Pro-Life Movement, Know Thyself
The Left does not understand why we and our movement don’t implode, collapse, or otherwise dry up and blow away.
Daniel K. Williams, in his stunning new book Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade answers that question in 365 pages of carefully documented (96 pages of footnotes and index!) research and highly readable prose.
In the eyes of the mass media (and the current pro-choice movement), the alliance between the pro-life movement and the Republican Party seems set in stone.
For the pro-life movement, however, the relationship with the Republican Party remains in the courtship phase. Both are still trying to figure out whether their worldviews are truly compatible. The reality is that the family tree of the pro-life movement does not share many roots with the Republican Party—and prior to the late 1970s, very few branches.
Williams’ thesis is that the pro-life movement did not emerge in 1973 but in 1937. It began, he argues, as a human rights movement—what it is rediscovering itself to be today. That is why it has survived against all odds.
The movement, as Williams describes it, was founded by Catholics. To understand how this happened, one must know something about Catholics in America in the first half of the 20th century. Most of them were children or grandchildren of immigrants who had no cultural loyalty to the upper classes they perceived the Republican Party to represent. Many of these immigrants, indeed, had been victims of laissez-faire economic policies that compelled their emigration.
Case in point this Saint Patrick’s Day: There should have been no famine in Ireland in 1845-52. Only the potato crop failed. Ireland continued to export grain and livestock throughout those years—even as well over a million people were starving to death and another million were emigrating. The potato was the food that almost alone had sustained millions of Catholic peasants. Now their landlords, looking to invest in the more profitable livestock business—and to clear their land of what they viewed as an inferior race—were happy to buy them tickets to America.
The upper classes in England felt no obligation to help the starving. Indeed, Rev. Malthus maintained that the failure of the potato crop was the hand of Providence seeking to restore a proper balance of population and land. Others maintained that the blight was a sign of God’s displeasure because Parliament had legalized “Popery” in 1829.
When the Irish reached the promised land of America, few had any fondness for absentee landlords, aristocracy, or wealth. Nor did their children and grandchildren who, like other Catholic immigrants, had to fight religious discrimination in the largely protestant country.
Meanwhile Catholic social teaching about labor and capital was articulated and formalized, notably by Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, and this resonated with Irish Catholics, who were mainly blue-collar workers—and Democrats. They were among the most enthusiastic supporters of FDR’s New Deal, which they saw as providing jobs and food to the hungry.
Born and nurtured in the heart of the Democrat Party, “the pro-life movement succeeded because it drew on the same language of human rights, civil rights, and the value of human life that inspired the struggle for African American freedom, the feminist movement, antiwar protests, and the campaign for the rights of gays and lesbians,” writes Williams.
It was to defend human dignity that Catholics in the 1920s opposed eugenics laws that led to mass involuntary sterilizations in America—long before Adolf Hitler. It was why they supported New Deal programs in the 1930s and joined the civil-rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s.
Republicans were on the opposite side of most of these issues.
When the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down on January 22, 1973, government lawyer Nellie Gray assumed her heroes in the Senate would quickly remedy what was obviously a mistake. I remember hearing her describe the utter shock she felt when she discovered that it was Republican senators (Jim Buckley and Jesse Helms in particular) who would listen to her when she visited them.
Gray founded the March for Life because, well, that’s how liberals launched protest movements and human-rights campaigns. But this one didn’t work out the way earlier campaigns had because the fundamental consensus about the intrinsic value of every human life had disappeared when no one was watching—well before 1973.
As pelvic politics gained control of the Democrat Party, its common ground with Catholics evaporated. Individual rights (of women who wanted abortions) trumped the human-rights focus that had previously defined the party. When the party wrote abortion into its platform at the 1976 convention, the pro-life cause became politically homeless.
Meanwhile, Paul Weyrich had been busy grafting the pro-life issue onto the Republican agenda. The son of an urban blue-collar Catholic immigrant, Weyrich knew how to use shoe-leather politics to win elections—something Republicans did not know how to do. But he would only help candidates who agreed to support a Human Life Amendment.
Ronald Reagan endorsed the Human Life Amendment in 1975; it was written into the GOP platform in 1976. By 1980, an engagement was announced between the pro-life movement and Republicans as “Reagan Democrats” surged into the party. Ever since, it’s been an ongoing, mostly happy, relationship – but this year’s so-far-from-typical presidential campaign may determine whether a wedding date can be set.
It is possible that the 2016 election may provoke yet another realignment, one that only a novelist can imagine right now.
In Williams’ words, historians have “mischaracterized both the chronology of the pro-life movement and its ideological origins.” Thanks to his book, the pro-life movement has no excuse for ignoring its own philosophical geneaology as it heads into the future.
Connie Marshner is a commentator and researcher on life and family issues in the Washington, D.C., area.
Great article, Connie. I had no idea about the prolife Democratic roots.
Thank you, Julie. Get Daniel Williams’ book — it’s a valuable contribution to the conversation!
I look forward to sharing this with many friends in the pro life and the religious liberty cause.
This actually makes sense of a lot of “paradoxes” in the pro-life movement that have puzzled me. I do remember hearing different Catholic Democrats articulate that, aside from abortion (and now, “gay marriage”) the Democrat party is the more natural home of the serious Catholic. But I’m still not sure if that’s completely true. I think the issue of how much control a government should exercise over the economy, balancing individual freedoms with the common good, is the other large issue that even the Church as Teacher is divided on, and good Catholics find things to agree with on both side. I find the economic issue to be divisive even among pro-life Catholics, and thus, while I agree that in some ways, the Democratic party was ONCE the more natural ally of Catholics, I don’t know if that’s still true, given how much the economic issues have changed. But all very interesting!
Regina,
You’re onto something: the labels we grew up with mean nothing today. I’ll go you one further: IMHO, the current Democratic party is a sworn enemy of Catholics–and indeed of all Christians–and of every aspect of the pro-life cause. Its continuous pursuit of pelvic politics has required it to trample the freedom of conscience that Democrats were the most vocal in advocating in the 1960’s and 70’s. Time was, it was “Democratic” to talk about the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood, and the obligation of employers to create a supportive environment for the discharge of those responsibilities. But now it’s Republicans who talk about responsibilities and the dignity of work, and the necessity of economic freedom as a prerequisite to that dignity while Democrats talk collectivism and entitlement.
Terrific overview! Great job Connie.
The price range of the book is $10-$30 depending on the usual factors. a free preview is available on-line, and if the rest of the book can be judge by it, i’d say its biggest flaw is that it doesn’t go quite deep enough.
Here’s an idea how to get it cheaper: I first heard about the book in a magazine review back in December. I took the review to my local public library and asked the acquisitions librarian to buy a copy. She did so, and in two months’ time, the library notified me it was on the shelf! The book should be on library shelves — it will be of value for years to come, especially for students writing research papers!
I’d love to hear your thoughts about how and where the book could go “deeper”.
You know a great deal more than I do about politics in general and Republicans in particular, so I’ll defer to your better knowledge and experience. But do you really think the GOP is interested in our worldview? I’m inclined to think they’re only interested in doing the bare minimum to get our votes.
Kathleen,
“the GOP” is just people, ultimately, though a platform gives guidance. I’m convinced that the current leadership in the House of Representatives is sincerely pro-life. I’m also convinced that the current Democrat leadership at all levels is sincerely pro-death. But what Party leadership believes is only part of it. It will always be our responsibility as pro-lifers to never let our grassroots muscles go flaccid: we have to always be able to reward our political friends and punish our political enemies at the ballot box. We have to constantly be able to connect our issue to a candidate’s political future. We need to be ever more effective at that. If we ever cease to be able to inflict political pain, our movement will cease to be of political consequence. That’s true of any political movement or issue.
Wonderful description of my own family’s path from Irish-Catholic, Boston Democrats to pro-life Republicans. Although my mother, aged 82, has always voted pro-life, she finally registered as a Republican in 2004, after 61 years of being a Democrat. Her siblings were scandalized .
Your mom is one sharp cookie! She realized that substance is more important than appearances or rhetoric. If only more voters were as wise as she–and as willing to change as times change.
Ronald Reagan endorsed the Human Life Amendment in 1975….and then nominated Sandra Day O’Connor, a woman who cast pro-abortion votes as a member of the Arizona State legislature, to the Supreme Court in 1981. Thirty five years later, Roe v. Wade is still law, and Planned Parenthood still receives federal funding. At best, politically pro-lifers have been able to prevent the complete triumph of the Party of Death. There is no political solution to the scourge of abortion.
But we will soon witness the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the restoration of all things in Christ.
Good article. Makes me sad to think how twisted everything has gotten. I still remember being in Catholic grammar school when Kennedy was elected, and how happy we all were.
As we await the second coming, remember that God expect us to be his hands upon earth. Do keep praying for the country and all aspects of its government — but don’t give up on doing your part as a citizen! None of us have the luxury to drop out of the political process. God chose to plant us in a representative democracy so He wants us to do our duty in it. He could have had us born as serfs in the middle ages, where we wouldn’t have had the same responsibilities–but he didn’t!
Great article, Connie. Very few remember or even know that Planned Parenthood was heavily financed and supported by two “Republican” Foundations: the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Governor Nelson Rockefeller single-handedly overturned a massive and popular anti-abortion referundum shortly before Roe v. Wade: one man, a Republican governor,violated the will of a majority of New Yorkers and reinstated abortion as legal in New York State. Today being a moderate Republicans is simply “code” for pro-abortion Republicans. The “establishment” in both parties are also clearly pro-abortion. PP is deeply embedded in both parties. This is the struggle we are facing.
Coming in very late to this discussion, but there were humanitarian efforts to help the Irish during the Great Famine. Not all were praiseworthy — there were the so-called “Soupers” who offered aid to Catholics if they would only convert. But there were other organizations who made no such demands. In fact, there were so many, they hindered their own efforts by refusing to work together.