Where Does Anti-Choice Extremism Come From?

When the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, a giant anti-choice movement did not spring, fully-armed, from the aching head of Jerry Falwell. Rather it took the better part of a decade to channel already-existing anger and zealotry in the direction of women’s right to choose, a direction that proved fruitful in dividing the country and ultimately, provoking violence.

Abortion wasn’t always a culture-war issue. Writes The Nation’s Max Blumenthal in a piece about Falwell, “While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the ‘pre-born.’” In fact, the issue didn’t have the rigid party divide that it does today–there were plenty of Republicans, particularly on the local level, who approved of the decision.

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