I was born in the 1970s, grew up in the 1980s, and came of age in the 1990s. As a kid growing up in a small Iowa town with nothing better to do, I spent summers scouring the history and biography shelves of our local public library. I checked out books about the Civil War, the Dionne Quintuplets, the Civil Rights Movement, JFK, and Shirley Temple. Reading about the more dramatic moments of American history, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed; my own historical era seemed to pale in comparison to previous eras. Sure, we had the end of the Cold War, but the Soviet Union went down more with a whimper than a bang. The First Gulf War caught our attention, but very quickly it seemed nothing like another Vietnam. When I read about suffragists and Civil Rights activists and student protestors, I felt a pang of envy. They lived at a time when things happened.
All of this changed, of course, on Sept. 11, 2001. History was happening. And it kept happening. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election of Barack Obama, the election of Donald Trump, the Covid pandemic, January 6.
Be careful what you wish for.
The moment I heard of the leaked SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this month, I knew we were in another moment, eyewitnesses to history unfolding around us. I thought of the decades of conservative Christian activists who had hoped and prayed for this moment, of the politicians who had dangled this issue in front of voters each and every election cycle, of Supreme Court nominees who had only recently assured all of us that Roe v. Wade was “settled law,” of the abortion rights activists reeling at this “worst case scenario.” I thought, too, of women who would continue to seek abortions, and how they would do so. And I thought of the already precarious state of our nation, wondering if this might well be the issue that rips asunder the already frayed seams of our democracy.
If there’s a more polarizing issue in this country than abortion right now, I don’t know what it is. Just a few years back, “safe, legal, and rare” was the mantra of the Democratic party. Most anti-abortion activists, meanwhile, routinely made exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or where the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother. The rhetoric of the past couple of weeks (and recent years, really) has shifted perceptably on both fronts. In an effort to destigmitize abortion, “reproductive justice” advocates have all but dropped the “rare.” Meanwhile, in “pro-life” circles, an abolitionist position is gaining prominence. Prominent pro-life activists are being dragged by those imposing new litmus tests: punishing women who procure abortions, making no exceptions for rape, incest, or even in the case of ectopic pregnancies, and demanding a loyalty to Donald Trump and the embrace of an ends-justify-the-means mentality.
I am aware of all of this. But I also know that, when I discuss abortion with my students, it ends up being not at all polarizing. It’s usually their favorite topic of the semester.
I teach a course on women and gender in U.S. history. We cover economic shifts, women’s labor, healthcare, racial inequities, sexual violence, feminism, and Christianity, from the colonial time to the present; I frequently also include a 2-week unit on abortion. For nearly every student, this is the first time they’ve ever discussed abortion in a classroom setting. And they are eager to do so.
I assign readings on the history of abortion, which they are prepared to digest because we’ve already read Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale, and they know the history of colonial midwifery and they’ve learned how male physicians worked to crack down on midwifery in order to enhance their own reputations and profit margins.
We read excerpts from James Mohr’s Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 and we engage the work of Leslie Reagan’s When Abortion was a Crime to learn how the reality of abortion is nothing new in American history, and how until the nineteenth century it was often legal and fairly widely accepted before “quickening,” or when the mother feels the baby’s movement.
I help my students assess the evidence and analyze the perspectives of historians writing on abortion. We read Randall Balmer’s thesis that it was segregation, not abortion, that mobilized the Religious Right, but I show students how this isn’t the whole story. I show them how many Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike, had long opposed abortion. I tell them about how the subject of my first book, Kate Bushnell, virulently opposed both abortion and birth control in the early 20th century, and she did so as a Christian and as a women’s rights activist. She, like many late-nineteenth-century women’s rights activists, preferred to advance the cause of “voluntary motherhood,” to work to restrain men’s sexual activity and empower women to refuse to have sex with men, including their husbands. It may sound naive today, but it was the commonly held view not all that long ago.
I have my students read articles from Christianity Today’s 1968 special issue on contraception and abortion, including “Therapeutic Abortion: Blessing or Murder?” and an extended discussion of what the Bible says about ensoulment, and of what the Bible does and does not say about abortion. And we read the conclusion of 25 evangelical scholars who participated in a symposium on the control of humjan reproduction earlier that year: “Where specific counsel is lacking, Christians acting under the authority of Scripture may differ from each other in the conclusions they reach becaus different weight may be given to different principles.”
I also introduce students to Daniel K. Williams’ Defenders of the Unborn, on the *progressive* roots of the anti-abortion movement. (One year I was able to bring Williams in as a campus speaker, alongside Jonathan Dudley, a Calvin alum who has found in evangelical history support for the pro-choice movement.)
I show students how modern scientific knowledge and medical technology is changing the ethical conversations. And I give them a sense for the politics of abortion. I have students read David Brooks’ advice to the Democratic Party and Karen Swallow Prior’s “Texas’ Abortion Law Should Force America to Change Its Ways.” Students raised in pro-life communities tend to find the latter piece less compelling than Timothy Gloege’s “A Modest Proposal to Conservative Evangelicals.” Gloege’s piece is worth a read in its entirety, but here’s the essence of his challenge:
“I simply can’t shake the suspicion that the pro-life movement is more interested in controlling women’s bodies than it is in preserving life. And, yes, I know this is a longstanding canard of the pro-choice movement. And I know you’ll insist you are sincerely concerned about life. I know, because that was me back in the day. But if you really, truly, believe that a fertilized egg is equal to an infant, then you need to prove it. Because when you repeatedly oppose programs that reduce abortions, it makes it look like your concern for ‘life’ is a convenient cover for ‘control.’ So, let’s settle the question once and for all. What is your end goal? Let me put it this way: because you are sincerely concerned about life, why not simply work for free access to birth control and anti-poverty efforts and then see what happens. You can reduce abortions and addressing the biggest critique of your movement. I guess I’m also asking what you, personally, are willing to sacrifice to reduce abortion in America. Because I realize this would be an ideological compromise. I’m asking you to risk supporting a policy that might not work. If you can’t stomach more federal programs or higher taxes, I suppose I understand. You are a conservative. But then let’s temper the rhetoric of abortion-as-moral-catastrophe. And let’s be honest about our real opinions. Maybe, in the end, we both believe abortion is simply a medical procedure with a touch of moral ambiguity. And if that’s the case, then let’s leave that discussion between a woman and her doctor.”
I confess I’ve been thinking a lot about Gloege’s piece in recent days as I’ve watched some pro-life proponents try to rally their side to get serious about addressing the needs of women and children. Now is the time, they say, to focus on affordable housing, paid family leave, and economic inquality! But as Gloege’s piece makes clear, if conservatives couldn’t do so in order to save the lives of the unborn, why would they be motivated to do so once Roe v. Wade is overturned?
In fact, I’ve seen evangelicals push back against this argument explicitly. And then there’s the reality that the “pro-life” cause is harder to take seriously when many of the same people have mobilized against measures to protect the vulnerable from Covid.
If I were to teach the class now, I’d probably add recent debates within pro-life factions for and against an abolitionist approach, and perhaps also Wes Granberg-Michaelson’s recent assessment, Rebecca Shrader’s interview, and Pete Wehner’s Atlantic essay, which dovetail well with the assigned readings. I’d include more historical resources, and also add Kate Glenn’s “Abortion Policy Around The World: A Guide,” for a global overview.
At the end of the two weeks, I show my students how they have everything they need to make an evidence-based, pragmatic, and historically compelling argument for pro-life.
And for pro-choice.
And then I explain how, choosing only the sources that make the case for one side while ignoring the evidence and sources on the other, ends up weaponizes history. It fails to the whole story, and it does not serve our communities, or ultimately our causes, well.
Students understand this, not only because of the careful reading they’ve done, but also because this unit is part of a larger course that shows, time and again, how history is complicated. How we can find both continuity and change, how we must exercise empathy and seek to understand people whose lives and circumstances are very different from our own, and how we need to work diligently to do so. I show them how history rarely provides us with answers to our most important questions.
Instead, if done right, it can help us ask better questions. And it can make us wiser.
History, I tell my students, can help cultivate the virtue of wisdom, or prudence. It can help ensure that the means that we select in pursuit of our ends—of justice, compassion, and restoration—are in fact conducive to those ends. Because too often they are not, and we fool ourselves into doing more harm than good, to our neighbors, and to our Christian witness.
For a final exam, I don’t ask my students to make a case for or against the legalization of abortion. Instead, I ask them to choose three challenges from the course materials—whether historical, political, scientific, or religious in nature—that the pro-life movement most needs to grapple with.
And then to do the same for the pro-choice movement.
The essays are invariably careful, nuanced, and principled, showing far more empathy and wisdom than nearly anything I encounter in public discourse.
Abortion
Wow. You've basically given a syllabus for an entire class. Yeah, COVID was the end of my confidence in the pro-life movement, although I hold a (nuanced) pro-life position. Will definitely read all those. This is why I said your twitter is like scholarly one-stop shopping! Might check out Gloege's book as well.
You have an exceptional ability to segment & break down complex issues like abortion-prolife-prochoice-feminism-patriarchy (I know these are not all named in the post, but they are there.) And all the while you weave/integrate these issues together into the focal topic of abortion in this post. Scholar extraordinaire. Prophet-Historian. Thanks.