Fiorentino Lysiane

391 Social Movements

December 17th 2009
Pro-Life Movement in the U.S.A.

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 The origins of the pro-life movement found its roots in a

nineteenth century movement led by doctors and physicians

opposing the practice of abortion.

However, anti-abortion really became a social movement during the

1960s with the goal of preventing abortion to become legal

throughout the United States through collective action led by several

organizations and networks.

The sexual revolution and the second wave of feminism had

witnessed the growth of individualism by redefining gender roles

among the American society and more especially for women who

where now able to control their bodies and their sexuality.

To the eyes of many activists, the sexual revolution was seen as not

only a threat to American traditional values but also casted doubt on

the sancticity of life.

The Anti-Abortion Movement was soon know as the Pro-Life

Movement as its activists argued that life begins at the moment of the

conception.

As we look upon the history and the development of the Pro-Life

Movement, we can identity three noticeable trends among the

movement: the initial call for civil disobedience and non violent

action, the religious zeal fed by fundamentalists joining the

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movement and the call for “guerrilla legislation” by extremist pro-

lifers.

In our paper, we shall focalize in these three trends and show how

the movement moved from a grass-root organization to being the

major component of the New Religious Right.

We will further focus our attention on how acts of violence against

abortion providers and clinics occurred frequently and eventually

harmed the credibility of the Pro-Life Movement.

In our last part, we will refer to Bill Moyer’s Doing Democracy : The

MAP for Organizing Social Movements, William Gamson’s The strategy

of Social Protest and Linda Stout’s Bridging the Class Divide to analyze

the failures of the movement and imagine new strategies for pro-life

activists to achieve their political and social goals.

Throughout our paper, I will imagine encounters and experiences

lived and shared by activists, abortion providers and women seeking

abortions so as to really to dive into the Pro-Life Movement.

The scene takes place in a small building at night in St Louis,

Missouri. The room is small and modest, yet it seems to have reached

its full capacity. The audience is made up of young, old, white, black

people who are silently waiting for the man who stands on the stage

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to speak. When he finally does, he makes himself heard through the

whole room and the tension seems to reach its peak:

“ As I look upon this room, there is this voice in my head that tells me

that I’m not alone. And now you can tell yourself that you are not

alone, Roe v. Wade may have been a success for abortionists but we

still have God by our side. He give us the strength to keep on fighting

just like he filled the Civil Right activists with dreams and hopes of a

better world to live for them and their children”.

In his book, Bill Moyer emphasizes the role of the citizen as a person

who seeks the public good and “give the movement legitimacy in the

eyes of ordinary citizens”1. Most of the time, the citizen just like

Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, opposes violence attitudes

and encourages non-violent direct actions.

It is worth noticing that the beginnings of the movement shared

similarities with the fight against the Apartheid in South Africa or the

Civil Rights movement in the USA.

First of all, they all cherish the Gandhian idea of civil obedience, that

is to say that all authority comes from the cooperation of the people

and social change can only be obtained with a withdrawing of

support.

1
Doing Democracy : The MAP model for Organizing Social Movements, p.24

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Second of all, many scholars agreed that to the eye of the public,

Martin Luther King was often seen as the charismatic leader of the

Civil Rights Movements because of the numerous emotionally and

religiously charged speeches he gave.

Pro-life organizations emerged in St Louis, Missouri shortly after the

Supreme Court of the United States of America declared abortion

legal via Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

The movement was prominently made up of Catholic activists who

had been encouraged by the St Louis Cardinal John Carberry to join

became active in the fight against abortion.

In Enemies of Choice, Merton underlines the importance of the

Catholic Church at the beginning of the pro-life movement.

Members of the Catholic Church in the USA had voiced their

disapproval of the steps taken by the American government towards

sexual revolution: in 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

approved the general use of birth control pill for women and in 1965,

the government was pouring millions of dollars into family planning

efforts around the country.

In 1968, Pope Paul IV issued Human Vitae that voiced the Catholic

Church ‘s opposition to any artificial birth control and insisted on the

sancticity of life.

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A Catholic man named Kevin created The Pro-Life Non Violent Action

Project (PNLAP) who was reportedly deeply influenced by Martin

Luther King’s methodology of civil disobedience.

The PNLAP cherished the idea of non-violent action and harbored

different tactics to counterattack the legalization of abortion:

- They would organize sit-in sections in front of clinics

- They would organize lectures to reinforce the educational

impact of their activism.

- They would hand out pictures of aborted babies to shock the

public: “Another photo shows two tiny, detacher arms and two

legs against a pulpy red background. Other show whole fetuses

bloody and discolored, aborted by hysterectomy or saline

injection”.2

- They would go to talk to women about to enter abortion clinics.

Jane* is a young woman in her twenties who decided to have an

abortion. As she is about to enter a clinic, a woman who is handing

flyers that reads, “Abortion is not a solution, it is America’s problem”,

approaches her. As she asks several questions to Jane about her age

and her social condition, she points out that she is more than

welcome to come to the events organized by the PNLAP.

2
Enemies of the Choice, p.11

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No one would judge her over there; they just want to show her that

abortion is not the only option.

“Have you ever considered putting up your child for adoption?”

“There are thousands of couples who are desperate to become

parents and you might be the one who would give them this chance.”

By 1970s, more than 100 abortion clinics had experienced sit-ins and

more than 40,000 individuals had participated in sit-ins at abortion

facilities.

It became obvious that Catholicism was at the heart of right-to-life

philosophy and in May 1973, the US Catholic Conference’s Life

Division organizes the National Right to Life Committee.

Catholic activists not only sought to appeal to the emotions, they also

had the primary goal to embrace a political change by overturning

the ruling of Roe v. Wade.

By the end of the seventies, their activism seemed to have paid off

since they had encountered legislative success in Texas and Georgia

and with the 1976 Hyde Amendment that has eliminated abortion

from health plans of Medicaid.

These victories fed the movement and motivated activist to go

further that is to say to reach the political level.

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The National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a resolution to

embark on a political crusade at the grass root level to achieve a

constitutional amendment outlawing abortion.

The scene takes place in an amphitheater in North Carolina.

As we enter, we saw thousands of people, all stood up, fidgety with all

eyes turned to the stage. A man stepped up, as he waived at his

enthusiastic public, we can hear them screaming his name: Jerry

Falwell.

“ As you may know my friends, I’ve always devoted my life to satisfy

God. As I look upon America today, I cannot help to see its impending

doom, as we seem to have taken the wrong path.

We are a nation under God. God gave us democracy through Madison

and Washington, and as a devoted believer and citizen I created the

Moral Majority to become politically involved in our crusade against

abortion. As I stand tonight before you, I’m happy to announce you

that the Moral Majority is officially endorsing Republican Candidate

Ronald Reagan for the Presidential Election “

The end of the 1970s soon joined the Pro-Life Movement that had

been essentially dominated by Catholics joined by Protestant

evangelicals and fundamentalists.

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We can notice that the Pro-Life Movement witnessed two radical

changes during the eighties: an increasing religious zeal and a push a

more decisive political involvement.

Through their non-violence actions, the activists of the Pro-Life

encountered several victories such as in Maher v. Roe in 1977 and

Harries v. McRae in 1980 that banned public funding for abortion

services.

Protestant denominations that supported the movement had

remained quite silent and did not get involved until the end of the

1970s. Their presence became soon so influential within the

movement that Ducan, an evangelical, replaced the Catholic Kevin for

the leadership of the PNLCAP.

A survey showed that at the beginning of the 1980s, more than 60%

of believers affiliated with a fundamentalist or evangelical

denomination opposed the Roe v. Wade decision.

As the organizations such as the NRLC embrace more and more

Protestant activists, the Pro-life also became more politically engaged

with the creation of the National Pro-life Political Committee (NPL-

PAC) and the Life Amendment Political Action Committee, which

emerged the need for a “political climate to improve chances for the

passage of human life amendment”.3

3
Enemies of the choice, p.160

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The movement did not deny its Gandhian heritage but realized it that

to achieve effective changes in the administration they needed to

reach the next level: politics.

In Doing Democracy : The MAP Model for Organizing Social

Movements, Bill Moyer identifies eight stages of the process of social

movement success and we can say that at the beginning of the

eighties, the Pro-life movement was embracing the sixth stage: it had

succeeded into winning public opinion by recruiting more and more

activists over the years. It was then the good time to target at the

power holders and to do so they needed

To have representatives of their beliefs within the judiciary and the

legislative branches of the government.

The Political Action Committee had distinct advantages over the

National Right to Life Committee in the extent that it could take direct

political action and act fast.

Moreover, contrary to the NRLC, the PAC was willing to speak out

about other issues linked to the “pro-family” movement whereas the

NRLC built the strongest collation to support a human life

amendment: “LAPAC is a Political Action Committee targeting at the

defeat of legislation that is being designed for the destruction of the

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American family and, at the same time, sponsoring legislation that

reinforces Christian family values “.4

The newly political groups soon became known as the New Religious

Right that would bring inconsiderable votes for the “born again”

Republican Party, which, by 1980, had adopted an extremist position

of the right-to-life movement.

The Republican Party later wrote into its platform a plank supporting

“ the efforts of those who seek enactment of the human life

amendment”5.

The Republican candidate Ronald Reagan was set to conquer the

Religious Right and Pro-life Movement with a pro-family agenda,

which happened to be successful when he was endorsed by LAPAC,

NPL-SAC and major right-to-life leaders.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan is the first American president of the United

States to be elected with political commitments to the anti-choice

movement to the anti-choice movement.

With Reagan president, the Pro-life movement was now decided to

influence Congress in engaging and supporting an agenda that would

dismantle Roe v. Wade.

Indeed, Reagan was then seen as able to appoint judges who

4
Enemies of the Choice, p.165
5
Enemies of the Choice, p.169

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supported the anti-choice agenda so as to have both the judicial and

the executive branches of the government on their side:

“ The Roe decision created a huge well funded and well organized

backlash to the abortion rights. The Right-to-Life Committee

launched a campaign in Congress to amend the Constitution to undo

the Supreme Court’s decision”.6

Ronald Reagan replaced three of the justices that had supported Roe

V. Wade and among the three new ones was anti-Roe Justice Antonin

Scalia.

The high days of the Pro-Life Movement seemed to come when the

ruling of 1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services imposed

restrictions on abortion services in Missouri and declared that life

begins at conception.

Many pro-choice movements declared that the ruling was a challenge

to the integrity of Roe v. Wade and groups such as NARAL and NOW

organized the biggest Pro-choice march on Washington since the

Vietnam War.

It is worth noticing that as the movement seemed to embrace its first

political successes, it also witnessed an escalation of violence.

6
The War on Choice, p.124

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The tactics moved away from the idea of civil disobedience and

seemed to adopt the biblical-connoted “rescue” where activists

would enter clinics to create unrest.

Sit-ins became more disruptive as repression and violence against

picketers became more and more frequent.

Acts of violence among the movement increased from 50% to 300%

from 1988 to 1992 as for the use of hate mails and harassing calls.

The scene takes place in a house in Florida. Doctor Smith* is an

abortion provider living in a suburban era with his wife and his two

kids. While they are all ready to have dinner, his wife Sophie* goes to

the mailbox and comes back into the house with two envelopes. One

is addressed to her older daughter and the other one to Doctor

Smith*. He proceeds to open the letter that reads:

“Dear Baby Killer, You have just been exposed to anthrax”.

In Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-life, Carol Mason

identifies anthrax threats as “the latest methods in decades of

increasingly clandestine and sophisticated efforts to terrorize

citizens devoted to reproductive freedom and health care for

women”.

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She further adds “pro-life violence of the 1990s signaled a move

away from protest and a move toward retribution”. 7

We may ask ourselves how pro-lifers went from civil disobedience to

civil war? We saw in the above part that Pro-life organizations made

their best to overturn the ruling of Roe v. Wade through legislation

and politics.

However even though they succeeded into making it more difficult

for a woman to have an abortion, Roe v. Wade was still undefeated at

the beginning of the 1990s, which led some activists to “vilify, harass

and intimidate when they could not change the laws legitimately” 8.

Those activists could be identified as negative rebels by Bill Moyer

because their perception of failure led them to take drastic measures.

At the beginning of the eighties, Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie

founded the American Life Lobby and joined Jerry Falwell’s Moral

Majority.

They received financial and strategic help from the New Right and by

1984, ALL had 68,000 subscribers and the organization had

established working liaisons with 4,000 groups nationwide.

It is worth noticing that the organizations did not lose the religious

language of the eighties but the message became quite different.

7
Killing For Life, p.4
8
The War on Choice, p.124

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The leaders insisted that abortion was an apocalypse, “a revelation of

how immoral America has become”9.

Even though some activists kept in touch with the original civil

disobedience message by refusing to pay taxes that would go

eventually to abortion clinics, the media became to focus their

attention to extremists who made the womb their battlefield.

In 1998, a group named the Army of God claimed the responsibility

for a series of bombings on an abortion clinic in Alabama.

Soon the public knew the term “guerilla legislation”: “Legislation is

the result of a formalized and painstakingly slow legal process

whereas guerilla is radical, random and often violent and illegal”. The

oxymoron of the term revealed the contradiction of the movement,

they were ready to kill so as to stop baby killing.

More than the use of biological weapon Anthrax that needed the

buildings to be scrubbed down by special hazardous chemical

emergency crews, clinics in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee were

the victims of highly toxic chemical that causes nausea, irritation of

eye and throat, nose and skin.

Yet, the bombs were not only made to destroy buildings but also to

kill and aim people.

9
Killing for Life, p.2

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Carol Mason emphasized that the violent trend within the pro-life

movement led to the assassination of seven abortion providers and

clinic personnel since 1993, the fire-bombings of hundred clinics

since 1980s, the sabotage of clinics with butyric acid and

psychological warfare tactics of fake anthrax and regular death

threats.

We might recall the murders of abortion providers David Gunn in

Florida and Barnet Slepian in New York.

It is worth noticing that when The Army of God promoted violence,

some other pro-life groups focused on lawful and legal means to

promote pro-life legislation and litigation.

Nonetheless, many of the Americans associated the pro-life

movement with the domestic terrorism spread by those extreme

groups and they gained the alienation of the majority of the American

population. They lost a number of ballot iniatives that attempted to

outlaw abortion and the federal ban abortion vetoed twice by

President Clinton in 1995 and 1997.

We can then draw the conclusion that the violence assimilated to the

Pro-life movement seriously affected its future and associated the

image of anti-abortionists with those of terrorists.

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 Before drawing any conclusions on the future and the latest

victories of the Pro-life movement, I would like to underline and

understand the failures of the movement by referring to the three

main authors we studied during the semester and imagine a

conversation between the three of them.

If they were all present in a room, my question would be: according

to you, what factors prevented the Pro-life movement from being an

efficient social movement?

Bill Moyer: “If we refer to my book, I would say that they were 3 main

factors: the use of media, the public opinion and their failure to focus

on one main issue.

I agree with Gloria Feldt’s The war on choice in which she underlines

the manipulation of the media and how several scandals on television

tarnished the image of the movement: for instance, a representative

of the NRLC was invited and declared that Gunn’s murder was “as

good as Dr Mengele being killed”.

Television and media know how to manipulate people, they know

how to influence people on who is the bad guy and who is the good

guy, and “TV network appear to legitimize people who support

murder, when right-wing extremists are given airtime the true

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debate is frozen”10. To the eye of average Joe, Pro-life is unfortunately

assimilated with extremists.

The sixth stage of the MAP emphasizes that you have to win the

majority of public opinion, whereas here we witnessed a minority

gaining control in politics.

I would say that the majority wanted Roe v. Wade to remain

untouched and several polls have showed that Americans are not

ready to reconsider the legalization of abortion.

At last, I would say that their alliance with other political groups that

focused on family values such as the threat of homosexuality on the

nuclear family drove them away from their main issue and their main

target. You have to remain clear and focus on one issue to win public

opinion.

As for violence…

William Gamson : “I have shown in my book that violence never

helped any social movements.

The repression they encountered by police forces didn’t help them to

the eyes of the public and even less when pro-lifers became to use

violence to pressure government. It’s more than obvious that it didn’t

work since no political representative would want to be assimilated

with domestic terrorism, even more after 9/11”

10
The War on Choice, p.197

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Linda Stout : “Regarding public opinion, I’ve already expressed in my

book how I had to overcome language and social barriers.

The Hyde Amendment, which cuts funding for Medicaid, affected

mostly low-income women and black women.

Most of the women in the Pro-life movement did not rely on Medicaid

so they could not understand other social classes.

Moreover, as a woman, I can say that the movement did not appeal to

women in general because fundamentalists questions their right to

control their own bodies and identified them with diminished

powers of reasons.”

What is the future of the Pro-life Movement?

The movement seemed to embrace political success with the two

elections of President George W. Bush who declared that he will “do

everything in his power to restrict abortion”.

In 2003, President Push signed the “Partial Abortion Act” that was

the first federal law to criminalize abortion and prohibited a form of

late term abortion (extraction of the fetus in second/third semester).

Under Bush’s administration, funding for family planning services

became more restricted and abortion services became more difficult

to obtain. Sexual education was replaced with “abstinence-only”

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education programs and lower federal courts were filled with anti-

choice judges.

Yet just as the prospects of legislative and judicial support for pro-life

movement increased, so did the use of violence and personal

harassment.

In 2008, Pro-life movement didn’t play as an important role as it did

back in 2000 and 2004.

We cannot deny it’s not influential in politics and we can’t affirm that

the movement is dead since it’s still active nowadays with the Health

Care Bill.

If I had an advice to give to the movement, it would be to try to

appeal more to women in general and to move away from the

“untermenschen” idea that a woman is inferior to a man and “third in

line behind God and man”. Since their bodies are at stake, they should

be in the heart of the debate and not put in the background.

My last advice would be to use more wisely media and not to let

extremist that are surely not “pro-lifers” become the face of the

movement.

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Bibliography:

- Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning, Motivation and direct

action by Carol Maxwell
- Opposition and Intimidation: the abortion wars and strategies of
political harassment by Alesha Doan
- The war on choice: the right-wing attack on women’s rights and
how to fight back by Gloria Feldt
- Killing for life: the apocalyptic narrative of pro-life politics by
Carol Mason
- Souls, bodies and spirits: the drive to abolish abortion since 1973
by Kerry Jacoby

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- Enemies of the choice: the right-to-life movement and its threat
to abortion by Andrew Merton

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