Thread by @sourjayne

Abortion wasn't always an issue for the evangelist right. Historically, church leaders believed abortion was a health issue, too complex & personal for government.

politico.com/magazine/story…

In 1968 a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society & Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, & social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy.

In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention encouraged legislation “that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, & the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, & physical health of the mother.”

Texas fundamentalist pastor W. A. Criswell: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born & had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, & it has always seemed to me that what is best for the mother & for the future should be allowed.”

Baptists, in particular, applauded the Roe v Wade decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church & state, between personal morality & state regulation of individual behavior.

“Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

Abortion was deliberately brought into politics as a strategic decision, after decades of focus groups looking for an issue that would mobilize enough evangelical voters to win majorities in elections.

The aim was to get evangelical leaders into positions of political power so they could ultimately continue running their whites-only schools as “charitable” (tax-exempt) institutions after the desegregation of public schools in the ’60s.

Losing tax-exempt status meant “persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.” In other words, the government no longer sanctioned racists funding racist schools tax-free.

The evangelical school leaders were pissed at what they perceived to be governmental intrusion into their religious freedom.

But they were politically savvy enough to know they wouldn't be able to mobilize a nationwide majority on the basis of racial discrimination alone.

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, rallied evangelicals to create a “moral majority” that “will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.”

(Sounds familiar, right?)

“For nearly 2 decades, Weyrich had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools … ‘I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,’ Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.”

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s.

He knew exactly what he was doing, and played y'all like a fiddle.

Between the Civil Rights Act in the ’50s until Roe v Wade in the ’70s, apparently, Weyrich tried unsuccessfully to mobilize his “moral majority.” He didn't find a way until 1978, when he saw pro-life activists influence enough voters in the midwest to win Senate seats in MN & IA.

I can imagine how, after 2 decades of fixating on winning his moral majority, Weyrich became maniacally blinded to facts, like that fellow evangelist President Carter wanted to reduce incidence of abortion, or that Reagan signed a liberal abortion bill into CA law in 1967.

Weyrich managed to rally his fellow evangelicals against a 2nd Carter term & for Reagan's anti-regulatory governmental stance. A poll suggested Carter would have won the popular vote by a margin of 1 percent had it not been for the machinations of the religious right.

Adorably, when one of the segregated schools' appeals for tax-exempt status reached the supreme court in ’83, the court ruled against the school in an 8-to-1 decision. Three years later Reagan elevated the sole dissenter, William Rehnquist, to chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Rehnquist opposed Roe v. Wade and continued to argue that Roe had been incorrectly decided in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Also, interestingly, in Bush v. Gore, Rehnquist voted with the court's majority to end the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election.

Anyway, I find all this interesting because it shows how strategic the right has been in carrying out their anti-regulation agenda by linking moral issues to it that get voters riled up. It's why the conservative stance seems so illogical — it is.

I know women, even women of color, so blinded by pro-life propaganda, who refused to vote for Hillary because she's pro-choice. When black activists pointed out white women helped elect Trump, despite his misogynist depravity, I think about this mess. It's racism under cover.

So once again, for the generation new to this debate, being pro-choice doesn't mean you love killing babies. It just means the choice has too many complexities for the clumsy realm of legislation to be involved. It means caring about the life of the mother & her bodily autonomy.

If you consider yourself #ProLife, seriously examine the consequences *to life* of being anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-healthcare, anti-welfare, anti-living minimum wage, anti-gun reform, anti-safety regulations, anti-climate action

Joy Ann Reid says it best:

https://twitter.com/thereidout/status/1433947448611835910?s=20