@KevinMKruse Also, I would add that much of Southern Baptist indifference to abortion was shaped by the fact that Catholics dominated the early pro-life movement. Anti-Catholicism was a more powerful driver of Southern Baptist ideas than pro-life theology for a moment.
@KevinMKruse W. A. Criswell, at time the most important SBC preacher, said this about Catholic pro-life mvmt just after Roe: "I think the Catholics have it in their heads…that they’re going to outbreed the rest of us...I just think that’s their way of survival and it’s working pretty good."
@KevinMKruse In 1967, the SBC passed a resolution driven by concerns of overpopulation that advised married couples to make “judicious use of medically approved methods of planned parenthood and the dissemination of planned parenthood information."
@KevinMKruse The 1971 “Resolution on Abortion” called for Southern Baptists to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity...
@KevinMKruse ...and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
@KevinMKruse This statement would later be cited in appeals to the Supreme Court to legalize abortion with Roe v. Wade.
@KevinMKruse After Roe passed in 1973, the SBC passed a resolution in 1974 that reaffirmed the 1971 statement and described it as reflecting “a middle ground between the extreme of abortion on demand and the opposite extreme of all abortion as murder.”
