In 1972, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Republicans believed abortion to be a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Ronald Reagan signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. Barry Goldwater sat on a Planned Parenthood committee. Nixon, Ford, and George H.W. Bush were all pro-choice—and they weren't party outliers.
Today's Republican orthodoxy on abortion isn't a return to traditional values. It's a political invention, manufactured in the late 1970s by operatives who needed a wedge issue to mobilize evangelical voters. The story of how that happened—and how it's now backfiring—reveals the machinery behind America's most divisive debate.
Before 1976, the word "abortion" didn't appear in any Republican Party platform. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats. The partisan divide we take for granted simply didn't exist.
Religious affiliation mattered far more than party. The right-to-life movement consisted almost entirely of Catholics—lawyers, politicians, and doctors who opposed abortion law reform. Evangelicals stayed out of it entirely. "The Evangelicals' attitude was that 'it's not our problem,'" recalled Paul Weyrich, the Catholic conservative activist who would later change everything.
In 1967, Republican-controlled states led abortion reform. North Carolina, Colorado, and New York—under Governor Nelson Rockefeller—eliminated restrictions on abortion up to 24 weeks. Planned Parenthood was essentially a Republican organization, with Eisenhower serving on a family planning committee. Explore the full history →
The religious right's political mobilization didn't begin with abortion. It began with defending racial segregation in private Christian schools.
When the IRS stripped Bob Jones University's tax-exempt status in 1976 due to its segregationist policies, Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich saw an opportunity. But they knew pro-segregation sentiment couldn't sustain a national movement. They needed a different issue to mobilize evangelical voters at scale.
Weyrich spent years testing wedge issues—pornography, the Equal Rights Amendment, school prayer—without success. Then, in 1978, he found what he was looking for. Historian Randall Balmer discovered in Weyrich's papers: "I found it; this is the issue that's going to work for us."
Paul Weyrich, one of the architects of the Religious Right, stated at a 1990 conference that the movement "did not come together in response to Roe" but rather the IRS attempt to rescind Bob Jones University's tax-exempt status. Abortion was chosen as a more palatable replacement for segregation.
The 1978 Iowa Senate race proved the concept. Republican Roger Jepsen defeated incumbent Democrat Dick Clark by targeting Catholic voters on abortion. In 1979, Weyrich and fellow operatives urged Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority—a phrase Weyrich himself coined. Reagan won in 1980, and the alliance between the Republican Party and white evangelicals was cemented. How the wedge was built →
For fifty years, Republicans wielded abortion as an aspirational grievance—a mobilizing tool against an unreachable target. Then the Supreme Court delivered the policy outcome, and the politics flipped.
By August 2022, just two months after Dobbs, FiveThirtyEight recorded a nine-point swing toward Democrats. In Michigan, Governor Whitmer won by 10 points and Democrats flipped both legislative chambers for the first time in 40 years. In states with abortion ballot measures, the Republican vote margin dropped nearly 5 points below the national average.
Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel acknowledged the problem: "Many of our candidates across the board refused to talk about it thinking, 'Oh, we can just talk about the economy and ignore this big issue,' and they can't."
Republicans were more effective wielding abortion as a mobilizing grievance than defending its implementation. Once voters confronted actual restrictions rather than theoretical ones, the issue became a liability. The full Dobbs fallout →
Here's the deeper irony: decades of political warfare over abortion didn't actually reduce abortions. Abortion rates in the US declined steadily from their 1980s peak through 2020—regardless of which party held power or what restrictions were in place. The real drivers were better contraception, expanded birth control access, and comprehensive sex education.
Post-Dobbs, the pattern held. Abortions fell in ban states but rose in others. Telehealth and mail-order abortion pills surged. Overall US abortion numbers may have actually increased. The bans didn't stop abortions—they just made them harder for poor women in red states. The post-Dobbs reality →
The policies that actually reduce abortion rates—contraception access, comprehensive sex ed, economic support for families—are often opposed by the same politicians pushing abortion bans. The wedge was never about reducing abortions. It was about mobilizing voters. Why contraception is next →
"Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts" – Harry Bosch (Michael Connelly)
The abortion debate gets framed as a clash of absolutes—"life" versus "choice"—that obscures what's actually at stake. The real question is simpler: who gets to make decisions about their own body? Why bodily autonomy is the foundation →
Every specific debate is a trap because it implicitly accepts the premise that some people's bodily autonomy is up for discussion.
The effective counter isn't policy defense. It's principle: Everybody counts or nobody counts.
The Republican strategy isn't really about protecting life—it's about establishing that government gets to decide which citizens deserve full autonomy over their own bodies. Once you accept that framework for any group, you've conceded the tool that can be turned on anyone.
The Harry Bosch principle that "Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts" is also just better politics. Universal principles poll better than specific policy defenses, and they don't require voters to first accept your position on when life begins before they can agree with you. But up until now, Democrats are arguing policy when they should be arguing principle. Why universal principles win →
Go deeper: Explore the political history in How Abortion Became a Political Wedge and the human reality in Reproductive Rights and Bodily Autonomy on Quarex.