Photograph by Joyce Dopkeen / New York Times Co. / Getty
The pro-life movement in the United States emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s but gained significant momentum after the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. Prior to this decision, abortion was largely illegal except for cases where the mother’s life was in danger. After the passing of Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion became political and partisan. A new era of propaganda and anti-abortion rhetoric began, and the past 50-60 years of our shared history is now molded, influenced, and manipulated by this movement.
A central strategy used by the pro-life movement is in its emotional appeals to persuade people to support the movement. In the years after the Roe v. Wade decision, pro-lifers began the argument that allowing for abortion is a slippery slope that can lead to genocide and fascism. It became a human rights campaign and was even compared to the Holocaust and compared to the time when black people did not have constitutional rights in the United States [1].
Vivid imagery was also used by the pro-life/anti-abortion movement to connect the idea of an unborn fetus to a baby. This included “pictures of fetuses, in utero and aborted, fetal models, and fetuses in jars in the 1970s; fetal pins, dolls, jewelry, and clothes in addition to a proliferation of pro-life movies in the 1980s; and ultrasound visuals of fetuses in the 1990s and 2000s.”[2] This personification of the unborn fetus attempts to create a sense of humanity for the fetus, and helps shift the collective narrative that abortion was a morally reprehensible act that violates basic human rights.
Shifts in language were also used to garner support for the movement. Abortion was commonly described as “murder”, and unborn fetuses were often described as a “child” who was “killed”. This shift in language represented a turning point in the movement, where previously Catholics were uneasy about using such explicit language about the practice of abortion. However, by the end of the 1970s, anti-abortion people were on board, as they realized they needed to up the rhetoric. “Catholic diocesan weeklies began publishing articles with titles such as “After about 10 to 12 Weeks, the Child Inside Is Cut into Pieces and Pulled or Scooped Out”; “Live, Aborted Babies Sold for Tests”; and “Today My Mother Killed Me: The Distressing Diary of an Aborted Child.” [5]
To this day, misinformation regarding abortions is also a tactic used by the pro-life movement to reduce abortions and change the narrative. A crisis pregnancy center (CPC) provides free services and counseling for women who have had unplanned pregnancies. CPCs are often funded by religious groups and taxpayer dollars, and work to persuade women to not get the abortion, by any means necessary.
Two NBC News producers went to state-funded CPCs in Texas, seeking pregnancy counseling. At one location, a CPC staffer implied to the journalist that abortions can cause cancer and infertility, and played the journalist a video saying that abortion causes mental illness. At a second CPC in the Dallas area, these journalists were given the same information, and even pointed to a plastic model of a fetus and told the journalist, “Can you imagine one of these in your panties?”, when the journalist asked about the abortion pill. The journalist was then sent home with a pair of knit baby socks.[3]
While today we think of the pro-life movement synonymously with conservative Republicans, it was not always this way. Prior to the Republican national convention in 1976, Republicans were on average more pro-choice than their Democratic counterparts, less than 40% of Republicans considered themselves pro-life. Nevertheless, after 1976 the GOP adopted an official anti-abortion platform and sought out a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. The main motivation for this shift was to appeal to Democrat Catholics. This shift in who the party appealed to ultimately formed the GOP we know today. The Republican party began to view abortion as a symptom of the sexual revolution and of feminism, and by 2009 only 26% of Republicans were pro-choice.[4]
In the 1980s and 1990s, the anti-abortion movement experienced a significant shift in strategy in which some groups rejected the traditional approach of seeking legal reforms. Instead, they opted for more radical methods to promote their cause. One notable group was ‘Operation Rescue’, which pioneered the pro-life “rescue” strategy by creating human blockades outside abortion clinics to disrupt daily operations and make it harder for women to access abortion services. This strategy aimed to attract media attention and sway public opinion towards their pro-life position. However, more extremist elements within the movement went beyond protest and resorted to violence and intimidation tactics against abortion providers. “Between the early 1980s and the 2000s, there were 153 assaults, 383 death threats, 3 kidnappings, 18 attempted murders, and 9 murders related to abortion providers.” [2]
In the 50 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, there has been a battle over our collective memory of abortion and abortion rights. Will we remember it as a fight for women’s rights and bodily autonomy, or will we remember it as a human rights violation of the unborn fetus. The latter is riddled with misinformation and political motivations, and not necessarily motivated by protecting the sanctity of life. Analysis of these motivations can greatly improve and sharpen the lens that we look through at this collective memory.
Written by Alex Kenny
Works Cited
[1]Shivaram, D. (2022). The movement against abortion rights is nearing its apex. but it began way before Roe. NPR. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096154028/the-movement-against-abortion-rights-is-nearing-its-apex-but-it-began-way-before
[2]Holland, J. (2016). Abolishing abortion: The history of the pro-life movement in America. The American Historian. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2016/november/abolishing-abortion-the-history-of-the-pro-life-movement-in-america/
[3]McFadden, C., Amorebieta, M., & Martinez, D. (2022, June 29). Crisis pregnancy centers in Texas gave medical misinformation to NBC News Producers. NBCNews.com. Retrieved April 21, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/texas-state-funded-crisis-pregnancy-centers-gave-medical-misinformatio-rcna34883
[4]Williams, D. K. (2011). The GOP’s abortion strategy: Why pro-choice Republicans became pro-life in the 1970s: Journal of Policy History. Cambridge Core. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/gops-abortion-strategy-why-prochoice-republicans-became-prolife-in-the-1970s/C7EC0E0C0F5FF1F4488AA47C787DEC01
[5]Williams, D. K. (2016). A new image. Defenders of the Unborn, 133–155. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391646.003.0007
Surely there was an initial Pro-life movement that successfully criminalized abortion in the late 1800s. The unpredictable collective memory of the change of the Pro-Life movement and distancing from the original criminalization over the past 150 years may have led to the processual forgetting of the original movement.
The use of the disgusting imagery reminded me of the prop with large posters with the same imaging at the beginning of this school year which brought upon a lot of backlash. Similar to what you had described, they also compared abortions to the Holocaust and ties between abortions and “mass genocide” has become a consistent part of their argument.
This was a super interesting read talking about the use of language, calling abortion “murder” or calling the fetus “a killed child”. Language is also used to vilify the mother in cases of abortion. People often use terms like “whore” or “promiscuous” to describe women who have had abortions. Pro-lifers want it to seem like people treat abortions very flippantly, when a lot of women have to think very deeply about getting an abortion and go through some sort of emotional trauma from it.
You did an excellent job describing the biases within the language used by pro-lifers. Comparing abortion to literal mass genocide was insane to me, but it also shows how far people will go when they believe their opinion is the right one.
In my opinion, I believe the pro-lifers were initially trying to create a powerful negative stigma about how abortion was unethical, but then it began to spiral out of control once the topic became increasingly controversial. This shows how Roe v Wade serves as a shifting, processual memory for abortion rights.