Dancing With Abortion
In the 1970's most conventional American Christians believed that abortion in some cases should be legal and safe. Most mainstream Christians supported Roe vs. Wade because they recognized that women getting "back-alley abortions" were being maimed and even killed.
In the late 1970's a Catholic attorney named Phyllis Shlafly determined that one of the ways to finally unify the anti-abortion Catholic Church with the traditional American mainstream Christian Church was to make "right to life" a political issue. Prior to this, Christians weren't terribly keen to get into bed (so to speak) with the Catholic Church. Many Christians were appalled that a Catholic named John F. Kennedy was elected to the presidency.
In the early 1980’s the “anti-abortion” coalition worked to change its messaging. The “pro-choice” side was perceived as positive, while the “anti-abortion” side was perceived as negative. As soon as they successfully changed their marketing to “pro-life”, they were seen in a much more positive light. Today “pro-life” doesn’t mean “one who defends all life”, but rather it means, “one who doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose her own medical care”. In this episode, Liz expresses her anger at learning the extreme hatred that was taught to her kids by their Sunday School teachers when they were little. They were taught that women who had abortions were murderers and AIDS was God’s punishment for being gay. In her naïveté, she believed her kids were simply being taught to love God and love people, but she was wrong.
Regarding abortion, according to an NPR abortion poll done in 2019, a total of 77% of Americans say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe, but within that there's a lot of nuance — 26% say they would like to see it remain in place, but with more restrictions added; 21% want to see Roe expanded to establish the right to abortion under any circumstance; 16% want to keep it the way it is; and 14% want to see some of the restrictions allowed under Roe reduced. Just 13% overall say it should be overturned.