The history of that movement, however, is more complicated. White evangelicals in the 1970s did not mobilize against Roe v. Wade, which they considered a Catholic issue. They organized instead to defend racial segregation in evangelical institutions, including Bob Jones University.
To suggest otherwise is to perpetrate what I call the abortion myth, the fiction that the genesis of the Religious Right — the powerful evangelical political movement that has reshaped American politics over the past four decades — lay in opposition to abortion.
The Religious Right also didn't mobilize against abortion because they still believed that elected governments control the country. All Roe vs Wade says is that there's nothing in the constitution that prohibits abortion. It's a passive right - no one says she can't so she can. So why would the Religious Right mobilize when they could instead campaign in the next election for anti-abortion candidate?
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