an abortion provider. Since an all-time high in 1982, the number of abortion providers has declined by 37 percent. For more detailed statistics about availability in various states and regions, see Lawrence B. Finer and Stanley K. Henshaw, “Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States in 2000.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 35, no. 1 (January/February 2003), 10. 5 Marlene Gerber Fried, “Abortion in the United States—Legal But Inaccessible,” in Solinger, The Abortion Wars, 207–26. For an excellent discussion of the role that clinic protests play in the anti-abortion movement see Alesha E. Doan, Opposition and Intimidation: The Abortion Wars and Strategies of Political Harassment (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007). For a discussion of abortion-related violence in the 1980s see Dallas Blanchard and Terry Prewitt, Religious Violence and Abortion: The Gideon Project (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993). For an account of the effect that clinic protests and violence have had on abortion providers see Patricia Baird-Windle and Eleanor J. Bader, Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 6 For histories of the abortion debate in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s see Timothy Byrnes and Mary Segers, eds., The Catholic Church and the Politics of Abortion: A View from the States (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); James R. Kelly, “Beyond Compromise: Casey, Common Ground, and the Pro-Life Movement,” in Abortion Politics in American States, eds. Mary C. Segers and Timothy A. Byrnes (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 205–24; Saletan, Bearing Right.

184 appointments resulted in a decision that essentially “issued an open invitation to the states to pass restrictive laws.”7 The justices were seen by some as asking the states to pass laws that would allow them to directly consider the constitutionality of the original ruling in Roe v. Wade. Tellingly however, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was not overturned, despite nearly two decades of lobbying and lawsuits on the part of anti- abortionists and social conservatives. The 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey dramatically increased the amount of state regulation permitted with regard to abortion, but it also upheld the basic premise of Roe v. Wade. The majority that saved legalized abortion included three justices who were appointed by either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush. Even though these two Republican Presidents prided themselves on their alliances with the right-to-life movement and made abortion a litmus test in their selection of Supreme Court nominees, they were still not able to ensure a majority decision against legalized abortion. Despite the contested nature of abortion in contemporary America and the role it has played in both the political and social realm, there is still a great deal of work for historians to do with regard to charting the growth of this most contentious social movement. Scholars must not presume that the politics, philosophy, and makeup of the right-to-life movement have remained static since the liberalization of abortion laws first began to occur in the late 1960s. Such an assumption implicitly accepts the arguments made by members of the “New Right” and the “Christian Right,” namely, that the anti-abortion movement was naturally suited to an alliance with the right wing of the Republican Party. It gives legitimacy to the idea that Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election, and the repeated triumphs of conservative Republicans in federal political contests, stems from middle America’s fundamental rejection of the tenets of liberalism. My research offers a history of the anti-abortion movement that disputes the idea that right-to-life activists were naturally aligned with the “New Right” simply because they opposed legalized abortion. Through an examination of the evolution of the anti-abortion movement over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, I have argued that the national movement underwent a fundamental shift that occurred as a result of both the changed political climate and the realities of federal coalition building. The early years of the movement were a time when right-to-lifers were remarkably open to divergent philosophical

7 Faux, Crusaders, 63.

185 and political opinions amongst both their grassroots activists and their national representatives. The movement envisaged itself as appealing to a broad cross-section of American society, and accepted a variety of approaches to the dilemma posed by legalized abortion. As discussed in chapter one, in the early 1970s, the right-to-lifers in AUL argued over exceptions, direct mail, and education. These debates, which occurred prior to the decision in Roe v. Wade, were essentially about how opposition to abortion should develop as a social movement, and they demonstrate the strength of moderates within the movement. Chapter two analyzed the reaction of right-to-lifers to the 1976 presidential election, and argued that anti-abortionists, acting as both individuals and as members of local and state groups, participated in the democratic process by focusing on educational materials and encouraging informed decision making. Although neither Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter clearly offered an acceptable position on abortion, movement activists such as Marjory Mecklenburg and Frances Frech encouraged right-to-lifers to view the elections as a time to build coalitions and form political alliances. The third chapter centered on ACCL and its activities relating to sexuality. It suggested that in the late 1970s, members of this group deliberately pursued ideas about social issues and the role of the government that allowed it to form alliances with people from across the political spectrum. Although not all in the movement may have agreed with the ideas of Professor George Williams of AUL or Marjory Mecklenburg of ACCL, this did not preclude them from leadership positions, and nor did it make them believe that they did not have the right to speak on behalf of the movement as a whole. The second half of this thesis explored how this movement that valued moderation and diversity responded to both the growth of conservatism and its own increasing access to federal power. Chapter four argued that right-to-life leaders such as Mecklenburg feared the political power wielded by the “New Right” in the late 1970s. She and members of ACCL attempted to persuade anti-abortionists about the danger of forming too close a bond with social conservatives, and emphasized the importance of viewing such an alliance in terms of its long-term effect rather than simply focusing on the short-term gains. ACCL’s activities against the “New Right” stemmed in part from the fact that many prominent right-to-life leaders threw their weight behind Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign, but once Reagan was elected, even these leaders began to question the nature of this new alliance. As Reagan began his first term in office, many anti-abortionists believed that their

186 struggle to end legalized abortion might be coming to an end, but as chapter five demonstrated, this was a period of intense disappointment for many activists. This chapter examined the fights that occurred over Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court as well as Congressional efforts to end abortion, and argued that these events early in Reagan’s presidency indicated the fragile nature of the alliance between the “New Right,” anti-abortionists, and the Reagan administration. The final chapter explored that relationship between anti-abortionists and the White House during Reagan’s second term in office, and it suggested in the fight over the Grove City bill, historians are presented with a moment when a moderate right-to-life group such as the NRLC struggled to distinguish itself from the ideas and tactics of social conservatives and the Reagan administration. Furthermore, it provided an overview of the relationship between anti-abortion leaders and the White House during Reagan’s two terms in office, and posited that the symbolic relationship between movement leaders and the White House eventually restricted the types of ideas and tactics advocated by those opposed to abortion. In the end, the anti-abortion movement became increasingly identified with the Right not because the two groups shared an underlying worldview but because of the active intervention of the “New Right” and the Reagan administration. During the 1970s, socially conservative politics were not upheld as the only possible response to legalized abortion. Indeed, some groups went so far as to explore the possibility of developing relationships with those on the political Left, a scenario that seems almost impossible to imagine in the contemporary United States. Although it may now appear as though that moment has passed forever, it is important to acknowledge and explore the nuances that existed amongst right- to-lifers, for they offer fresh insights into the development of single-issue politics in the post-World War II period. In the early years of the right-to-life movement, some of the individuals and organizations that were active cannot be easily categorized as either politically Left or Right. By exploring the early history of the anti-abortion movement, I have attempted to problematize versions of contemporary American history that chart the swift ascendance of the “New Right” in the late 1970s and the triumph of conservatism in the political and social realm. If the right-to-life movement did not form an easy partnership with the “New Right,” despite their supposedly shared worldview, we should not assume that every single-issue group that fell under the umbrella of the “New Right” was a natural ally or shared the values

187 of conservatives. To truly understand the United States of today, historians must first understand the events that gave rise to the seemingly entrenched social and cultural divisions that now exist within the country, even if that means considering the possibility that the anti- abortion movement once attempted to negotiate a position that would allow them to persuade and speak to all Americans rather than to preach only to the converted.

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Flowers, Prudence

Title: Compromise and conflict in the fight to end legalized abortion in the United States, 1971-88

Date: 2008

Citation: Flowers, P. (2008). Compromise and conflict in the fight to end legalized abortion in the United States, 1971-88. PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne.

Publication Status: Unpublished

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/39558

File Description: Compromise and conflict in the fight to end legalized abortion in the United States, 1971-88

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