Welcome to Post Natal Report, where a few disgruntled bloggers expurgitate on abortion and other life issues, along with the accompanying policy debates.  Look here for wide ranging subject matter on all things pertaining to the life issues, from the basics of fetal biology, to discussions of pro-life policy, political news, even interneccine bloodletting, we’ve got it all here.

Where We’re Coming From:

Just to help orient you, a short history of the pro-life movement and the abortion issue, as seen by PNR’s former fetusus (should that be “feti”?).

The Roe decision in 1973 was obviously the watershed event that both pro-lifers/choicers look back to as kicking off everything, but the debate had been brewing for some time, years in fact. If you want to be pedantic (and I do), you could go back to the late 19th century, where abortion was pretty much outlawed everywhere. The American Medical Association was largely responsible for the tough laws restricting abortion in the U.S. Gradually in the early 20th century, however, opinion (especially in the medical/intellectual communities) gradually changed. How this change happened and some of it’s motivating factors is a subject for a raucously fun post at a later date.

But by the late fifties/early sixties in the U.S. support for abortion was starting to gain political clout in some areas, and gradually a few states started loosening their abortion restrictions. The debate on abortion started to heat up, and the first pro-life groups were formed at this time (not actually after 1973, the first one in the states was the Virginia Society for Human Life, formed in 1967). The Roe decision and the lesser known companion case, Doe, dramatically changed the landscape.

It sounds silly to us today, but at the time, both sides failed to understand the implications of Roe. the pro-choice side believed that Roe was the final word, The New York Times opined that the case had brought a “final and reasonable resolution,” to the issue of abortion. On the other side, pro-lifers were shocked and horrified, and the movement exploded in size and impetus immediately, but pro-lifers cast an equally inaccurate forecast, believing that one or two years of hard work would be all that was required to either reverse the court case, or pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

While the pro-choice side moved to consolidate its new found power, the pro-life movement made great steps from the get go to develop and coordinate a grassroots base, a trend that continues to this day (pro-life groups get vastly outspent in elections, but their volunteer base makes them extremely competitive in close races). While tapping into the common sense of the average American wasn’t too difficult, the pro-life movement took awhile to develop political savvy. An overly optimistic forecast of a quick victory only slowly gave way to the sober realization that the culture war over abortion would be only won slowly and gradually. In football terms, less Brady to Moss, and more Lombardiesque three yards and a cloud of dust. Skipping a lot, it wasn’t until the late eighties that the pro-life movement settled on a dedicated strategy of passing pro-life laws at the state and federal level to restrict abortion and chip away at the pro-choice base, using these laws to both save unborn babies where possible, and as teaching moments to help educate the general public. This has continued to be the overall direction of the pro-life movement politically/legislatively, coupled with supporting pro-life candidates and presidents in the hopes of one day achhieving a pro-life majority on the Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning Roe. At the same time, a parallel impulse towards “direct action” has kept up a steady stream of pressure on the pro-choice establishment with prayer campaigns, picketing at abortion clinics, and ministering to pregnant women in need.

The abortion debate has always had such a particularly unique character for two reasons:

1. It’s been largely a battle between moneyed interested groups and intellectuals pushing the remnants of a largely discredited ideology under the cover of fawning media and savvy marketing, vs. a large grassroots base operating in coalitions of groups (sometimes together, sometimes not to much), with a large middle ground of undecided moderates who either don’t want to consider the issue, or know nothing about it.

2. The Roe decision completely reshaped public policy overnight. The “act of raw judicial power,” while supported by influential groups, did not have broad society wide appeal , most of the country was apathetic, and a small minority was opposed. The decision then, created a scenario rarely seen in political science, for instead of campaigns of gradually intensifying support on both sides, the Court jumped straight to the endgame. This left the pro-choice crowd with a huge victory to consolidate and preserve, but not a huge consensus of support from the populace at large. The last thirty seven years have been a race to the middle by both sides.

At least that’s largely how I see it so far. This theme’ll be developed in future posts, as well as a complementary dose of filling in a lot of the information left out.