Abortion opposition once spanned both parties and was not partisan

Evidence

Up through 1979, members of both major parties, in a variety of ideological flavors, inhabited all sides of the abortion issue. Democratic opponents of abortion included Sargent Shriver, who campaigned against Maryland’s liberal abortion laws in 1992. Hubert Humphrey was also personally opposed to abortion, although he did not favor a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and Al Gore adopted antiabortion positions early in their careers and later evolved toward choice. In 1982, while serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden voted for a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade, although his views also dramatically shifted over time. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans such as Barbara Bush, Arlen Specter, William Weld, and Pete Wilson were unabashedly pro-choice and sought to strip antiabortion planks from the party platform. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 270

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs the current abortion-partisanship debate against the empirical recency of the split — useful context for any piece on how single-axis partisan sorting happens. — connects to: Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 160; Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 122; Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 113 (+4 more)
• SEED: A ‘before the sorting’ electoral-history angle: documenting how recent and contingent the party-line abortion alignment actually is.

Broader Connections

• Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed #corroborates (0.85) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160
• Christian conservatives purged pro-choice Republicans only by the mid-1990s #corroborates (0.85) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 271
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue #corroborates (0.82) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 113
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s #corroborates (0.80) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 122
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons #qualifies (0.75) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 222
• The Religious Right’s origins lay in defending racial segregation, not opposing abortion #complicates (0.72) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 140