Before Reagan: The Early Anti-Abortion Movement and the Republican Party

• In Event: Religion and Party Politics

Abstract

This paper explores the merging of anti-abortion positions with the conservative movement and Republican party at the mass, activist, and elite levels in the 1960s and 1970s. Well before the parties staked their respective position on abortion in the 1980s, pro-life attitudes among the mass public related to Republican presidential vote choice, conservative positions on Civil Rights, anti-communist defense spending and broader conservative identification. Using survey data and archival research, I argue that mid-level activist leaders in the late 1970s and 1980s then capitalized on pre-existing sentiment in the mass public in defining their activist constituency and entering partisan politics. A key finding is that rank-and-file white evangelical Protestants are as conservative on salient abortion questions as white Catholics by the late 1960s and already support the Republican party, even while evangelical leaders remain silent or take moderate-to-liberal abortion stances. Rather than being an arbitrary policy position with respect to ordinary voters, I argue the Republican party's adoption of an anti-abortion platform reflected salient and pre-existing cleavages in the mass electorate.

Author

• Neil O' Brian, University of California, Berkeley