Friday Jul 04, 2025

Amoral Majority: The Evangelical Abortion Shift of the 1970s

Opposition to legal abortion wasn't always a consensus matter across the Christian Right. In fact, as recently as the early 1970s, Protestants mostly considered it a "Catholic issue." But against a backdrop of paranoia about government overreach into religious affairs and fear of demographic decline, a Catholic named Paul Weyrich and an evangelical named Jerry Falwell joined hands to turn abortion into the signature mobilizing issue of their new Moral Majority. This week, June and Josh look at how this historical moment was primed for exploitation, why Christian rhetoric and policy toward abortion shifted so quickly, and what the long-term durability of this unholy alliance means as Americans continue to see their civil rights rolled back by the Trump administration.

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EPISODE IMAGE: Paul Weyrich, cofounder of the Moral Majority, in a Heritage Foundation portrait from 1982

SOURCES:

"Creating the Litmus Test: Abortion, Mainline Protestants, and the Rise of the Religious Right" by Sabrina Danielsen
"Family Values" and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda by Seth Dowland
Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right by Randall Balmer
“How the Right Uses Abortion Restrictions to Reinforce Racist and Gendered Hierarchies” by Cassie Miller, Southern Poverty Law Center
“Respect for Unborn Human Life: The Church’s Constant Teaching” from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Historical Abortion Law Timeline: 1850 to Today from Planned Parenthood Action
“The Religious Right and the Abortion Myth” by Randall Balmer, POLITICO
"Here's how much the ICE budget would increase under Trump's megabill" by Grace Deng, Snopes

AUDIO CLIPS:

42:55 – Ronald Reagan delivers an address to religious leaders at the 1980 National Affairs Briefing