Roeder and the Anti-Abortion Movement Itself Followed Parallel Paths

Posted on June 4, 2009

“He wanted a scapegoat.  First it was taxes — he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.”  This is how Scott Roeder’s ex-wife described him, according to the New York Times.  His personal journey to anti-abortion activism, like the journey of the entire movement beginning in the 1970s, began NOT with moral or religious outrage about abortion itself.  Rather, it began with anti-government sensibilities – starting with an outrage at having to pay taxes that primed their activist pumps.  Abortion simply became a surrogate for anti-government, anti-taxation passions.

In the case of Roeder, it was a personal trip from anti-taxation to anti-abortion – possibly stoked by mental illness.  In the case of the anti-abortion movement itself, it was a play for money and power, also beginning with anger at the IRS.    The Christian Right movement, as we know it today, was born when the IRS rescinded the tax-exempt status of the White Christian Academies in the South that had sprung up in the wake of Brown v Board of Education, the decision which mandated the end of public school segregation.  The abortion movement actually began as a pocketbook issue having nothing to do with abortion at all. By responding to the withdrawal of their tax emption, a group of fundamentalists formed an organization called Christian School Action, which later became the National Christian Action Coalition.  By doing this, they developed a public voice, raised a lot of money, and savored their newfound power.  However, the IRS backed down and reinstated the academies’ tax exempt status – leaving the Religious Right a movement without a cause.  They needed a cause.  They tried to latch on to abortion as a cause – but their followers did not buy it.  Abortion, most Evangelicals reasoned, was a personal choice.  Nobody was forcing abortion on anyone, and women could simply choose not to have one.  Christian conservatives did not feel compelled to ensure that all Americans acted on their particular Christian belief system.

            In fact, in 1971 (before Roe v Wade was decided in 1973) the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted almost unanimously in support of a resolution affirming a woman’s right to an abortion in many circumstances, including a threat to her physical or emotional well-being.  (That was the same reasoning which prompted Dr. Tiller to provide abortion care to women.) 

Frustrated, the Religious Right leaders continued to promote abortion as a major concern by infusing the tax issue into the discussion – as in “Do you want your tax dollars going to pay for abortions for ‘welfare queens’?”  Conflating abortion with tax dollars turned out to be a brilliant approach by the Religious Right. The issue caught fire with the people in the pews.  Abortion was an innocent bystander, which got caught up in the Religious Right’s push for power and influence.  The “morality” of abortion was not part of the equation.  Americans need to know this history.

© Copyright 2008, Carol Roye, All Rights Reserved.