Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113, decided January 22, 1973) held that the Constitution's implicit right to privacy protected a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy, subject to state regulation increasing as pregnancy progressed. The ruling invalidated abortion laws in forty-six states. The common historical narrative holds that Roe galvanized evangelical Christians into political action. The documentary record shows something more complicated: in 1973, evangelical leaders barely reacted. A Baptist Press analysis by Washington bureau chief W. Barry Garrett declared that the Court had 'advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality and justice,' and the ruling broadly fit the SBC's 1971 resolution supporting legislation to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, severe fetal deformity, or likely damage to the mother's emotional, mental, and physical health. W.A. Criswell — the SBC's most prominent conservative, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, and a future leader of the Conservative Resurgence — was quoted in news reports welcoming the ruling: 'I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother that it became an individual person.' Not every evangelical voice agreed: the National Association of Evangelicals said it deplored the decision 'in the strongest possible terms,' and Christianity Today's February 1973 editorial said it ran 'counter not merely to the moral teachings of Christianity through the ages but also to the moral sense of the American people.' The initial anti-abortion response was predominantly Catholic. The National Right to Life Committee was founded in 1973 under Catholic Church auspices. Catholic bishops coordinated the first organized legislative response. For most of the 1970s, abortion opposition was identified in American political culture as a Catholic issue. The transformation of abortion into the defining evangelical political grievance was the work of Paul Weyrich, Francis Schaeffer, and the political strategists of the emerging New Right. Weyrich's own account, as quoted by historian Randall Balmer, points to the IRS action against racially segregated Christian schools, not abortion: 'I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.' Abortion was chosen as the public mobilization issue because it was morally legible, emotionally powerful, and — crucially — not explicitly about race. Historian Randall Balmer argues that this framing let a mobilization that began in the fight over segregated schools present itself as a moral crusade — whatever the sincere convictions of the many who joined it later. Roe v. Wade was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in June 2022 — forty-nine years after it was decided.

Themes this entry appears in

• Abortion Politics
• Political Strategy
• Christian Nationalism
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Roe v. Wade

• influenced → Moral Majority (1979) — Roe v. Wade became the primary stated mobilization grievance of the Moral Majority, even though the documentary record — including Paul Weyrich's own account — shows that the actual galvanizing event was the IRS enforcement against racially segregated Christian schools. Balmer argues the construction of Roe as the founding issue was strategic: abortion was morally legible, emotionally powerful, and — crucially — not explicitly about race. Jerry Falwell Sr. and the Moral Majority's direct mail and public communications consistently named Roe as the cause they existed to reverse. The gap between what actually mobilized the movement (the IRS, Christian schools, racial backlash) and what it publicly presented as its cause (abortion, Roe) was, in Balmer's account, one of the most consequential strategic decisions in American political history.
• influenced → Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) (2022) — Roe v. Wade's 1973 ruling legalizing abortion was the stated target of the Religious Right's judicial strategy across forty-nine years. The Federalist Society's judicial pipeline, the Heritage Foundation's judicial nomination process, the successive Republican presidencies that appointed conservative justices, and the Alliance Defending Freedom's litigation strategy were all oriented — in significant part — toward building a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, which held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and overruled both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was the culmination of that four-decade project.

Connections to Roe v. Wade

• IRS Proposed Rules 1978 influenced (1979) — The organizational infrastructure built in response to the 1978 IRS proposed rules — the mailing lists, donor networks, pastoral coalitions, and direct-mail machinery — was redirected by Weyrich and Falwell toward abortion as a more politically viable public rallying issue. In Balmer's account, abortion was not what first galvanized the Religious Right; it became the public cause afterward, because defending segregated Christian academies from IRS enforcement was politically toxic. Weyrich recalled in an early-1990s interview, quoted by historian Randall Balmer: 'I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.' The infrastructure built for one fight was rebranded for another.
• Paul Weyrich responded to (1978) — In Balmer's account, Weyrich came to see Roe v. Wade as a useful mobilization issue for evangelicals — more politically viable than the issue that first galvanized them (IRS action on segregated schools).

Sources

• Were evangelicals really silent about Roe v. Wade? — The Gospel Coalition (Evangelical History blog) (2018)
• Roe v. Wade: CT's response over the decades — Christianity Today (2020)
• How Southern Baptists became pro-life — Baptist Press (2015)
• Book excerpt: Thy Kingdom Come (Randall Balmer, 2006) — NPR (2006)
• Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 12-18
• Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right — Randall Balmer (2021), pp. 51-80
• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 90-96