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When Being Pro-Life Didn't Make You a Republican
Christianity Today ^ | 11/23/15 | Robert Tracy McKenzie

Posted on 01/24/2016 6:06:05 PM PST by SoFloFreeper

Historians have a favorite saying: "The past is like a foreign country." When we travel there, we meet people who think and act very differently. We return home with a new perspective, recognizing how much we take for granted, how much is far from inevitable.

For a powerful illustration of this truth, look no further than Daniel K. Williams's masterful new book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press). When readers turn the final page, they may feel like they have visited not just a different country, but a different universe.

(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abortion; infanticide; pandering; prolife; roevwade; vote
There was a time when both parties cared about precious unborn children.

Then one party (mostly) sold out for votes.

1 posted on 01/24/2016 6:06:05 PM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: SoFloFreeper

There was a time when most the Bushes in the White House were pro-choice.


2 posted on 01/24/2016 6:08:49 PM PST by boycott (--)
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To: boycott

Not Barbara or Laura, I later learned, after their husbands’ administrations were finished.


3 posted on 01/24/2016 6:22:24 PM PST by mrsmel (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: SoFloFreeper

I was there in 70. It is much as he describes. Country Club Republicans hated paying for the babies of the overly fertile and poor. Dems were more sympathetic. But Catholics were predominantly Dems. Gradually, the Catholic pro-lifers moved to Republican side. Cafeteria Catholics stayed with the Dems and became more Dem than Catholic. That included the Catholic Hierarchy. Not any different now.


4 posted on 01/24/2016 6:23:42 PM PST by amihow (l)
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To: boycott

Oops, I misread your comment as “pro-life”, not “pro-choice”. Sorry.


5 posted on 01/24/2016 6:37:24 PM PST by mrsmel (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: amihow

Pre-Roe abortion was very low priority as a political issue, at least in Chicago. Planned Parenthood operated out of a mainline church sponsored settlement house. Pro-abort social workers referred teens to it. The general attitude of the social work community was that these teens (mostly Hispanic in my area, but a few Blacks and whites) were not fit to have children and should focus on becoming feminists.

The big debate was over the fact that the guy who ran the local PP would tell teens that they couldn’t get more pregnant than they already were. So they should take advantage and enjoy as much sex as possible. He had sex with many of them. He referred them to parties at a place on the lakefront where rich people who donated to PP partied and liked it when the teens showed their appreciation for the rich guys paying for their abortion.


6 posted on 01/24/2016 6:39:08 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: mrsmel

G.H.W. Bush was pro-choice when running for president in 1980. He switched to pro-life to get on the ticket with Reagan.

G.H.W. Bush had no real pro-life convictions. It was just politically expedient for him to say that he was.

It’s also important to remember that G.H.W. Bush’s father, the late former senator Prescott Bush, was the first ever treasurer of the group that later became known as Planned Parenthood.


7 posted on 01/24/2016 6:51:12 PM PST by boycott (--)
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To: SoFloFreeper
Roe v. Wade

Henry Wade was a democrat. And he lost a congressional race to a Republican in the 1950s, lest anyone try to argue that all successful southern politicians of that era were democrats.

8 posted on 01/24/2016 6:52:07 PM PST by PAR35
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To: spintreebob

Geez. Worse than here . Arizona had M. Sanger herself starting clinics with Peggy Goldwater as a donor and board member as I remember.


9 posted on 01/24/2016 7:23:04 PM PST by amihow (l)
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To: spintreebob

Geez. Worse than here . Arizona had M. Sanger herself starting clinics with Peggy Goldwater as a donor and board member as I remember.


10 posted on 01/24/2016 7:23:20 PM PST by amihow (l)
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To: SoFloFreeper

BUMP.


11 posted on 01/24/2016 7:36:19 PM PST by golux
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To: SoFloFreeper
There was a time when both parties cared about precious unborn preborn children.

A better term.

12 posted on 01/24/2016 7:40:53 PM PST by libertylover (The problem with Obama is not that his skin is too black, it's that his ideas are too RED.)
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To: SoFloFreeper

Remember the one time at band camp when there was a Democrat President who wanted to cut taxes? Yeah you saw what they did to him!


13 posted on 01/24/2016 8:19:22 PM PST by zaxtres
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To: libertylover

What an awesome insight! That you for sharing that here.

Words have power. That one change causes an incredibly powerful change in perspective.

Let’s get this out to pro-life spokespeople and organizations,


14 posted on 01/24/2016 8:32:07 PM PST by 5thGenTexan
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To: SoFloFreeper

There’s something really fishy here:

The review seems to say that the book seems to say that when the pro-life movement was “liberal,” it was about protecting the unborn—but after Roe, the movement became “conservative,” and THEN it was a “backlash against individual rights.”

This sounds like the pro-aborts’ description of the “anti-abortion rights” movement: i.e., that it’s all about oppressing women.


15 posted on 01/24/2016 9:00:01 PM PST by Arthur McGowan
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To: SoFloFreeper

> When Being Pro-Life Didn’t Make You a Republican

More like:

Why Being a Republican Doesn’t Make You Pro-Life

Not only will they not put an end to the crimes of Planned Parenthood and Stem Express - they insist upon giving them tax subsidies.

And they want my vote!


16 posted on 01/24/2016 11:25:56 PM PST by Ray76
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To: SoFloFreeper

But now being a RAT makes you a baby-killer by default.


17 posted on 01/25/2016 9:11:51 AM PST by JimRed (Excise the cancer before it kills us; feed & water the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS NOW & FOREVER!)
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