Pro-Life Movement

The pro-life movement, also referred to as the right to life movement or antiabortion movement, is copmosed of several distinct forms of activism: political lobbying, direct action, crisis pregnancy centers, awareness-raising campaigns, “postabortion” advocacy groups, and secular/nonpartisan efforts. Some factions within the movement are increasingly likely to address women in unplanned pregnancies as opposed to an exclusive focus on the rights of the fetus and subsequently have adopted a public health framework that downplays the religious motivations of many activists. Others groups take a deliberately secular approach. Recent developments such as the movement's successful efforts to block public funding of abortion in federal healthcare reform legislation indicates the movement is a significant social force in the United States. Abortion rights advocates respond to these efforts with a number of criticisms that reveal the struggles over women's rights and role in the contemporary United States.

The majority of pro-life activists are white and middle or working class. Most are women, although certain types of activism are more likely to be led by men. Originally a Catholic movement focused primarily on state and federal legislation, evangelical Christians predominate in the pro-life movement today, alongside a sizable Catholic minority and some secular activists.

Prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion in the United States, pro-life efforts were sporadic and focused on individual states that already permitted abortions. After Roe, Catholics began mobilizing in larger numbers to reverse the legalization of abortion or at least to restrict access to abortion through state and federal legislation. The largest political lobbying group in the United States today is the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). Originally a Catholic organization, NRLC leaders made a strategic decision in the 1970s to downplay the organization's religious roots due to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment and to recruit Protestant and secular activists into the movement.

As of 2010, there are more than 3,000 NRLC chapters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Most members, including leaders, are women, but men remain a sizable minority. At the national level, NRLC and similar organizations consistently support political candidates who oppose abortion and played instrumental roles in both instating the so-called “partial birth” abortion ban in 2003 and the passage of a conscience clause in 2005 giving medical personnel the [Page 1170]legal right to refuse to participate in abortion procedures. Most recently, these groups successfully lobbied Congress to maintain various restrictions on public funding and access to abortion in the federal healthcare reform bill passed in 2010.

Critics of these efforts argue that political-lobbying pro-life groups seek to impose their own moral norms on women, regardless of women's circumstances or own sense of morality. They also argue that legally restricting abortion does nothing to prevent unintended pregnancies or to help women faced with pregnancies made problematic by financial need or a lack of support from male partners and family members. Abortion rights advocates object to the apparent dismissal of women's ability to make key decisions for themselves. Activists in political pro-life groups respond with arguments claiming that science offers irrefutable proof that human life begins at the moment of conception, that the difficulties faced by pregnant women are not solved by abortion nor do these problems justify ending another life, and that restrictions on abortion are necessary because women do not always understand the magnitude of abortion decisions and must be protected through mandatory delays and “informed consent” stipulations prior to having abortions.

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