by Adele

Pro-choice authors Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer explore how Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S., was overturned after seeming invulnerable for nearly fifty years. They describe the evolving tactics of the Christian Nationalist movement to end legal abortion and those of feminists fighting back. This led them to ask what it will mean to be a woman in America and what kind of country is it becoming?

Roe seemed safe since anti-abortionists in the U.S. are increasingly in the minority. Even the Republican Party, when it analyzed its 2012 Presidential defeat, dropped its opposition to abortion and gay marriage, realizing its traditional constituents were no longer the majority of the population. However, the religious Right, also called the Christian Nationalist movement, still uses the Party to put their candidates into political offices.

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM’S RETROGRESSIONISM

Attempting to create an authoritarian government, Christian Nationalism calls for a return to a patriarchal and racist past. Key to this is limiting the self-determination of women through complete elimination of abortion rights. The authors explain the influence of the Federalist Society, a Christian Nationalist organization, in promoting “originalism.” Originalism holds that the Constitution and laws must be interpreted based on the original intent of the people—almost always rich white men—who wrote them. They’re talking of a time when women and Blacks were forbidden to vote! If the right to abortion—settled law for 50 years—could be ruled unconstitutional, then other human rights can also be trashed.

The founders of the anti-abortion movement knew it would not be successful if the public understood it as religion in the service of authoritarianism. They promoted it as extending human and civil rights to “the unborn” which would trump the human rights of pregnant women. This was instrumental in moving working-class voters to the right.

YES, IT IS A WAR ON WOMEN

The Fall of Roe also thoroughly debunks the propaganda claiming that Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood (PP) to wage “genocide” on Black people. Dr. Martin Luther King even praised Sanger as an inspiration. The authors also analyze propaganda from the younger generation of anti-abortionists infiltrating PP with hidden cameras.

Anti-abortionists made their woman leaders prominent, hoping to dispel feminists’ accurate description of the Right’s “war on women.” Right-wing female politicians and judges claimed women could succeed in careers with no control over childbearing and that abortion is never necessary to save a women’s life. They ignored financial, medical, educational, and childcare issues faced by most women. Right-wing organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List produced deceptive studies, later retracted by the publishing journals, claiming abortion harmed women medically and emotionally.

Christian Nationalists used this propaganda claiming harm to women and fetuses to propose state laws limiting abortion. They had a generations-long plan to use these laws to challenge Roe. While unpopular, they have a highly organized wealthy network of organizations including the Alliance Defense Fund and the Heritage Foundation. Its few women leaders were eclipsed by men that the Trump administration placed in key government positions. The anti-abortion movement’s Christian Nationalism became more obvious when their leaders participated in Trump’s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some feminists accuse Democratic politicians of exploiting Republican attacks on abortion rights to get elected while doing nothing to secure them. The authors show feminist Democrats fought anti-abortion legislation. They did not have the votes in Congress to codify Roe into federal law. They were up against the public’s denial, and sometimes their own, that Roe and women’s rights in general were endangered.

Christian Nationalism overturned Roe by seizing political power and imposing its will from the top down. In a working democracy it is the opposite, with the will of the people influencing public discourse and using demonstrations and the vote to create progressive change. The good news is that now Christian Nationalism has lost the element of surprise. The authors encourage the public to become aware of its goals and strategies.