Beyond the stereotypes

...Yet they started local right-to-life chapters and even a political party...

...A male pioneer, one of the few Republicans in the sample, said that his "involvement in right-to-life has been the greatest factor in producing good ambiguity in my conservatism...

...First of all, the pioneers were by no means naive, moralistic, or inclined toward a "fetal sentimentality...

...Without exception the pioneers said that they would pay more taxes if the de-legalization of abortion resulted in higher welfare costs...

...It bothers me when we sing 'America the Beautiful' at Mass...

...They had not previously thought of themselves as community leaders and they described themselves as reluctant and self-taught activists...

...I'd rather pay for them [welfare children ] than kill them," said a bus driver...

...But they were not "social liberals...

...Apart from their right-to-life activism, they would be indistinguishable from their Brooklyn and Long Island neighbors...

...Their basic principle, that all of human life deserves protection and nurture, even when uneconomical and inconvenient, logically assumes a . communal ethic of mutual interdependence which the experience of daily life systematically contradicts for many people...

...Few of the pioneers in this sample knew each other before their involvement in the movement...

...There are, to be sure, potentially radical implications in the pioneers' arguments against abortion...

...Finally, all of the pioneers observed that political success, which they defined as the passage of a human life amendment to the Constitution overruling the 1973 Supreme Court decision, would require a political coalition embracing many different political ideologies...

...Another male pioneer spoke similarly of his "awakening...

...The reason it hit home is because I have a child who is mentally retarded...

...With the obvious exceptions of the three clergymen and the three lawyers, the pioneers reported no previous experience in public speaking, lobbying, or politics...

...She and all subsequent interviewees were asked, "Who were the people active in the beginning of the right-to-life movement...

...ceived as part of the New Right, or the right wing, or whatever, it will hurt us...

...Two male pioneers explicitly said their right-to-life activity had "radicalized" them...

...It is a way to punish the mother...

...Only four pioneers said that their pro-life activities had pushed them to think more radically about politics and justice...

...It would be fair to describe the pioneers as "economic liberals"-they explicitly endorsed the principle that government has responsibilities to lessen the grosser inequalities resulting from the insecurities of a capitalist economy...

...Although I became aware of it only late in my visits, many of the pioneers, it turns out, had an experiential basis for their strong emotional reaction to abortion...

...But the more a person is in need, the more you should provide for them...

...They get the poor dependent on their benefactions for food and trinkets...

...pragmatic...

...or that they had had a last trimester miscarriage which powerfully convinced them of the humanity of the fetus...

...Among the questions I asked was, Why had they limited their political activism to the single issue of abortion...

...I also asked, "If abortion is not the solution to social problems, what is...

...Some analysis of survey data about citizens holding pro-life and pro-choice positions does exist, but little of it deals with activists...

...Even otherwise sympathetic observers have criticized pro-life groups for being concerned only with the single issue of abortion and leaving unattended those causes associated with helping the already bora, such as peace, poverty and similar efforts...

...Among those I talked with there was certainly a recognition that opposition to abortion required a correlative affirmation of a more communal social order in which the poor, the unwed, the retarded, and the handicapped (and their parents) were not abandoned to their own slight resources...

...Why do I use such an ambiguous phrase to describe the pioneers' politics...

...Their reactions were deeper and more complex...

...It seemed to me that there was ample room for more empirical evidence...

...Unlike the Moral Majority, for example, the right-to-life movement takes no position on prayer in...

...Their answers to these questions, and to others, cannot appropriately be described by the usual political labels of conservative, liberal, or radical...

...The finding was serendipitous...

...When a person was named by at least three interviewees that person was defined as a pioneer activist and subsequently interviewed...

...We also need government intervention for retarded people-so that they can develop their full potential...

...Second, a single-issue focus on abortion is not only consonant with the sui generis nature of the issue, but it also protects the right-to-life movement from being absorbed by any political party...

...The problem, it seems, is not in the moral dilemmas of abortion, but in the misshapen psychologies of those oppsing abortion...

...The in-depth study of right-to-life activists on which I embarked nonetheless posed certain problems of method...

...second, if support for the unborn required increased taxation, so be it...

...Making a logical connection between a principle and its policy implications is not a mental operation beyond the powers of most right-to-life activists...

...She has had her hours of pleasure and should be made to take the consequences, especially if those idylls were illicit...

...One woman said, "Right-to-lifers do what liberals talk about...

...Their description of "liberalism" differs from the self-understanding of those in politics who call themselves liberal as a way of signifying a special regard for those excluded from full participation in American life, such as the poor, minorities, and women...

...At least for some, the strong personal reaction to abortion might be partially explained by their personal experience with extremely vulnerable forms of human life which now seem threatened by legalized abortion and its underlying principle...

...But these answers do not go much beyond conventional welfare-state thinking...

...one was a doctor, and the remaining ten had skilled rather than professional occupations (such as bus driver, printer, and secretary...

...If we are per...

...The sample can be described by those amorphous terms "middle" and "lower-middle" class in that they generally owned modest and mortgaged single-family homes...

...But she concluded this observation with a telling last sentence: "I don't have a solution but I can't think that there isn't a solution...

...Examples are not hard to find...

...they reflect, for want of a more precise term, an unstructured populism...

...hypocritical...

...I automatically enlisted in the service...

...I remain a sort of Democrat-Democrats have good programs but no foundation based on respect for life...

...Hacker wrote: "There is another reason for compelling the birth of a baby...

...Now Task, 'Is any war justified?' This [abortion] awakened in me other things I never would have questioned...

...As the housewife who was the Long Island-based Right-to-Life party campaign manager observed, "We're never going to win a roll call vote in Congress without getting moderate and liberal votes...

...In the interviews they always returned to two constants: first, that support for abortion morally disqualified any political candidate...

...His wife explained, "Before the abortion issue we didn't think about politics and patriotism so much...

...Still, it is not implausible to think that a study of right-to-life pioneers might yield some especially telling insight into the particular nature of the strong opposition to abortion which continues here and elsewhere...

...Still, they are far from being political conservatives...

...Right-to-life endorses liberal candidates, providing they oppose abortion...

...The pioneers' frequent criticism of liberalism should be understood in this context...

...One of the last pioneers I interviewed had been talking about retarded children and she remarked: "There is a widespread feeling-a sentiment that they're expendable because they're not perfect...

...During each interview I asked, What was special or different about you that made you become an activist...

...The selection process continued until no new names were mentioned...

...ARE THESE STEREOTYPES, so easily substituted for thought in this difficult controversy, actually true...

...THE PIONEERS were far from locating their opposition to abortion in a comprehensive framework...

...In a syndicated column written during the 1975 Edelin case, Harriet Van Home described right-to-life activists as the same people who were "the hawks shrieking for blood in the dark days of Vietnam...

...We'd be surprised by what they have to offer...

...We should think not about the difficult issues raised by elective abortion but how, in a democratic society, to best constrain the morally regressive, and perhaps psychologically troubled, right-to-life activists...

...all but four were married, averaging close to four children, and they were mostly in their late forties and early fifties...

...They were allies, not friends, and they could not strain the alliance by seeking agreement on a broad range of moral issues...

...The highly individualistic conservatism has to be balanced with a sense of community...

...and "self-defeating...

...All of them fully comprehended the varied tragic circumstances in which a woman might seek an abortion...

...It includes, deliberately, only "pioneers" or initiators in the movement...

...INTERVIEWS WITH RIGHT-TO-LIFE PIONEERS Beyond the stereotypes JAMES R. KELLY RIGHT-TO-LIFE ACTIVISTS are commonly characterized as sectarian, morally naive, politically conservative, and best understood in the reductive social-psychological terms of "status politics...

...She was referring to the extensive volunteer network of emergency pregnancy counseling centers which developed nationwide after the 1973 Supreme Court decision...

...A concern for the unborn child implies a concern for the born child and a parental ability to provide it some semblance of a secure environment...

...Zealot" occurs in Maris A. Vinovskis's analysis (The Law and Politics of Abortion, 1980) and "resentment" in Andrew Hacker's article in the September 1979 Harper's...

...I used the New York City phone book to contact an activist (she ran a clinic offering alternatives to abortion) and a "snowball" technique was used to obtain the names of other activists...

...the schools, pornography, sex education, the Equal Rights Amendment, or military security...

...The poor need jobs and the rich offer them abortions," was a typical response...

...They'll finally eliminate the poor by saying, "If you don't have a job and you're pregnant you must have an abortion...

...I don't know," she conceded, "that much about national health insurance, but there has to be something for people who need it...

...Eleven were housewives, three were clergy (a priest, a rabbi, and a minister), three lawyers...

...If my son were drafted I'd go somewhere else...

...They are staffed by volunteers, they train each other, and they depend entirely on donations...

...This finding might also explain the extraordinary persistence of many in the right-to-life movement even when it seems to others that abortion has become an irrevocable part of contemporary technological societies.ontemporary technological societies...

...I think the human spirit and the human intellect have an infinite capacity to solve problems...

...My sample was necessarily small, but strategic, and its size made possible lengthy unstructured interviews which averaged three hours...

...JAMES R. KELLY teaches sociology at Fordham University...

...This point can easily be missed, for the pioneers frequently describe "liberals" who include abortion among social welfare measures with such pejorative phrases as: "arrogant...

...The final sample comprised twenty-eight pioneers, fourteen men and fourteen women...

...Responding to a question about the plight of a poverty-stricken woman facing an unwanted pregnancy, one woman right-to-lifer answered: "I can't see if some woman is asking for help, for bread, and you and society, say, 'kill the next one.' " Another replied ' 'The answer is not to decrease the number of guests at the banquet of life but to solve those problems...

...Nowadays I'm not very patriotic...

...THE PIONEERS CANNOT be called inconsistent on these points, although there is some question about the adequacy and comprehensiveness of their consistency...

...If they want separation of church and state, let's go all the way...

...When asked about the sources of the movement in favor of legal abortion, the right-to-lifers answered that much of its impetus stemmed not from compassion but from the powerful and the affluent who feared the political and economic implications of the fertility of the poor...

...This is a place for creative minds to work and see what can be provided for these people...

...AT the very least, my discussions make suspect the liberal left's quickly formed judgment that the anti-abortion movement represents a retrogressive impulse of lower-middle-class religionists seeking status affirmation in a world grown too complex to publicly mirror their moral traditionalism...

...If we don't care about the truly needy, we promote an anti-life philosophy in our state," he argued...

...How does it make sense," one pioneer asked rhetorically, "if a man is for civil rights but he wants to kill the person before he gets his civil rights...

...Half had not attended college...

...Abortion is a ludicrous solution-look, for example, at New York City...

...The sample selection was appropriately random...

...When necessary, they consult doctors, psychologists, and social workers, and these professionals also donate their services...

...And needless to say, studies done in other areas might yield somewhat different results...

...They don't want people who question why and who can't be controlled...

...And while the right-to-life movement's narrow focus may be a political and organizational necessity, the question of the politics and moral consistency of its members remains a relevant issue...

...Besides explaining the single-issue focus of right-to-life as a kind of prophylactic against political absorption, the pioneers, pointed out that it enabled them to prescind from issues which would surely fragment, and make politically impotent, a movement already divided on important aspects of the abortion controversy itself, such as the question of acceptable exceptions to a general prohibition of abortion...

...If pregnancy interrupts a woman's job, we must have a law allowing the woman to go back to that job...

...She then described the "old-timers" in the right-to-life movement as "pretty frequently" being parents who had handicapped children or who were people working in the health field with the handicapped or the elderly...

...Someone could turn around and argue from expediency and cut funds for the retarded...

...It is at least interesting to note that among the strongest supporters in the New York Senate for the recently approved increase in the state welfare grant were the Senate's acknowledged anti-abortion leaders...

...Abortion has not stemmed child abuse, and the plight of the poor is unchanged...

...It cannot be said that the right to life movement concentrates only on abstract moral principles completely severed from the needs of actual women burdened by an unwelcome pregnancy...

...They had not thought about politics and justice in any systematic way...

...I found among the pioneers no "ressenti-ment" nor any sentiments that those who engaged in irresponsible sex ought now to balance some abstract scales of justice by accepting the proper punishment of bearing an unwanted child...

...Another remarked: "With all the money in this country, do we have to kill them...

...Maybe they'd contribute to life later on...

...My country was never wrong...

...But the labels and social-psychological reductionism mechanically applied to right-to-life groups make such linkages appear politically impossible...

...From grammar school on you had to prove to government that you can be a good Catholic and still be an American...

...In answering the criticism that an authentic moral concern for human life could not be restricted to a single issue, the pioneers made three general points...

...Both recalled that as young adults they had been "super-patriots...

...It is possible that others who joined-attracted to it for a variety of reasons-might answer my questions differently...

...They readily agreed that it often required heroism for some women, especially the unmarried, to bring a pregnancy to term...

...As one observed, "The issue brought people together who shared little else...

...All of the pro-life literature they gave me cautioned against judging the abortion-seeking woman herself...

...Even social scientists describing the right-to-life movement routinely lapse into pejorative language...

...They are tainted with death...

...And one very pertinent final observation: During the interviews the pioneers had consistently described themselves as part of a "grassroots" movement, by which they meant they had received little help or direction from the usual community and church leaders...

...Prompted by her observation I reviewed the interviews and found that, excluding the clergymen and the two unmarried males about forty percent of the pioneers (9 of 23) had spontaneously volunteered the information that in their own families they had either a retarded child, or senile or handicapped parents...

...It [the right-to-life movement ] has broadened my sense of social awareness...

...WHILE THE pioneers give sensible answers to criticisms of of their single focus on abortion, much of the legitimate . discomfit of its critics is surely related to the feeling that abortion cannot be humanely opposed without some corresponding attempt to deal with its causes...

...it goes back to people like the Rockefellers-They want a certain way for the government to operate and people like us get in the way...

...Roger ML Williams (Saturday Review, June 9, 1979) describes right-to-lifers as "implacable," "nasty," full of "rationalizations," and "inflicting the sting of fetal politics...

...superficial...

...Some obvious limitations about this sample should be acknowledged...

...First, they argued that abortion stops a human life and therefore is a unique issue, for the protection of human life must be the basic premise of any political legislation...

...Senator James Donovan, the anti-abortion leader in the Senate for more than a decade, argued that without higher welfare grants, poor women would be more likely to seek abortions...

...She cited no studies linking pro-war and anti-abortion attitudes...

...One woman active in Birthright - a counseling center offering alternatives to abortion-said that it had become clear to her that the country "needs catastrophic medical insurance...

...They cannot be described as opponents of a "welfare state" ideology whereby government intervenes to help the failed competitors in the capitalist market...

...I asked each pioneer, "Wouldn't the de-legalization of abortion increase the welfare rolls and require increased government spending...

...In fact, most are Democrats, or they were before they registered in the Long Island-based Right-to-Life Party because they found few Democratic candidates with suitable records on the abortion issue...

...For the pioneers, liberalism is closer to a managerial ethos based on expediency and resulting in client dependency rather than autonomy...

...It bothers Bill seeing so many Catholics so super-patriotic...

...This pioneer-then a bus driver-did not trust "liberals" to truly represent the poor in American society: There's a great liberal slant in this country...

...For women seeking alternatives to abortion, the right-to-life movement has staffed from its own ranks a miniature, nonsectarian, voluntary, and per-sonalist system of social welfare...

...When I was growing up," one reflected, "it was not my country right or wrong...

...Their critique of elective abortion stemmed not from ressentiment but from an abhorrence of the nihilism they found implicit in such a solution to a woman's problems...

...I knew no one in the right-to-life movement...

...They did not endorse the laissez-faire principle that all questions touching on family life and sex were solely questions of personal taste with no politically relevant consequences...