The Great Abortion Switcheroo

TALKING POLITICS

Catherine Carr

News, News & Politics

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the final episode of our American Histories series, Sarah Churchwell tells the incredible story of the politics of abortion during the 1970s. How did evangelicals go from supporting abortion to being its die-hard opponents, what did the switch have to do with the politics of race and what have been the lasting consequences for American democracy?

Talking Points:

A lot of people think that the U.S. abortion debate started in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, and that evangelical republicans have always been anti-abortion. Both assumptions are wrong.

There weren’t many laws against abortion in the United States until after the Civil War.
After the Civil War there were large waves of migration. This led to a rise of nativism. Many early abortion laws were rooted in scientific racism and anxieties over ‘race suicide.’

Initially, the Democrats pandered to the Catholics by taking on a more pro-life position.

Evangelicals were not particularly politically active (with a brief exception in the 1920s and 30s). Republicans wanted to change this.
Roe v. Wade was fought on a right to privacy issue. Abortion was seen as a thing that white, middle class people did in their home.
Evangelical Christian magazines, even in the years immediately after Roe, tended to characterize abortion as a question of indiivdual health, family welfare, and social responsibility.
Yet by 1978, this had completely flipped. What happened?

After Brown v. Board desegregated schools, a bunch of white Christians created whites-only Christian academies and claimed tax-exempt status.

Anxiety about the federal government interfering in Christian life got caught up in itself.
Abortion for many became a proxy issue: it was easier (and more politically acceptable) to oppose abortion than integration.

Today the battlelines feel entrenched and we could be moving towards the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

But these are not immutable dividing lines in American politics.
This doesn’t mean that abortion isn’t extremely important to many evangelicals: it is. But it’s important to recognize the contingency in what questions are politically central.

Further Learning:

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, my name is David Runseman and this is Talking Politics. We've reached the final
0:15.0	episode in our American History series. And Sarah Churchill is going to explain the remarkable
0:20.9	story of how the politics of abortion turned around in the 1970s. How did its friends become
0:28.6	its implacable enemies? Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London
0:37.6	Review of Books. This Christmas, it's Thoughts that Counts. Give everyone you know a subscription
0:43.8	to the LRB for just 1999 and they'll throw in a free 2020 calendar featuring some of the
0:50.8	best of their fantastic cover art. Find this special festive offer at lrb.me forward slash Christmas.
1:03.4	The politics of abortion in America deeply contentious but in a way people seem to make two
1:09.8	assumptions that are broadly shared I think. One is that it begins with Roe vs. Wade, that's the
1:15.8	historical beginning point 1973 and also that evangelical Republicans are anti-abortion and that
1:25.5	means that people on the other side are pro-choice. You're going to tell me I think that both of those
1:32.8	assumptions are wrong. So let's start with the first that the role of abortion in American politics is a
1:39.6	post 1973 shortly pre and then post. It doesn't go back in the history of the Republic but it does.
1:46.9	Well and I think yes that is the assumption but I think there's a concomitant assumption that's
1:50.8	also wrong which is that in a sense it does go all the way back through the Republic but that it
1:54.4	was just always illegal and that it only becomes an issue once Roe vs. Wade overturned centuries of
1:59.9	quote unquote normal practice where of course in traditional life abortion was illegal and Roe vs. Wade
2:05.2	overturns all of that in the evangelicals instantly go crazy and that's the kind of standard take I
2:09.4	think and they're both both aspects of that are wrong. So there wasn't actually much law against
2:14.6	abortion in the United States until after the Civil War and up until that point what laws
2:20.9	there were were by state as was so often the case in America and what laws they had attended to be
2:26.4	on the basis of what they called quickening and quickening was when you could feel a baby move
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Catherine Carr, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Catherine Carr and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.