January 22, 1973. The landmark US Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion in the United States has been made. It’s almost like nothing. Although a few Catholics express their opposition to the institution, they are small and struggle to be heard. According to a leaked working document, almost fifty years later, the institution could rescind the 1973 founding judgment. The topic of abortion has become a controversial one, which is deeply dividing American society. How did we get to this point?
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Paul Weyrich is the best way to sum up the answer. This Catholic strategist for the Republican Party, at the end of 1970s, saw the potential for electoral mobilization through the topic of abortion for a segment that had not been much politicized up until that point: the evangelicals. Reagan won the 1980 election after placing abortion at its core. This was the beginning of the rise and structure of what’s known as the “religious left”, which has since been a major component of the Republican party.
To “win hearts, minds and change the law,” anti-abortion groups used radical propaganda strategies to get their message across. Comparison of abortion and the Holocaust, defenses of “unborn” human rights, iconographies of fetuses in suffocation… With the support of the Republican Party, opponents to abortion have been able to “hysterize,” the debate about abortion, deciphers Sylvie Laurent, a historian. Here are photos of forty years worth of reactionary offensive.
