The Manufactured War on Abortion: How the Religious Right Hijacked a Non-Issue
How racism, politics, and power fueled the anti-abortion movement
This is a relatively high level overview of why we are still banging our heads against the wall fighting for basic reproductive healthcare for all. Further reading is linked at the bottom for those who want a deeper dive.
Intro
If you grew up in the US, you probably heard that abortion has always been one of the biggest moral issues in politics, something the church has opposed for centuries. But that’s a lie.
For most of American history, abortion wasn’t a church issue. It wasn’t even a political issue. The evangelical obsession with abortion didn’t start until the 1970s, and even then, it wasn’t about saving babies. It was about power. Specifically, it was about white evangelicals scrambling for a new cause after their original rallying cry, segregation, became unjustifiable.
The Church Used to Be Pro-Choice
It’s wild to think about now, but there was a time when conservative Christians either supported abortion rights or didn’t care. The idea that abortion is the defining issue of Christianity is actually a recent invention.
In 1971, two years before Roe v. Wade, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution affirming abortion rights in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, and even emotional distress. They reaffirmed this stance in 1974 and again in 1976. The same denomination that now treats abortion as an unholy evil used to be publicly in favor of reproductive choice.
Even W.A. Criswell, one of the most powerful Southern Baptist leaders, praised Roe when it was decided in 1973. He said it aligned with their values of personal freedom.
The Catholic Church had always been against abortion, but their opposition was mostly theological, not political. There was no universal Christian philosophy that life began at conception. That idea was created for political reasons, not religious ones.
How Racism Became Abortion Politics
In the 1950s and 60s, white evangelicals weren’t rallying against abortion. They were rallying against desegregation.
After Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation unconstitutional in 1954, white Christians pulled their kids out of public schools and set up private Christian schools (known as segregation academies) to avoid integration. Evangelical leaders framed these schools as just ‘religious freedom,’ but the reality was that they existed to maintain segregation.
Then the government stepped in. In the 1970s, the IRS cracked down on these schools, threatening to revoke their tax-exempt status if they continued to exclude Black students.
Some argue the religious right wasn’t trying to protect segregation but was fighting government overreach. The Catholic League claims evangelical leaders saw the IRS crackdown as an attack on religious freedom, not race. But that argument ignores the context. Most of these schools were created specifically to resist desegregation. When the IRS moved to revoke their tax-exempt status, evangelical leaders didn’t openly defend segregation. Instead they claimed the fight was a religious liberty issue, which was more socially acceptable.
But by then the religious right had a bigger problem. The segregation fight was a losing battle. They needed a new issue to rally conservative Christians. That issue became abortion.
How Abortion Became a Political Weapon
At first, evangelicals didn’t really care. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, there was barely a reaction from evangelical leaders. But conservative political strategists, like Paul Weyrich saw an opportunity. They needed a new culture war, something to rally evangelicals just like segregation had. Abortion was the perfect issue. It was emotional. It allowed them to claim moral high ground. And it distracted from their original fight for racial segregation.
By the late 1970s, Weyrich teamed up with Jerry Falwell, and together they built a political movement that rebranded evangelicalism around “family values.” That phrase was vague enough to include anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, school prayer, and opposition to abortion.
The Republican party caught on fast. Ronald Reagan, who had signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in US history as governor of California in 1967, suddenly became extremely anti-abortion during the 1980 presidential election.
By that point, evangelicals had been fully convinced that abortion had always been the defining issue of their faith. The actual history was erased.
The Manufactured War Continues
Today we’re living with the consequences of that political bait-and-switch.
The religious right (originally mobilized by racism) successfully rebranded itself as a movement fighting for “the unborn.” The anti-abortion movement became a billion-dollar industry - funding crisis pregnancy centers designed to mislead women, restrictive laws disguised as moral victories, and a Supreme Court stacked with justices chosen specifically to dismantle Roe v. Wade.
The irony is obvious. The same people who scream about big government want the government controlling people’s bodies. The same institutions that once fought for religious freedom are now imposing their religious beliefs on an entire population.
And the most infuriating part is that it was never about life. It was never about babies. It was about power. The religious right didn’t lose their minds over abortion because they suddenly cared about embryos - they did it because they needed a new way to control the narrative after segregation was no longer a winning issue. And they pulled it off.
Further Reading
Abortion Bans Are Part Of A Larger Agenda To Roll Back Advances In Racial Justice And Women's Rights
The Real Origins of the Religious Right
The Religious Right and the Abortion Myth
Evangelicals didn't always play such a big role in the fight to limit abortion access