Conservatives commandeered the once-diverse antiabortion movement

Evidence

I have heard from several pioneer opponents of abortion who speak nostalgically about the early years of the movement. It was a time of great excitement and energy, they say, with diverse voices offering judicious, nuanced arguments against abortion. What happened? Conservatives, led in part by Paul Weyrich, commandeered the antiabortion movement, calling for legislation outlawing abortion (somewhat improbably for an ideology that professes to champion individual liberties and small government). — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 170

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-abortion politics brokered the Protestant-Catholic right-wing alliance. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 37; 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 (+5 more)

Related

• Conservatives seized the antiabortion movement and turned it statist (similarity 0.93)
• Evangelicals adopted anti-abortion politics six years after Roe for political gain (similarity 0.87)
• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. (similarity 0.87)
• Anti-abortion politics brokered the Protestant-Catholic right-wing alliance. (similarity 0.86)
• The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. (similarity 0.86)
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons (similarity 0.85)
• Christian conservatives purged pro-choice Republicans only by the mid-1990s (similarity 0.85)
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue (similarity 0.85)
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s (similarity 0.85)
• 1978 pro-life upsets convinced Weyrich abortion could mobilize evangelical voters (similarity 0.84)
• Operatives treated the 1978 election as a test of abortion’s mobilizing power (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.84)
• Abortion was adopted as a rallying issue because it could unite disparate cultural conservatives (similarity 0.83)
• Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue (similarity 0.83)
• Conservative Christians originally welcomed Roe v. Wade as advancing religious liberty (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons #corroborates (0.78) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 222
• Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed #corroborates (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160
• A viable evangelical Left existed in 1973 but lost to conservatives #expands (0.72) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 120
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s #corroborates (0.70) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 122