S2E01: The Post-Roe Episode

In a disheartening but long-anticipated 6-3 decision, the Supreme court struck down 1973’s Roe vs. Wade decision, eliminating constitutional protection for abortion. In this first episode after a 2021 hiatus, the hosts examine several threads in the anti-abortion movement’s generations-long trajectory:

• The origins of the modern anti-abortion movement, and Francis Schaeffer’s role in bringing the “Catholic Issue” to a relatively indifferent Evangelical world in the late 70s

• The movement’s strategic shift in the early 80s from totalizing “fetus-centered” to “woman-centered” and “conscience-centered” arguments against abortion and incrementalist legislative goals

• The rise of deceptive “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” and their legally-fraught history of deceiving patients seeking abortions; Kristin discusses her experiences with the young fundamentalist women who keeping them running, and the danger of assuming the movement is primarily a male one

• The tension between the anti-abortion movement’s “anything is justified to stop murder” rhetoric, and its opposition to sex education and contraceptives; Jeff discusses his own history as a committed anti-abortion ideologue in the 90s, and the role that tension had in convincing him to leave — and eventually support abortion rights.

Articles and essays in this episode include:

• The Changing Strategies of the Anti-Abortion Movement, 2021, by Daniela Mansbach and Alisa Von Hagel, Political Research Associates

• Foot Soldier of the Patriarchy, June 2022, Kristin Rawls, Revue

• On Murder and The Other, June 2009, Jeff Eaton, Growing Up Goddy

Books mentioned or cited in this episode include:

• Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century, 2017, Karissa Haugeberg

• After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, 2015, Mary Ziegler

• Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present, 2020, Mary Ziegler

• Handbook for a Post-Roe America, 2019, Robin Marty

• Whatever Happened To the Human Race? 1979, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop

• Crazy for God, 2008, Frank Schaeffer