"A few years ago I was researching the history of anti-abortion activism in Michigan...."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Great thread on a terrific project:

A few years ago I was researching the history of anti-abortion activism in Michigan. In telling the story of Catholic and Evangelical opposition to reproductive rights, I kept coming across stories that made no sense to me: clergy actively supporting abortion and contraception.

Link to tweet

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. A great thread about how evangelicals were motivated by pro-segregation before anti-abortion

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=16106078
(my post in the thread)

[Hortensis]

2. Amazing to realize that virtually the entire anti-abortion "movement"

and ideology in the U.S. is practically brand new, growing like a monster that sprang from nowhere but I just assumed to have always been there. I'd like to read this book when it's published.

I knew that before the 20th century it was common for women and babies to die from pregnancy, childbirth, sequelae. Until then, the big concern was to keep them from dying, and midwives, etc, did whatever they did. So did clergy in rendering comfort and rituals and sisters caring for women as patients in church hospitals.

Meanwhile, the industrial revolution was freeing vast numbers to be able to support themselves independently and make their own decisions, including to shorten their skirts and have abortions. How on earth did that not create a mass movement to use reproductive rights to reel women in?

It didn't! Astonishing to have pointed out that even those churches that finally got involved in opposing abortion didn't until significantly later, in the second half of the 20th century, mostly after 1980 while I was worrying about getting our kids safely through adolescence.

Beyond astonishing considering the power this one topic created for the corrupt people who were simultaneously taking over the right. If only those behind this brilliant development could have used their powers for good.