The issue of abortion has a long, complicated history before and after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal nationwide.
It’s a historical story worth understanding, given the chaos we see in our nation today. Abortion is particularly complex because it has evolved into a defining political issue affecting state and federal elections.
The Catholic Church has always maintained strong opposition to abortion based on its principles and teachings. While not all Catholics share the church’s official stance, the church has been consistent in opposing abortion for moral reasons.
Opposition to abortion didn’t begin as the cultural war issue it is today. While the Catholic Church opposed abortion, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination, said it should be allowed in many circumstances. This was before evangelicals became organized and deeply involved in politics.
Neither political party viewed it as a defining issue until candidates like Richard Nixon saw the Catholic Church’s passion to restrict abortion access and decided to use the issue to gain Catholic votes. Nixon suffered a painful loss in 1960 when Democrat John Kennedy narrowly defeated him, becoming the first Catholic president.
Vowing never to lose the Catholic vote again, Nixon began taking anti-abortion positions to appeal to Catholic voters and other social conservatives during the 1972 presidential campaign. After Nixon won the election and most Catholic votes, Republican strategists used the same tactics for congressional races. Supporting the anti-abortion movement became more about getting votes than saving unborn lives for many candidates and elected officials.
Before and for several years after Roe v. Wade, evangelicals were largely indifferent to abortion, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” Although a few evangelicals mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval.
Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel explained in their book “Before Roe v. Wade” that the shift against abortion rights was part of a larger effort to paint the Republican Party as pro-family to mobilize socially conservative voters. Catholic groups led the anti-abortion campaign, which was hampered by disagreements but eventually became a political agenda directed by religious right organizations that were politically sharp and media savvy.
The strategic shift among evangelical leaders wasn’t strictly for moral reasons. While a court case sparked the religious right movement, it wasn’t Roe v. Wade. The Green v. Connally ruling captured evangelical leaders’ attention, especially when the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies” about their racial policies. The school led by Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, Lynchburg Christian School, was included.
Because of Green v. Connally, the IRS enacted a policy denying tax exemptions to all racially segregated schools under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination. Discriminatory schools weren’t, by definition, “charitable” educational organizations, so they had no claims to tax-exempt status. Evangelical leaders had long boasted that the federal government couldn’t tell them what to do — whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject — because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for not paying taxes). The Civil Rights Act changed that.
Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and Heritage Foundation co-founder, laid out a long-term social conservative agenda still in play in 2025. Weyrich concluded evangelicals, with their large numbers, would be a formidable voting bloc.
“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.”
Weyrich believed the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. Falwell and Weyrich tapped into evangelical leaders’ anger over Green v. Connally and recognized that organizing grassroots evangelicals to defend racial discrimination would be challenging. Abortion became the answer and the rallying issue used to mobilize evangelical voters broadly. Black and brown communities must now recognize that Roe v. Wade was the start. The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act of 1964 are the next targets. The baton passed to Donald Trump, who intends to take it over the finish line.
A pro-justice counterattack is needed. Everyone in Black and brown communities, particularly young people, must understand the threat to their futures. As abortion was the religious right’s rallying issue, pro-justice and fairness must be ours. There can be no petty divisions among those directly affected by the current war on DEI.
That includes white women. A long-term commitment is needed to recover from current damage while saving the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. Taking pages from the evangelical playbook, multiple election cycles will be needed to pass crucial legislation such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. While the price of eggs matters, our future depends on being driven by a pro-justice political agenda as if our lives depend on it.
Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and author of the book “God Bless Our Divided America.”