✉️ The Abortion Conversion: How Religious Conservatives Found Their Cause in the 1970s

If you listen to the rhetoric today, you’d think evangelicals have always cared about abortion. It’s portrayed as a timeless, unshakable, straight-from-the-Bible stance—as obvious as “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not vote Democrat.”

But the truth is stranger, and frankly, darker. The religious right didn’t rally around abortion until the late 1970s. Before that, the issue barely registered on the evangelical radar. What changed wasn’t divine revelation—it was political calculation.

Before Roe: A Shrug, Not a Crusade

When the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in Roe v. Wade (1973), you might expect evangelicals to have immediately risen up in unified protest. They didn’t.

In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest evangelical denomination in the country—passed multiple resolutions in the early 1970s supporting abortion access in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, or threats to the mother’s health.

That’s right: the same SBC that now insists abortion is the ultimate moral crisis once treated it as a complicated personal decision. For most evangelicals, abortion was a Catholic issue. It didn’t drive sermons, it didn’t drive votes, and it certainly didn’t define religious identity.

The Real Spark: Segregation, Not Sanctity

So why did abortion suddenly rise to the top? Here’s the uncomfortable truth: it wasn’t theology. It was politics—specifically, the defense of segregation.

In the 1970s, the IRS began revoking tax-exempt status from so-called “Christian academies” that were, in reality, segregation academies—private schools set up by white parents to avoid desegregation. Conservative strategists like Paul Weyrich and preachers like Jerry Falwell needed a rallying cry to unite evangelicals against the federal government.

But “Save our segregated schools!” wasn’t exactly the best bumper sticker. It sounded ugly because it was ugly. They needed a moral issue that could sound noble, even transcendent—something that would build a movement, not expose it.

Abortion became that issue.

The Great Pivot

By the late 1970s, conservative activists rebranded abortion as the central moral concern of American Christianity. This wasn’t a grassroots swell of conviction—it was a top-down marketing campaign.

Televangelists preached fiery sermons. Activist groups mailed out newsletters. Catholic leaders—already firmly opposed to abortion—were courted as allies. The issue had legs. It could unite evangelicals, peel Catholic voters away from Democrats, and hand Republicans a powerful wedge issue.

Enter Ronald Reagan. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan had signed one of the most liberal abortion bills in the nation. But by 1980, seeking the White House, he reinvented himself as a pro-life champion. Evangelicals lined up behind him, and the marriage between the Republican Party and the religious right was sealed.

Why It Stuck

Once abortion became the defining litmus test, it proved politically irresistible. It was simple, emotional, and endlessly useful. Politicians could raise money on it, pastors could rally congregations with it, and media empires could thrive on it.

Over time, the historical reality was scrubbed away. Evangelicals who once shrugged at abortion were recast as eternal warriors for the unborn. Opposition to abortion was no longer a recent pivot—it was reframed as “God’s truth since the Garden of Eden.”

And today, with Roe overturned and state legislatures tripping over themselves to outdo one another in restrictions, the political strategy hatched in the late ’70s continues to shape American life.

And Now, A Word From the Almighty Marketer

If you believe the current narrative, God apparently stayed silent on abortion for roughly two millennia, letting Christians bicker over indulgences, usury, dancing, slavery, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll. Then, in 1979—just in time for Reagan’s campaign—He suddenly leaned down from Heaven and said: “Ah yes, abortion! That’s the most important issue in all creation. Make sure you register Republican while you’re at it.”

Convenient, isn’t it?

The truth is this: abortion was not chosen because it was divinely ordained. It was chosen because it was politically useful. It covered the less marketable origins of the movement—segregation—and gave evangelicals a unifying identity. It was, and still is, a brilliant marketing campaign.

As Kurt Vonnegut might say: “So it goes.”

Julie Bolejack, MBA