In light of all this #JaneRoe news - a little history (as I understand it). This is a long bit, so stay with me.
Essentially during the 1950's and 1960's Southern (white) evangelical leaders started getting really upset with anti-segregation laws - especially when it came to their churches and schools. T
They felt like they were losing control to the "government" and a "culture" trying to abolish racist policies. So they attempted to increasingly make both government and popular culture out to be evil, but we'll get more to that soon.
These racist, controlling, white Evangelicals were primarily "Democrats" at that point - along with most of the South.
Around that time - in the 1960's and 70's - an evangelical preacher named Francis Schaeffer was taking the US and Europe by storm. He's known now as the godfather of modern Evangelicalism.
He was actually pretty progressive for his time- his ministries welcomed unwed mothers and smoking weed. He was even an environmentalist and wrote a book called "Pollution and the Death of Man."
He was an avid hiker and art lover, and also abusive to his wife, Edith, who actually led much of his ministry, but that's a different story.
His son, Frank, was 17 when he got a girl pregnant. They decided to keep the baby and get married. This impacted him. When faced with abortion - which was more prevalent amongst Catholics during this time but wasn't yet a major evangelical or political issue - he got on board.
He made it his mission to get evangelicals on board, too. He was a savvy comms strategist and convinced his famous, super influential dad (who had up until then had stayed out of politics) to go on a speaking tour in the US - accompanied by a film crew - to speak against abortion
Needless to say, they enraged, engaged, and mobilized millions of American evangelicals - who up until this point had cared little to nothing about abortion.
The GOP saw this moment of opportunity and reached out to try and switch the large, influential Southern evangelical population - which mostly voted Democrat at that point - over to their side.
They cut a behind the scenes deal: we'll take up abortion as a primary issue, and fight for "state's rights" (aka segregation measures) if you deliver us voters. It worked and has ever since. White evangelicals went in mass from being Democrats to Republicans around this time.
Thus, the modern "religious right" was born - not founded on caring about babies - but racism, rather. The "pro-life" movement was never about life, it was always about power.
They do remain particularly savvy at comms strategy though, and still enrage, engage, and mobilize millions of (mostly white) evangelicals.
And for the record, @Frank_Schaeffer has now publicly apologized for his involvement in all this and is now a progressive author and thought leader. Please correct me if I'm wrong about anything I've said here, friend.
Fast forward: the reason good climate policy hasn't been adopted in the US? Or for that matter, why the coronavirus was so horribly handled? Or any other number of recent injustices? The GOP. Who drives the GOP? And got Trump elected? Culture war voters. Anti-abortion voters.
Who are being used. The GOP leadership doesn't care about his clear lack of leadership or decent humanity - or the fact that almost 100,000 Americans are dead. And they don't care about abortion - they care about winning. They care about power.
That's only ever what it's been about. Us vs. them. My team vs. yours. Winning. Power. Control.
<the end>
