The Pre-Roe Pro-Life Movement in Minnesota and New York

Abortion as a “Medical Problem Broadly Defined” * :
Grassroots Activist Beginnings and the Minnesota Story of the Pro-Life
Movement, From Nineteenth Century State Anti-Abortion Legislation to
1980s Pro-Life National Politics
Julia Vill
A senior thesis submitted to the History Department of Princeton University in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
Princeton, New Jersey
April 3, 2012
* Former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, quoted in Linda Greenhouse, Becoming Justice
Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey (New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and
Company, LLC, 2005), 94.

This paper represents my own work in accordance with University Regulations.
Julia Vill
ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
(iv)
Abbreviations
(v)
A Brief Overview: Minnesota Politics, Culture, and Unique Forum in Fostering the Abortion Debate,
and Setting the Stage for Minnesota Activists to Continue on a Post-Roe National Scale (1)
Chapter 1: The Pre-History of the Contemporary Anti-Abortion Movement: The Long Shadow of
Nineteenth Century Abortion Law (12)
Chapter 2: The Minnesota Pre-Roe Story: A Challenge Spurred by the Opposition, and Furthered by
Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life
Liberalizing Abortion Law: Minnesota Council for the Legal Termination of Pregnancy (23)
“Let Us be Born”: The Emergence of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, Its Progression as
Model to State Groups and the Contemplation of Its National Organization (29)
Chapter 3: The Post-Roe Shift: Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Redirect and Progress at
Home in the Midst of Evolving Abortion Politics on a New National Level
The New Wave of a Post-Roe Debate: MCCL’s Accomplishments After a “Day of Infamy in
American History” (43)
The Changing Debate from State to Nation: The Politicization of the Abortion Issue and the New
Importance of Nationwide Groups (53)
Chapter 4: The National Movement Emerges: Clashing Christian Foundations, Progressive
Protestant Leaders, and the Promotion of MCCL’s Earliest Founders
American Citizens Concerned for Life and the National Right to Life Committee: Alike in
Organization, At Odds in Platform (67)
Away From the Catholic Mold: Pro-Life Leaders Progress Within An Established and National
Organization Framework (85)
The Common Thread: Marjory Mecklenburg as the Last, and Most Distinguished, Activist
Standing (93)
Conclusion (108)
Bibliography (114)
iii

Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the following persons in their aid to the research
and writing of the Senior Thesis.
Neil J. Young, for his crucial help in guiding the author’s Junior Paper and Senior
Thesis topic interest toward Minnesota, Marjory Mecklenburg, and MCCL, and
for his aid in editing, counseling, and guiding the author throughout the entire
thesis process.
Linnea Anderson, for her help in the Social Welfare History Archives at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Sonia Barbosa, for her help
at the Henry A. Murray Archive at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts; William R. Conary, for his help at the Harvard University
Archives in Cambridge, Massachusetts; William McNitt, for his help at the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library Archives; and Frances E. O’Donnell, for her
help at the Manuscripts and Archives division of the Andover-Harvard
Theological Library at the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Eduardo Canedo, for his encouragement and aid in organizing and guiding the
author’s preliminary work in the process of researching, brainstorming, and
editing the first chapter of this thesis.
Robert and Mary Joyce, for their precious wealth of wisdom, stories, articles,
documents, and faithful encouragement regarding the founding years of
Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, and the author’s independent work.
iv

Abbreviations
ACCL – American Citizens Concerned for Life
ADA – Americans for Democratic Action
AGI – Alan Guttmacher Institute
AIM – Abortion is Murder
ALI – American Law Institute
AMA – American Medical Association
CWLU – Chicago Women’s Liberation Union
DHHS – Department of Health and Human Services
HLA – Human Life Amendment
MACS – Minnesota Abortion Counseling Service
MCCL – Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life
MCLTP – Minnesota Council for the Legal Termination of Pregnancy
NCCB – National Conference of Catholic Bishops
NRLC – National Right to Life Committee
OAPP – Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs
PAC – Political Action Committee
SOUL – Save Our Unwanted Lives
USCC – United States Catholic Conference
v

A Brief Overview: Minnesota Politics and Culture, Its Unique Forum in
Fostering the Abortion Debate, and Setting the Stage for Minnesota
Activists to Continue on a Post-Roe National Scale
In the still snow-covered days of a Minnesota March in 1968, a group of
neighbors and concerned citizens met in the living room of George and Alice Hartle, in
the heart of the Calhoun-Isles district of Minneapolis. Alice, a former lobbyist, had
recently organized the meeting with the help of Reverend William Hunt, as both had
become concerned with recent rumblings in the Minnesota state legislature that would
attempt to overturn a Minnesota bill that outlawed abortion. Present too were the
husband and wife pair, Robert and Mary Joyce, a Catholic professor and writer,
respectively, from nearby St. Cloud. Dr. Fred and Mrs. Marjory Mecklenburg were also
in attendance; they were vocal Methodists who shared a backyard with the Hartles. 1
These friends, among others, had come together to contemplate the formation of an
organization to prevent the liberalization of the Minnesota law. While some, like the
Hartles and the Joyces, were easily persuaded to join the cause, Marjory Mecklenburg
was hesitant. Unsure of her opinions, especially on such a broad issue with great
implications and varying instances for consideration, she did not subscribe to the group
right away. However, later in the meeting, and perhaps after her husband, Fred, was
voted the first president of the organization on the spot, Marjory joined the board. 2
With
1 Mary and Robert Joyce, interview with author, 4 November 2010, St. Cloud, MN.
2 Ibid. Throughout the remainder of this thesis, I will typically use “Fred” to refer to Fred
Mecklenburg, and “Mecklenburg” to refer to Marjory Mecklenburg.
1

this first neighborhood grassroots meeting, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life
(MCCL) was born.
Many Americans today conventionally define the anti-abortion movement as a
pushback against Roe v. Wade, as a post-1973 national phenomenon dominated by
evangelical Christian leaders and conservative voices from pulpits, podiums, and
neighborhood patios. But this story is incomplete. Thousands of people organized
against legalized abortion through statewide and nationwide groups well before 1973.
This 1968 Minnesota start represents just one of these groups. The immediate actions of
this movement in the days after the Roe decision is strong evidence for the high level of
long-standing organization, structure, and support of these early groups. On January 23,
1973, groups issued pamphlets, wrote newspaper articles, gave speeches, and organized
rallies demonstrating direct opposition to the decision, issued the previous day. Without
an established network of identifiable anti-abortion activists, little of this immediate
action would have been possible. These state and national anti-abortion groups
established themselves in the late 1960s, and pushed their own agendas by mimicking the
tactics and rhetoric of pro-abortion activists as they navigated through many themes and
issues that had shaped the abortion debate for over a century. 3 Clearly, this anti-abortion
movement has a significant pre-Roe story.
3 I will use the terms pro-abortion and anti-abortion in the first part of this paper, in alignment
with the dominant rhetoric in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Minnesota and nationwide. I will use the
terms pro-life and pro-choice in alignment with the changing rhetoric in primary sources found that
occurred over time, and began at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision. The author is aware of the possible
political charge of such terms in contemporary times, yet does not wish to push any political or moral view
in this paper. The author asserts the terms were more neutral ones in the pre-Roe era and in the short-term
after the decision. The rhetoric used throughout the paper corresponds to the terms that appeared in
newspaper articles and government papers at the given time. The author in particular mirrors the language
modeled in the State of Minnesota House of Representatives Report, House Judiciary Committee,
Subcommittee on Abortion Laws, Interim Activities and Recommendations Report from January-
December 1968 and in Congressional Minutes from Subcommittee Hearings after Roe. i As one of the first
2

Actors in this movement ranged from physicians and law professors to pastors
and housewives; all these concerned citizens actively participated in educating others and
lobbying for their cause, motivated by individual morals, safety, and concern for human
life. The anti-abortion groups of the 1960s and 1970s drew on themes rooted in the
physician-led nineteenth century anti-abortion movement in their own twentieth century
fight against the push for liberalized abortion law reform. The frequent clashes between
the two camps, which both used scientific and medical rhetoric to make their very
different claims, necessitate an analysis and comparison of the two. However, this paper
will begin by interpreting the story of Minnesota’s most prominent 1960s anti-abortion
group, as the anti-abortion movement of this state was an exceptional and successful one.
Unlike abortion laws in states like New York, Colorado, and Hawaii, Minnesota’s
nineteenth century abortion law was not reversed before the Roe decision. 4
Perhaps this
explains the limited scholarship on the Minnesota abortion debate, compared to debates
documents investigating and recording the Minnesota abortion debate in the decade preceding Roe, the
Minnesota House of Representatives Report both framed the debate for the 1969 legislative session and
established the rhetoric the Minnesota legislature would use for years to come. The report records both
“testimony from proponents of abortion” and “testimony from opponents of abortion reform;” the author
believes abbreviations to pro-abortion and anti-abortion may be permitted, especially when considering
also personal papers and media sources of the time. Indeed, as late as 1972, Minnesota newspapers still
used the same terms. The author found ample headlines employing this rhetoric, asserting “Antiabortion
Push Failed at Polls,” ii “Mayo Doctor Launches Antiabortion Campaign,” iii and “Former Pro-Abortion
Pastor New ‘Right to Life’ Executive,” iv in 1970s articles found in activists’ papers. After the Roe
decision, the author found the terms pro-life and pro-choice to be much more common in newspapers, in
internal correspondence among all sides of the debate, and in Congressional Hearing Minutes. To this end,
the author deems it appropriate to use the rhetoric employed by both camps of the debate, as well as more
neutral and official (legislative) sources, in corresponding periods of time in this paper.
i. Katherine Taylor Wood Papers, Box 1, Folder: Legislation Minnesota 1967-1969, Minnesota
Historical Society, St. Paul, MN.; ii. St. Paul Dispatch, 13 November 1972, Section 2A, Box 3,
Folder: Newspaper Clippings 1971, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers, Minnesota Historical Society,
St. Paul, MN.; iii. Dave Giel, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3 June 1970, Box 1, Folder: Newspaper
Clippings 1967-1970, Governor Harold Levander Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul,
MN.; iv. St. Paul Dispatch, 1 August 1973, Folder: Warren Schaller, Historical Files Box, MCCL
Archives, MCCL Headquarters, Minneapolis, MN.
4 Newsletters, 1970-1973, Historical Files Box, MCCL Archives.
3

in New York, California, and Colorado. 5
At first glance, Minnesota’s conventional
characterization as a liberal, progressive state is at odds with the emergence of a thriving
anti-abortion movement. Yet, a closer exploration of Minnesota politics and the tactics
employed by both sides of the pre-Roe abortion debate shows this Minnesota political
culture in fact nurtured such activist grassroots organizations. Additionally, an
understanding of the abortion debate in Minnesota, where abortion law reform was
defeated, offers new insight into the debate’s progression to the national level after the
Roe v. Wade decision. This thesis will briefly continue to follow the Minnesota story in
the years after 1973, but the greater scholarly value for understanding the evolution of the
early contemporary anti-abortion movement must continue in an analysis of the national
movement in the years after 1973.
As the Supreme Court decision overruled all standing state laws and pending
debates, the abortion debate flew away from the state level and onto the national stage
with Roe v. Wade. Appropriately, this thesis will follow the Minnesotans who founded
MCCL in 1968 through the state group’s founding years, and onward and upward to their
positions as leaders and founders of national pro-life groups, many of which still exist
today. The debate itself shifted from its origins as a non-religious, non-partisan issue to
quite the opposite; with this shift, grassroots leaders adapted their tactics to work toward
5 For more on the abortion debates in these three states, ranging from the mid-1800s to the turn of
the 21 st century, see: Stacie Taranto, “Defending ‘Family Values’: Women’s Grassroots Politics and the
Republican Right, 1970-1980,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2005; Rosemary Nossiff, Before
Roe: Abortion Policy in the States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Michael A. Russo,
“California: A Political Landscape for Choice and Conflict,” in Abortion Politics in American States, ed.
Mary C. Segers and Timothy A. Byrnes, 168-181 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc, 1995); Clifford
Browder, The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, The Abortionist (Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1988); Eyal Press, Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006); John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company: 2003), 270-278; and Mildred Danforth, Anti-abortion Women of
America: A Sampling (Lewiston, Me.: M.E. Danforth, 1982).
4

their goal of a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution, which would protect and
define human life at the moment of conception. With the rise of the Moral Majority and
New Right came increased pressure and publicity (and therefore, change) for the pro-life
movement. Roe and the long struggle that followed it represented a defeat that
discouraged some, but mobilized others. Marjory Mecklenburg, the woman who needed
convincing to subscribe to the movement in the first place, was one activist who became
arguably more motivated than any other. She eventually progressed farther than any
other MCCL founder and was appointed to a government position as the Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Mecklenburg’s trajectory and those of many early anti-abortion actors show that pre- and
post-Roe histories do not tell a segmented story, but rather a continuous one. This thesis
challenges historiography’s periodization of the abortion movement and the larger rise of
modern conservatism, complicating how scholars think about anti-abortion actors, who
were not always conservatives themselves. Institutional structures, political arguments,
and individual people can all be traced out of Minnesota, which acts as a vital breeding
ground and a continual link throughout the abortion story explained here.
Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), founded in 1968, was one of the
first statewide anti-abortion groups, and became one of the nation’s most popular groups
at the time of the Supreme Court decision. MCCL took a forceful stand against abortion
before, immediately after, and ever since the historic ruling in January 1973. The unique
nature of Minnesota politics, the large membership of MCCL, and the seemingly
paradoxical existence of this group in a historically liberal state presents a grassroots
story that is hardly discussed and rarely understood. Indeed, the Minnesota pre-Roe story
5

is a unique and important one to tell. Minnesota is the state that nurtured and educated
St. Paul Van Buren elementary school classmates (and lifelong companions) Supreme
Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v.
Wade decision itself. 6
It is the state that is home to a world-famous medical institution
and one of this country’s most prestigious and consulted hospitals, the Mayo Clinic. And
Minnesota is a state with a political culture drawn to and supportive of single-issue
politics and moral-driven issues, due to its immigrants’ surviving culture and active
citizenry. 7
By revising Minnesota’s place in the conservative/liberal paradigm and
asserting its prominence in the medical sphere through a careful consideration of oral
histories of MCCL founders and archives of pro- and anti-abortion activists, an
exceptional case of a successful secular anti-abortion group emerges. Such a group was
not at odds with, but instead exemplary of Minnesota’s political culture, and one that
produced effects that rippled through the national anti-abortion movement and through
multiple presidencies. It still survives today.
MCCL rose to become one of the most prominent state anti-abortion
organizations around the time of the Roe decision because of its formation at the
grassroots level in a unique political climate by appealing to fellow neighbors,
physicians, and educators using non-religious (but rather medical, scientific, and
philosophical) language, while borrowing tactics from the pro-abortion camp, which
started organizing in the early 1960s to alter the 1873 Minnesota anti-abortion statute.
Politics, grassroots organization, upbringing, education, careers, moral beliefs, and
6 Linda Greenhouse, Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey,
(New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2005), 6.
7 Daniel J. Elazar, Virginia Gray, and Wyman Spano, Minnesota Politics and Government,
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 9.
6

history of activism – all of these factors influenced the early anti-abortion leaders of
Minnesota to take action, and served these actors well in the post-Roe years. Further
motivated by the Roe v. Wade decision, MCCL’s efforts since 1973 can be explained by
its earlier activity in the pre-Roe years. The group’s reluctance to deploy religious
language in favor of medical and political rhetoric reveals both MCCL’s mimicry of proabortion
tactics and its efforts to appeal to a broad citizenry. It was MCCL’s ability to
identify and align itself with the unique characteristics of Minnesota’s political culture
and the appropriate vocabulary of the abortion debate that allowed much of its great
success. The same holds true in instances later explored in the national post-Roe debate.
Further, this early and highly organized group became a breeding ground of educated and
experienced anti-abortion leaders, who moved on to the newly formed national groups
after 1973. For instance, MCCL founders became involved in the National Right to Life
Committee and Americans United for Life, serving as presidents, editors, and board
members in the years after Roe v. Wade.
This long history of the Minnesota abortion debate is best explained
chronologically. I will justify MCCL’s language and tactics through an identification of
the themes that emerged in the nineteenth century abortion debate, an explanation of its
rival group’s activists and efforts in the 1960s and 70s, and an analysis of how MCCL fit
into Minnesota’s political culture in its pre-Roe years. Further, the politicization of the
issue after the Roe v. Wade decision necessitated flexibility among national pro-life
activists. Those who were able to adapt and broadly appeal to the dominant rhetoric and
multiple constituencies later in the movement were the most successful activists. These
7

major factors led to MCCL’s victories before Roe v. Wade and also led to the success of
certain flexible and attentive national pro-life leaders and groups after the decision.
Although the MCCL story is significant for its accomplishment of preserving the
state’s nineteenth century abortion law, it is of greater importance because this statewide
story had nationwide ramifications in the Roe decision itself. Supreme Court Justice
Harry Blackmun, the decision’s author, grew up in a working-class neighborhood of St.
Paul, Minnesota and met future Chief Justice Warren Burger in kindergarten. These
“Minnesota Twins” lived just six blocks apart. 8 After graduating from Harvard in 1932,
Blackmun returned to Minnesota to practice law and remained there for over twenty-five
years. 9
Burger, too, had strong ties to Minnesota; he did not live anywhere else until
1953. 10 Blackmun later worked as the Mayo Clinic resident counsel, “a position in which
he would function not only as a lawyer but as a member of the senior management of the
multimillion-dollar nonprofit corporation.” 11 He later wrote his nine years in the position
were “the happiest of my professional life.” 12
As an extension of these blissful years,
Blackmun remained tied to the institution for life, as his medical experience proved a
crucial asset in his Supreme Court position. According to Pulitzer Prize winner and New
York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, Blackmun’s “ties to Mayo and to the medical
profession…made him more aware than the other justices of the winds of change blowing
through the health care establishment.” 13 Blackmun returned to Mayo to research at the
institution soon after Burger assigned him the Roe case. In July 1972, Blackmun sifted
8 Greenhouse, 5-6.
9 Ibid., 13.
10 Ibid., 21.
11 Ibid., 18.
12 Ibid., 18.
13 Ibid., 74.
8

through books and articles set aside for him; many of the articles and publications found
in this Mayo stack were the same ones found in the papers of Minnesota’s top pro- and
anti-abortion activists. Various actors here were informed by the same (often medical)
publications, yet were led to very different conclusions. 14
Blackmun was certainly influenced by the institution he knew so well; the Mayo
Clinic has been the country’s forerunner in medical care, research, and teaching for over
a century. 15 Patients and doctors travel from across the globe to visit Mayo; author Lucy
Wilder describes the clinic’s average patient as “a cross-section of everyone in the
world.” 16
The worldliness and significant presence of the medical profession in
Minnesota helps explain the dominant usage of medical rhetoric in the abortion debate.
These doctors made the medical advancements that spurred pro-abortion sympathizers to
action, and these Mayo doctors and Mayo-affiliated University of Minnesota professors
wrote articles and letters to establish the vocabulary for the debate. All this, taken
together with the high abortion approval rate (3 out of every 4) of therapeutic abortions
by clinic boards, created an atmosphere quite supportive of the Supreme Court decision
Blackmun would write in 1973. 17 The Minnesota abortion debate had implications not
only for the state’s own residents, but also clearly connected to a drastic and lasting
impact on the national scale. This continuous Minnesota story is tightly knit into the
nation’s medical, social, and even judicial history.
14 For example, Blackmun consulted the March 1971 American Journal for Public Health issue
and a Washington Post article that asserted “2 out of 3 Americans think abortion should be a matter for
decision solely between a woman and her physician.” Ibid., 90-91. I found both publications in the MCCL
Historical Files and the Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
15 Alan E. Nourse, Inside the Mayo Clinic, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979), 23;
Lucy Wilder, The Mayo Clinic, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947), 26.
16 Wilder, 58.
17 “Doctors Estimate 3 of 4 Abortions Accepted at Mayo,” 19 May 1970, Minneapolis Star, Box 1,
Folder: Newspaper Clippings 1967-1970, Governor Harold Levander Papers.
9

Well before Blackmun’s 1972 Mayo visit, Minnesota residents grappled with the
abortion decision themselves. Anti-abortion MCCL came together as a direct response to
community-driven pro-abortion rumblings in the Minnesota legislature in 1967. Spurred
by pro-abortion activists, legislators proposed a bill to repeal the 1873 Minnesota statute
that outlawed abortion. As previously mentioned, a group of concerned citizens,
professors, and physicians rallied colleagues and neighbors, and met in March 1968 in
the Hartle family living room to plan the action and the organization that would last for
decades. 18 These actors and the tactics they employed in their earliest activist years
affected the movement on a state and national scale before and after the 1973 Roe
decision. MCCL and the National Right to Life Committee still exist today; this living
room meeting set a movement in motion that continues to survive. The 1968
neighborhood gathering served as the first official meeting of MCCL, which proclaims
itself to this day as a “non-profit, non-denominational public service organization
dedicated to fostering, through education and social action projects, the right to life and
the dignity of each human being.” 19 MCCL implemented its first actions – recruiting,
distributing literature, and writing letters – by mimicking the pro-abortion groups
established earlier in the decade. Minnesota Council for the Legal Termination of
Pregnancy (MCLTP) was the most prominent of these groups and mobilized on a
grassroots level, lobbied at the state capitol, and used broad rhetoric to build its strong
support. MCCL formed and acted as a pushback on both the 1967 legislation and groups
like MCLTP, but also implemented the same tactics and non-religious language to
accomplish its goals.
18 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
19 MCCL, History of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, (Minneapolis: 1995), 2.
10

In 1968, the handful of MCCL founders could never have predicted the forty-year
(and continuing) struggle they were to face. Yet, this conflict between pro- and antiabortion
organizers started much earlier. In order to understand the rhetoric and tactics
used by the earliest state and national actors in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, one must trace the
abortion debate to when it was first ingrained in American law in the mid-1800s. A
familiarity with the rise of state laws that outlawed abortion nationwide by 1900 and the
emergence of physicians and hospitals as abortion experts is essential to an understanding
of the nature of the abortion debate in the years surrounding the Roe decision. Indeed,
the 1800s abortion debate was very different from the one that persists today.
11

Chapter 1: The Pre-History of the Contemporary Anti-Abortion
Movement: The Long Shadow of Nineteenth Century Abortion Law
The story of the nineteenth-century anti-abortion movement illuminates many of
the themes the twentieth-century actors encountered in their crusade against abortion law
reform. Although their direct motivations differed greatly, discourse in the fields of law,
professional medicine, and public debate shaped the arguments and influence of
nineteenth and twentieth century anti-abortion activists alike. Abortion was legal in
1800; yet by 1900, abortion was criminalized throughout the United States. The earliest
anti-abortion actors swayed government and public opinion on the issue through secular
and medical language in letters and public statements; MCCL helped hold off the
liberalization of legalized abortion in the five years before the Roe decision by employing
the same approach. Indeed, the story of the nineteenth century anti-abortion movement
provides the background for MCCL and its national successors. Discourse in the fields
of professional medicine established over a century ago ran throughout the early
contemporary anti-abortion story. Although the nineteenth century shift was seen most
tangibly in the changes in law and public opinion, one must primarily look to
professional medicine and science to best explain this change.
Scholar James C. Mohr asserts that “regular” or professional physicians were “the
first right-to-lifers of American history,” though their initial motivations could not have
differed more from twentieth and twenty-first century anti-abortion activists. 1
Having
lost much of their abortion-related income to midwives and homeopaths that also
1 James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 10.
12

performed the procedure, doctors were largely motivated by economic factors in forming
their anti-abortion stance. 2
Indeed, the 1840s saw the rise of abortion as a business, and
with this trend came a greater awareness of competition in the medical sphere. 3
In
attacking abortion, doctors eliminated their competition, presented themselves as both
professional and moral authorities, and thus increased their influence on nineteenthcentury
American society. An added advantage of attacking abortion was the opportunity
to make the issue into a “widespread social phenomenon” and into a rallying point, a
symbol itself. 4
From the outset, the issue was in part framed by a highly symbolic
medical and moral debate.
Individual professional doctors wrote and lobbied their legislators for antiabortion
laws; in 1847, those willing to join forces to promote the status and interests of
physicians formed the American Medical Association (AMA), marking the beginning of
what Mohr deems the “Physician’s Crusade” against abortion. 5
The AMA provided the
opportunity to integrate medical rhetoric in the abortion debate. Indeed, Dr. Horatio
Robinson Storer, an obstetrics specialist, used the framework of AMA to launch his
attack on abortion ten years later. Storer originally gained followers and support by
writing to individual physicians, most already involved in anti-abortion policies or
discussion across the country. One such man was Dr. C.W. LeBoutillier. Reporting on
the status of abortion laws and public opinion in the Minnesota Territory, LeBoutillier
asserted “the practice of producing abortion is frequently resorted to in our vicinity…and
I regret to say that regular physicians have in many instances assisted in this damnable
2 Ibid., 37.
3 Ibid., 47.
4 Ibid., 46; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), 31.
5 Mohr, 146.
13

practice. The law as it stands is to us worthless, and unless it is amended, the evil will
not soon cease.” 6
Even before statehood, Minnesotans were vocal advocates of the antiabortion
doctrine. Some of the state’s earliest settlers were colonial descendants, New
Englanders committed to moral and issue-oriented politics with a fervent desire for
economic success. 7
Due to the physicians’ drive to change their professional and
economic status, this trend was consistent throughout the country; forty anti-abortion
laws were passed between 1860 and 1880. 8
Even before the MCCL years, Minnesotans were pioneers in the abortion issue, as
the state’s amateur citizens, not legislators, were catalysts in enacting change on specific
moral issues. The state passed its anti-abortion law in 1873 with an overwhelming vote
of 37-0 in the Senate and 55-1 in the House. 9
The Minnesota law prohibited abortion
except to save the mother’s life, and was quite similar to the Texas statute declared
unconstitutional by the Roe decision exactly one century later. 10
The 1873 Minnesota
statute is a prime example of how abortion opinions and trends changed drastically in the
late nineteenth century due to this overwhelming pressure from the medical community
and the resulting sway in public opinion.
Religion, however, was a notably minor force in shaping our country’s earliest
abortion legislation; Mohr asserts the “origins and evolution of anti-abortion attitudes in
the United States owed relatively little to the influence or the activities of organized
6 C.W. LeBoutillier to A.R. Storer, Letter, 28 March 1857, Storer Papers, quoted in James C.
Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), 149-151.
7 Elazar, Gray, and Spano, 9.
8 Faye D. Ginsburg, Contested Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 25.
9 Mohr, 223.
10 617.18 Minn. St. § IX (1873).
14

eligion.” 11
This absence of religion, however, generally holds true only until the 1970s
rise of national organizations like the National Right to Life Committee, founded and
financed by the Catholic Church. In contrast, nineteenth-century medical authorities
realized there were few religious spokesmen for the organized anti-abortion movement;
to be sure, the few religious leaders who did speak up in the nineteenth century were
deemed “unpopular, and their works b[ore] but little fruit, and that of poor quality” by Dr.
J. Miller, an active doctor in the nineteenth-century anti-abortion movement. 12 The same
description may be applied to Catholic clergy leadership in Minnesota in the decade
preceding Roe, according to MCCL founders. 13
Therefore, the actors and arguments
most prevalent in shaping nineteenth century abortion legislation would prove to be the
most powerful forces in pre-Roe times as well. Church groups and bishops were seldom
thought leaders of the pre-Roe anti-abortion movement in the nineteenth century and the
immediate pre-Roe years in Minnesota. Rather, concerned citizens, lawyers, educators,
and physicians led the push in both the pro- and anti-abortion camps.
While many states formed their earliest anti-abortion groups through local
Catholic parishes, largely aided by Catholic bishops and the National Right to Life
Committee (NRLC), MCCL became the voice of the Minnesota anti-abortion movement
through neighborhood and chapter meetings that transcended specific religious
denominations. According to historian Neil Young, Catholic leaders began to organize
“a network” of anti-abortion parish and diocese groups in certain states that otherwise
11 Mohr, 196.
12 J. Miller, “Criminal Abortion,” Kansas City Medical Record, I, No. 8 (August 1884), 297,
quoted in James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 195.
13 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
15

would have functioned independently of one another. 14 Historian John McGreevy, too,
describes a state-by-state campaign to organize church anti-abortion groups, armed with
“an instant network of parishes, parish bulletins, newspapers, copy machines, staplers,
and most important, volunteers.” 15 While this was certainly the case in states like
California and Illinois, no such Catholic-specific action occurred in Minnesota. Instead
of organizing around existing religious institutions, MCCL drew on a tradition of secular,
medical anti-abortion rhetoric in neighborhood settings especially vibrant in Minnesota.
Sociologist Kristin Luker calls the years following the Physician’s Crusade the
“Century of Silence;” until groups like MCCL arose, the abortion debate received little
public attention, and no legislative change until the 1960s. 16
In the decades before
MCCL, the anti-abortion movement had no notable, forceful voice in Minnesota or on the
national level because there simply was no pressing need for an anti-abortion public or
political voice. Additionally, although the era of the Great Depression and World Wars
saw huge social and political change, abortion was simply not a social or political issue in
America. 17 Instead, it was a technical, scientific, and medical issue. Physicians were the
established authority on the issue by the turn of the century; for any other group to rally
for and attain change would have proved very difficult. Physicians overwhelmed all
other groups as candidates for opposition because they simply did not speak the same
language; technical language was superior in this era, and only doctors used it.
14 Young states that the NRLC brought 864 Catholic chapters together by 1974. Over 100 of these
were in California, and 50 were in Illinois. No figures were mentioned for Minnesota, but Birthright, a
Minnesota group, was specified as “remaining separate.” Neil Young, “We Gather Together: Catholics,
Mormons, Southern Baptists and the Question of Interfaith Politics, 1972-1984,” Ph.D. dissertation,
Columbia University, 2008, 146.
15 McGreevy, 273. McGreevy cites specific instances from New York, Colorado, and Arizona, but
not from the Midwest.
16 Luker, 41
17 Ibid., 42.
16

Physicians’ elevated status from anti-abortion legislation was magnified as
medicine advanced and developed new treatments for the previous threats to maternal
health. 18 The decision to perform an abortion was often entirely left to the discretion of
individual physicians, thus creating a large variation in the circumstances under which
abortions were performed. To remedy the disparities, hospitals established abortion
committees to assemble uniform guidelines for the abortion decisions in the 1950s. 19
Abortions became more difficult to obtain, especially as some hospitals reverted to
systems deemed especially controversial and discriminatory against poor, less-informed,
and less-connected women seeking abortions. 20
In addition, significant medical
advancements made during WWII and exponentially in the post-war years increasingly
convinced many that state abortion laws were becoming “archaic.” 21
Not only did
doctors identify “new” fetal deformities (such as Down’s Syndrome in 1959), but they
also found new ways of detecting these deformities early in the pregnancy. These
medical advancements convinced physicians that nineteenth century abortion laws were
inconsistent with twentieth century social thought and medical and genetic technology.
All this led to the post-war mobilization of physicians, educators, and medical
organizations to the pro-abortion cause, striving for equal treatment and protection for all
under the law.
Two highly publicized causes of fetal deformity, the 1962 thalidomide drug
scandal and the 1965 rubella epidemic, shifted this awareness from the medical to the
public sphere, thereby convincing the broader citizenry the law needed revision. These
18 Ibid., 54-55.
19 Ibid., 55.
20 Ibid., 57.
21 “Abortion Law Isn’t Moral – Dr. Hodgson,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 18 November 1970, 1A,
Box 1, Folder: Hodgson, Dr. Jane Legal Case 1970-1973, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
17

instances also increased awareness of startling abortion realities - 1 million women had
illegal abortions, 350,000 women were hospitalized because of botched abortions, and
illegal abortion was the leading cause of death for American women in 1968 - and
brought the abortion debate from hospital waiting rooms to dining room tables. 22
In
1962, Sherri Finkbine, host of a popular children’s television show in Phoenix, took
thalidomide (a European sleeping pill), which led to deformities in the unborn. She
eventually obtained an abortion in Sweden, after facing hospital rejections and court
cases on the matter in Arizona. 23
Her conflict was the cover story of Life magazine on
August 10, 1962 and therefore became the topic of heated discussion among citizens
across the country and the world. 24 Just three years later, German measles (rubella)
swept the nation; all expecting mothers exposed to the disease had a large risk of fetal
deformity. The epidemic of the disease soon grew into an epidemic of paranoia,
increased abortions, and therefore increased involvement and tension in a suddenly public
abortion debate.
As a response to the developing public awareness on abortion problems, the
American Law Institute (ALI), an organization of lawyers, professors, and judges, drafted
its 1959 Model Penal Code on abortion, stating the procedure was permissible if
performed by a licensed physician. Three years later, the American Medical Association
(AMA) endorsed the ALI’s Model Penal Code and proposed policy statements based on
the Code itself; this was quite the departure from the campaign the AMA championed a
22 “What Started the Abortion Battle?,” 1978, Box 2, Folder: Abortion Rights Council of
Minnesota 1973-1981, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers; Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel, Before Roe
v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (New York: Kaplan
Publishing, 2010), 11.
23 Ibid.,11.
24 Ibid.
18

century before with Storer and the Physician’s Crusade. In the 19 th and 20 th centuries
alike, the AMA’s central mission was advancing the status and interests of the medical
profession. In the 1960s, physicians were often accused of overstepping the maternal life
protection clause of the Minnesota law in performing abortions as it became more
broadly interpreted. 25
As a result, the AMA pursued law reform to protect its doctors
from this criminalization over abortion law. Further promoted by the AMA endorsement,
the ALI Moral Penal Code became the model for most liberalized abortion laws passed in
the United States from 1959 to the 1973. 26 Minnesota’s agitators for reform frequently
cited the ALI’s Code, and suggested reformed legislation for the state based on the Code
as well. Indeed, this 1959 recommendation shaped much of the rhetoric and wording for
the pre-Roe debate.
The ALI’s Code had a strong impact in Minnesota. Aware of the recent ALI
Code and other states’ decisions to reevaluate abortion laws, the 1967 annual meeting of
the Minnesota State Medical Association House of Delegates in Duluth assigned a special
committee to study the abortion problem. Later that year, the committee presented a draft
of a Minnesota model abortion law to avoid situations that left “the doctor in a position
where following his professional judgment may mean violation of the law.” 27
At this
point in the abortion debate, the discussion was still within the framework of the medical
profession, and did not yet concern itself with considerations for the health of the mother.
As previously stated, medical authorities at this time were primarily concerned with the
25 Mohr, 20.
26 Ibid., 24. Twelve states passed laws identical to this code: Arkansas, California, Colorado,
Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Virginia. All other laws adopted at least some of the ALI’s recommendations.
27 “Selected Handouts and Reports,” Box 1, Folder: Legislation: Minnesota 1967-1969, Katherine
Taylor Wood Papers.
19

threat of abortion criminalization to the social prestige of the profession. Aware of the
Minnesota Medical Association model law, the Minnesota State Legislature formed a
committee in 1967 to study the question of abortion. It was this rumbling in the
legislature that spurred the formation of MCCL. However, against the wishes of the ALI
and AMA, the committee asserted it was “not the responsibility of this legislature to
purify the race, and [remained] unwilling to permit abortion on the statistical possibility
that a fetus may or may not be deficient.” 28 Despite the committee’s statement, or
perhaps motivated by it, two additional bills were introduced in 1969 that would have
declassified abortion as a crime and instead placed it under medical regulation in
Minnesota. Neither bill was passed, but both sides of the abortion debate lobbied hard in
committee hearings. 29
This was the first direct legislative confrontation between
Minnesota pro- and anti-abortion groups.
All this was happening in the years of significant change in public opinion on
abortion, which also convinced MCCL its education and lobby efforts were vital at this
time. A 1969 Planned Parenthood/World Population Poll was one of the first to publicly
show a majority opinion that the abortion decision should be between a woman and her
physician (57% to 37%, with 6% without an opinion). 30 In addition, the November 3 rd ,
1969 issue of Modern Medicine, a self-defined “editorially neutral” magazine that
discussed medical and surgical issues and education programs, released the results of a
poll that asked “should abortion be available to any woman capable of giving legal
28 “State of Minnesota House of Representatives, House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on
Abortion Laws, Interim Activities and Recommendations,” 1968, Box 1, Folder: Legislation Minnesota
1967-1969, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
29 “Abortion Measure Withdrawn in Senate,” St. Paul Dispatch, 15 May 1969, Box 3, Folder:
Newspaper Clippings 1969, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
30 “Public Opinion,” Handout, Box 2, Folder: 1969-96 Opinion Polls: Abortion MN & NAT,
NARAL Pro-Choice MN Records, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN.
20

consent upon her own request to a competent physician?” 31
Nationwide, the results
showed 62.8% of physicians in favor; in Minnesota, only 55.6% were in favor. 32
Minnesotan physicians did not have a clear stance on the issue; they did not champion
law reform like they had in the nineteenth century. MCCL’s ability to recruit physicians
was the reason all physicians didn’t subscribe to the pro-abortion camp. Joining activists
from various professions, doctors took part in both sides of the debate.
Clearly, the 1950s brought about a change in the abortion issue within the medical
profession. As articulated before, because of the authority and unique technical language
of physicians in the debate, one could argue that doctors themselves needed to change
their opinions for any large shifts to occur. Because of the growing disparity of the
administration of abortions from doctor to doctor, paired with the controversial guidelines
of the hospital abortion committees, many physicians began to reject their strictly antiabortion,
nineteenth-century platforms on the issue. And yet, nineteenth-century
physicians could not win over a majority of the public and legislators on their own in the
first Crusade, and neither would they do the same in the twentieth century. 33
In the
1850s, sensational stories in the New York Times and the support of feminists helped
promote awareness of the cause to people that physicians could not reach or convince. 34
Likewise, in the early 1960s, increased press coverage, growing knowledge of abortion
problems, and the help of concerned citizens outside the medical sphere motivated a
movement for the reversal of the nineteenth-century abortion laws. This in turn triggered
31 Modern Medicine, About Us, last modified 2010, http://www.modernmedicine.com/aboutus;
“Recent Public Opinion Polls” Handout, 1969, Box 2, Folder: 1969-96 Opinion Polls: Abortion MN &
NAT, NARAL Pro-Choice MN Records.
32 Ibid.
33 Mohr, 146.
34 Ibid., 172.
21

the actions of new twentieth-century state and national anti-abortion advocates. These
activists joined state groups like MCCL and national groups like the National Right to
Life Committee (NRLC) and American Citizens Concerned for Life (ACCL). While
these new anti-abortion organizers had nineteenth-century predecessors, their
contemporary identity was more diverse and their tactics were more organized and
innovative in the North Star State and nationwide.
22

Chapter 2: The Minnesota Pre-Roe Story: A Debate Spurred by the
Opposition, and Furthered by MCCL
Liberalizing Abortion Law:
Minnesota Council for the Legal Termination of Pregnancy
Those in favor of the liberalization of Minnesota’s 1873 abortion law
inadvertently caused the mobilization of actors that would form and develop Minnesota
anti-abortion groups like MCCL. One of the strongest and most prominent pro-abortion
groups to emerge in the pre-Roe period was the Minnesota Council for the Legal
Termination of Pregnancy (MCLTP), now known as the National Association for the
Repeal of Abortion Laws Pro-Choice Minnesota (NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota).
Student Carolyn Qualle and fellow activists and neighbors formed MCLTP in December
of 1966 due to personal experiences, newspaper reports of the negative effects of illegal
abortions, and the growing knowledge of the problems doctors and women faced when
considering an illegal abortion. 1
For the next six years, the group would press for the
revision of what they deemed as Minnesota’s “archaic abortion law.” 2
MCLTP gained
significant momentum after it obtained support from various medical associations for
liberalized abortion laws in the 1960s and sponsored two major pieces of state legislation
in 1969. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Nurses Association
released statements supporting a revised abortion law, adding to the credibility and ranks
1 “MCLTP,” [~1971], Box 2, Folder: MN NARAL brochures, undated and 1967-1983, NARAL
Pro-Choice MN Records.
2 Ibid.
23

of the MCLTP. 3
In the early 1970s, faced with the pressure of a new, unified, and
highly-organized MCCL, MCLTP hired lobbyists, built a stronger grassroots
organization, and formed new relationships with state legislators to advance its mission
of abolishing the 1873 Minnesota statute. 4
In addition, the organization successfully
sought alliances with other groups, including the Minnesota State Medical Association,
the Minnesota Psychiatric Association, Planned Parenthood, and the Minnesota Welfare
Association, to expand the scope of the discussion and the ranks of Minnesota’s most
prominent pro-abortion group. 5
MCLTP sought to cultivate public interest in reform by proposing and endorsing
state legislation to liberalize abortion access. Soon after its formation in 1966, the
handful of members drafted a 1967 bill based on the ALI 1959 proposal and obtained
legislative support in the 1969 and 1971 sessions. However, letters written by Robert
McCoy, the MCLTP Coordinator, indicate the group recognized the need to spread its
message beyond the metropolitan area to attain success with the bill. MCCL founders
identified McCoy, a long-time family planning advisor, as the most prominent advocate
of the pro-abortion camp in the 1960s and 1970s in Minnesota. 6 As such, MCCL and
Minnesota anti-abortion activists noted his actions and continuously brainstormed how
3 APA and ANA Public Statement Copies: 1967 and 1968, Box 2, Folder: Kay Taylor Files: Cor.
& Misc. und. 1969-1978, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
4 Tom Berg to Katherine Taylor, 27 August 1972, Correspondence, Box 2, Folder: Kay Taylor
Files: Cor. & Misc. und. 1969-1978, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers. The letter thanks Ms. Taylor for her
campaign contribution and for being “the first person that has helped out as a result of the abortion issue.”
The box also contains letters from Stanley A. Anebo of the 34 th district of the Minnesota House (undated)
and George S Pillsbury of the 33 rd district to Katherine Taylor (25 August 1972).
5 Pamphlets of and Correspondence with Listed Groups, Box 1, Folder: Legislation: Minnesota
1967-1969, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
6 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
24

they could be countered. 7
McCoy began writing to newspapers and sending letters across
the state, urging those sympathetic to the cause to involve their peers, call and write state
representatives, and fill newspaper “letter to the editor” columns with statements of
support for the liberalization of abortion law. 8
McCoy himself wrote countless letters and
articles to Minnesota citizens and newspapers, advocating the liberalization of the
abortion law and advertising his own counseling organization, which directed women
seeking abortions to out-of-state physicians. McCoy’s Minnesota Abortion Counseling
Service (MACS) became publicly associated with MCLTP in 1970. 9
The leaders of
MCLTP were all on the board of MACS, including MCLTP President Betty Benjamin
and Treasurer Katherine Taylor. MCCL would soon mimic MCLTP’s moves to tie itself
to other organizations to increase support and membership.
As MCLTP membership continued to grow, the group adjusted its arguments and
tactics to match the medical framing of the abortion discussion and gain greater support
in the legislature and across the state. Joining with medical, civic, political, professional,
and social organizations, the group used discussions of prenatal defects, poverty, ecology,
rape, and morality in its letters, articles, and literature it wrote and distributed. 10 Its
pamphlets were heavily illustrated with photographs, ranging from teenage mothers to
deformed (and aborted) fetuses to Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother photograph
7 The MCCL Archives, the personal papers of Mary and Robert Joyce, and the ACCL Records
contain newspaper articles and internal correspondence regarding Robert McCoy. MCCL and ACCL
activists traced his actions and organized protests in front of the abortion clinics he would organize after the
Roe v. Wade decision.
8 Robert McCoy to undisclosed recipients, 22 January 1967, Correspondence, Box 2, Folder:
Elections and Abortion, NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota Papers.
9 MCCL leaders began appearing on Board of Directors lists in 1970. Box 1, Folder: Abortion
Counseling Center of Minnesota 1970-71, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
10 “MCLTP,” [~1971], Box 2, Folder: MN NARAL brochures, undated and 1967-1983, NARAL
Pro-Choice MN Records.
25

from the Great Depression in its section on poverty. 11 From the graphic to the
sentimental, these photographs triggered powerful emotions: discomfort, disgust, and
sympathy. MCLTP felt that advances in medicine and genetics necessitated abortion law
reform; it therefore distributed literature on recent advances in medical procedures to
persuade Minnesotans that existing abortion restrictions were dangerously out of date.
The pamphlets focused on the hazards of x-ray radiation, hallucinogens, and rubella
(German measles) to the fetus, and the genetics advancements that facilitated the prenatal
detection of those defects. 12
MCCL, formed soon after MCLTP, would directly respond
to these arguments in its publications in the late 60s and early 70s.
Given the pro-abortion/pro-choice debate today is often associated with women’s
rights and medical reasoning, MCLTP’s focus on morality as an argumentative
framework is striking. 13
While anti-abortion sympathizers relied heavily on the morality
of preserving the life of the fetus, MCLTP instead used morality to explain the
insensitivity of the anti-abortion camp itself. They argued that a woman could have
respect for human life in deciding not to bring a child into the world, unable to provide a
rich, happy life for him or her. Further, in response to those who deemed abortion
murder, MCLTP simply avoided a full discussion of the matter, stating the fetus is just
“flesh, cells, organs, bones, and tissues,” 14 not a human being. MCLTP argued, by
aborting a fetus, a mother was not killing a human life, but rather removing parts – flesh
and bones – of a potential one. This response involved and fused both medical and moral
discourse, used by all sides of the abortion debate. This in fact represented a turning
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
26

point in the rhetoric and arguments in the abortion debate; while nineteenth century
abortion debates were led by doctors and therefore dominated by medical language,
diverse activists of the twentieth century began to focus on the moral aspects of the
abortion issue. Multiple rhetorical forces were at play in many of MCLTP’s arguments;
MCCL, too, would tap into diverse language to argue its side of the abortion debate.
Despite its best efforts to innovate in its vocabulary, arguments, and actions, the
pro-abortion camp soon found its principal task of liberalizing abortion law quite
difficult, for Minnesota never independently changed its abortion law. Legislators
proposed several bills from 1969-1972, which were all immediately referred to
subcommittees. Both MCLTP and MCCL testified in front of legislators in these
subcommittee hearings. However, due to a variety of factors, none of these bills passed.
First, it took time to educate and mobilize public support in the early years of MCLTP,
after which the group faced formidable opposition from MCCL. Made clear by the
inability of the group to pass a new abortion bill into law, MCLTP never had the upper
hand against MCCL in the pre-Roe abortion debate. In addition, MCLTP could not find
and retain supporters for the bills very easily. In fact, Senator Kelton Gage retracted his
support for the cause in the 1971 legislative session, after authoring the liberalized Gage
abortion bill in 1969. 15
Ever the optimist, Robert McCoy asserted in a 1972 press release
that although “the small but vocal minority…represented in Minnesota by such
organizations as SOUL, AIM, MCCL, and Birthright…are often very vocal, they actually
only speak for a minority of our population who extol the fetus.” 16
McCoy
15 Tom Matthews, “Supporters of New Abortion Bill Lose Sponsor in State Senate,” Minneapolis
Tribune, 1971, Box 3, Folder: Newspaper Clippings 1971, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
16 Press Release, 24 June 1972, Box 1, Folder: Abortion Counseling Center of Minnesota, 1970-
1971, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
27

underestimated his opponents, as MCCL and its partner organizations put up an
organized, grassroots, and united front against the pro-abortion groups in the pre-Roe
years. MCLTP’s subcommittee testimonies and membership recruiting were unable to
convince legislators to pass a liberalized abortion law. Instead, the group’s earliest
successes and failures created an example MCCL would follow in its own anti-abortion
efforts.
One may ask if MCLTP did the same; did the pro-abortion camp mimic the antiabortion
camp to the same extent? After all, the Minnesota legislature never overturned
its 1873 abortion law; despite MCLTP’s two-year head start on MCCL, the pro-abortion
group did not achieve its goals. Mutual mimicry makes sense, given each camp’s close
observation of the other. However, due perhaps to the chronological differences of the
two groups (as one started before the other), very little evidence of pro-abortion mimicry
of anti-abortion tactics exists in the archives or newspaper articles of the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Because MCLTP began years before MCCL, it established the tactics and
rhetoric of the debate early on. In order to then enter that debate, MCCL reacted to proabortion
strategies and adopted some of their tactics. After these early years, as MCLTP
shifted its tactics, MCCL usually reacted in the same way. Evidence shows very little
inversion of this pattern occurred. A stalemate resulted from MCCL’s successful
attentiveness to MCLTP’s actions. MCCL mirrored them, moved with them, and kept
the debate at an equal count, despite the fact that other states reformed their own antiabortion
laws.
28

“Let Us Be Born:” The Emergence of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for
Life, Its Progression as Model to State Groups, and the Brief Pre-Roe
Contemplation of National Organization 17
The Minnesota anti-abortion story is one “rife with paradox,” according to
historian Glen Halva-Neubauer, and one that is seemingly perplexing and surprising on
the surface. 18
Indeed, the Minnesota story is a unique one. How could such a historically
liberal state – the only one to vote for Mondale in 1984, and one that produced Justice
Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe decision itself – foster the largest state anti-abortion
movement in the country, attracting over 10,000 members by 1973? 19
This can be
explained in part by the prominent medical establishments in Minnesota, by the moraldriven
ancestry and culture of the its citizens, and also by the nature of the abortion issue
itself as a non-partisan issue in the years before Roe v. Wade.
Minnesota has an unusually vibrant and progressive political atmosphere; through
the lens of MCCL, one can see why. Political scientist David Elazar claims Minnesota
has a “moralistic political culture,” one that emphasizes the community’s power to
influence government for the sole betterment of the community itself, and provides for a
structure that supports amateur political participation. 20 Elazar attributes this moralistic
culture to Minnesota’s earliest immigrants: New Englanders and northern Europeans,
17 Robert E. Joyce, Let Us Be Born: The Inhumanity of Abortion (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1970).
18 Glen A. Halva-Neubauer, “Minnesota: Shifting Sands on a ‘Challenger’ Beachhead?,” in
Abortion Politics in American States, ed. Mary C. Segers and Timothy A. Byrnes, (Armonk, NY: M.E.
Sharpe, Inc, 1995), 29.
19 Ibid., 29.
20 Elazar, Gray, and Spano, xxiv.
29

who shared a “communitarian ethic” reminiscent of that of America’s colonial settlers. 21
Elazar claims that this communitarian ethic survives today because of Minnesota’s steady
population growth and “demographic homogeneity;” indeed, the large distance between
Twin Cities and other major metropolitan areas and persistent cold weather partially
isolate Minnesota from frequent migration and outside influences that could alter its
ethic. 22 Columnist Neal Peirce deems the state’s political structure “open, issue-oriented,
[and] responsible.” 23
The state’s population is one of the most highly educated, well
informed, and politically mobile in the nation. Peirce again asserts, “few states exceed
Minnesota in the quality and extent of the education offered its citizens; none appears to
provide health care of comparable quality.” 24
The Mayo Clinic is a key example of this
high quality health care. Well-educated, open, and issue-oriented, Minnesotans respond
favorably to lucid, well-organized, and reasoned debate. This is exactly what MCCL has
tapped into since its pre-Roe years. MCCL owed much of its success to its ability to
remain a single-issue organization, despite pressure to enter euthanasia, capital
punishment, and Vietnam War debates by critics like Denis Wadley, then chairman of the
Minnesota chapter of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), who deemed the group
“too loud and coercive on its one issue, and too glaringly silent on the other, related
matters.” 25 The group employed moral and medical knowledge and remained open to all
members, regardless of religion or party affiliation. All this was precisely aligned with
21 Ibid., 10.
22 Ibid., 210.
23 Neal Peirce, “Minnesota: The Successful Society,” in The Great Plains States of America:
People, Politics, and Power in the Nine Great Plains States (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972, 1973), 110,
quoted in Elazar, Gray, and Spano, 3.
24 Ibid.
25 Denis Wadley, “M.C.C.L. or M.C.C.A.?,” [~1971], Box 3, Folder: Denis Wadley Papers,
Personal Papers undated, 1971, 1973, Denis Wadley Papers 1948-1982, University of Minnesota Social
Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
30

the state’s moralistic political culture, defined by its communitarian ethic and
mobilization of ordinary citizens to influence government actions. 26 Indeed, Halva-
Neubauer argues that Minnesota’s “progressive tradition and activist politics” provided
an environment in which groups like MCCL and MCLTP could flourish. 27
One could argue Minnesota’s moralistic political culture would make it a
supportive atmosphere for religious statewide anti-abortion groups. After all, a quarter of
the state’s population was Catholic in 1967. 28
Overall, Catholics seem to historically care
more about abortion. According to sociologist James R. Kelly, the first “abortion
opponents [in the United States were] disproportionately Catholic…self-recruited, selffinanced…[and]
used Catholic parishes as resources for recruitment and meeting
spaces.” 29
Did religious leaders champion the anti-abortion movement before MCCL?
Perhaps surprisingly, they did not. Contrary to Kelly’s claim, religion was noticeably
absent from the Minnesota abortion discussion, parallel to its absence in the nineteenth
century movement. The Catholic Church largely failed to address the abortion issue on a
united scale until the 1960s, with the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s and
Humanae Vitae in 1968. The Second Vatican Council (1962-5) denounced “whatever is
opposed to life itself,” citing sins like murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, slavery and
“disgraceful working conditions,” as “infamies…[and] poison [to] human society.” 30
26 Elazar, Gray, and Spano, xxiv and 10.
27 Halva-Neubauer, 30.
28 Ibid., 30.
29 James R. Kelly, “Learning and Teaching Consistency: Catholics and the Right-to-Life
Movement,” in The Catholic Church and the Politics of Abortion, ed. Timothy A. Byrnes & Mary C.
Segers, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 154.
30 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium Et Spes), Chapter 2, No
27, 7 December, 1965, .
31

However, the Council did not offer a distinct solution or suggest direct Catholic action. 31
Additionally, the 1963 Roman Catholic Colloquium did not notice or discuss the issue. 32
The influential Catholic conservative William Buckley, too, blamed clergy leadership in
a 1970 Rochester Post article, asserting, “bishops and…priests are complacent,
or…undecided about what ought to be the rights of others, in pluralistic situations.” 33
By
the time Pope Paul VI circulated Humanae Vitae, a Papal encyclical “On the Regulation
of Birth” condemning abortion and contraception, MCCL had already filled the vacancy
left by Catholic bishops as the leader of the Minnesota anti-abortion movement. 34
Kelly’s nationwide claim cannot be applied to any Minnesota Catholic group; MCCL was
the state’s first major anti-abortion group in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Perhaps Humanae Vitae even strengthened MCCL. Enlightened by the encyclical, newly
invigorated Catholics could easily join MCCL and work together with those of other or
no faith to achieve the same goals. Indeed, Catholic Minnesotans did contribute as
individual actors to the popularity of MCCL and the ideas for which it stood, even though
they did not publicly assert their Catholic opinions as group members. 35
MCCL, like MCLTP, focused on secular arguments involving medical practices
and realities of human life. Posing the abortion question as a Roman Catholic versus
others debate would have proved wholly problematic; according to a article written by
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.; and James R. Kelly, “Learning and Teaching Consistency: Catholics and the Right-to-Life
Movement,” in The Catholic Church and the Politics of Abortion, ed. Timothy A. Byrnes & Mary C.
Segers, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 154. Author’s note: Surprisingly, Kelly does not mention
Humanae Vitae.
33 William Buckley, “Catholic Anti-Abortion Influence Waning,” Rochester Post, 20 October
1970, Box 1, Folder: Newspaper Clippings 1967-1970, Governor Harold Levander Papers.
34 Paul VI, “Humanae Vitae,” 25 July 1968, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/e
ncyclicals/doc uments/hf_pvi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html.
35 Douglas Interview Transcript, Boxed 9 April 1993, Box 2, Folder 313, Kristin Luker Papers,
Henry A. Murray Archive, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
32

Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus in 1970, “the question of abortion is of more
universal scope.” 36
MCCL founders deliberately shied away from invoking religion to
support their arguments out of concern for alienating potential recruits to their cause.
However, even though MCCL downplayed Catholicism (and religion in general), it did
matter to some extent; certainly some MCCL activists were Catholic (or of some
religious faith). Kelly is only partially correct if one applies his claim to Catholics as
individual anti-abortion actors. That these activists mobilized as individuals within
MCCL, rather than as a clergy-led group, further supports the Minnesota exception.
Along with New York, Hawaii, and Colorado, Minnesota was a clear pioneer in
the abortion discussion. California amended its anti-abortion statute several times
between 1828 and the Roe decision. While California was one of the first states to enact
its abortion ban in the nineteenth century, it repealed the law earlier than many others
before Roe v. Wade. 37
Hawaii had a very similar story. 38 Minnesota remained
exceptional as the sole leader among these states that did not pass a reformed abortion
law before the 1973 Supreme Court decision. Other states considered liberalized
abortion laws, but Minnesota remained one of the few that did not pass a proposal to
change it. According to Halve-Neubauer, even after Roe, Minnesota was a “challenger
state…[in that its citizens] demonstrated the greatest antipathy to Roe by enacting
restrictions that undercut the decision or implemented it in the narrowest form
possible.” 39 What made Minnesota a challenger? Minnesota’s tradition of informed,
36 Richard John Neuhaus, “The Dangerous Assumptions,” [~1970-1], Series 3: Program Records,
Abortion, Box 17, Folder: Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, 1970-1, Minneapolis YWCA Records,
University of Minnesota Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
37 Louis J. Palmer, Jr., Encyclopedia of Abortion in the United States, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland
& Company, Inc., Publishers, 2002), 260.
38 Ibid, 138-9.
39 Halva-Neubauer., 29.
33

issue-based and activist politics facilitated the formation of single-issue groups and the
ability of one issue (abortion) to then dominate public debate.
Indeed, this activist spirit thrived among a handful of Minnesotans throughout
1967, when Rev. William Hunt, soon to be known as “the father of MCCL” and lobbyist
Alice Hartle, the “mother of MCCL,” became aware of the predecessor to the 1969
Gage/Bell-McMillan bill in the Minnesota legislature. 40 The pair saw the revised
abortion bill not only as permissive murder, but also as the tip of the iceberg. What, one
anti-abortion activist (a “Mr. Abernathy,” a 34-year old Catholic St. Paul man
interviewed by sociologist Kristen Luker) argued, would stop man and the law from
going further with human lives - to infants, to the physically and mentally retarded, and
to anyone not “like us?” 41
Spurred to action, Hartle and Hunt joined forces with Dr. John
McKelvey, a University of Minnesota Medical School professor, and Dr. John Falls,
Public Policy Chairman of the Minnesota State Medical Association. They travelled
around the state appealing to the most well known Minnesota anti-abortion voices. These
prime movers, the handful of recruited vocal anti-abortion sympathizers and a few of
Alice Hartle’s neighbors, met in March 1968 in Hartle’s living room to formally establish
MCCL as a non-profit, non-denominational organization dedicated to fostering the right
to life of each human being. 42
The group elected the first president, Dr. Fred
Mecklenburg, a suburban Minneapolis physician, on the spot. Fred, along with the other
founders, counted among their ranks the founders of Birthright St. Cloud, a Catholic
priest at St. John’s Abbey, University of Minnesota and St. John’s University professors,
40 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
41 Abernathy Interview Transcript, Boxed 9 April 1993, Box 2, Folder 300, Kristin Luker Papers.
42 Mary R. Joyce, The History of MCCL, article provided after Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
34

Mayo Clinic doctors, lobbyists, pastors, speech-writers, and published authors. 43
Together, they started their fight against what MCCL founders deemed the “anti-life
drive” with what historian Halva-Neubauer defined as “tenacious, grassroots lobbying
coupled with indefatigable electioneering” to become a lasting political power and rival
of MCLTP. 44
MCCL immediately and vigorously started to act toward their goals. The group is
often given credit for preventing the 1969 pro-abortion Gage and Bell-McMillan bills
from passing into law in Minnesota. 45
MCCL members, ranging from doctors and
pastors to homemakers and educators, lobbied and testified in committee hearings, and
established strong relationships with legislators across party lines. In doing so, the group
clearly mirrored MCLTP tactics. Dr. James A. Blake, for example, testified against the
Gage Bill on March 31, 1969 in a subcommittee hearing, asserting that “doing an
abortion is taking a life and all our training and all our practice is for the preservation and
lengthening of life.” 46
He practiced at the most highly respected hospitals in the state:
Hennepin County General, University of Minnesota Hospital, and Mayo Clinic. As
stated before, medical rhetoric still prevailed a century after the Physician’s Crusade
established it. The high profile of medicine in Minnesota further strengthened physician
voices in the state. Although Blackmun reached a different conclusion than MCCL
doctors at Mayo, the immense influence of the institution is evident. In part, leadership
in both MCCL and pro-abortion groups was to some extent professionalized, as was the
case among leaders in the nineteenth century debate. The combination of doctors like
43 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
44 Ibid.; Halva-Neubauer, 35.
45 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
46 James Blake Testimony, 31 March 1969, Box 1, Folder: Legislation: Minnesota 1967-1969,
Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
35

Blake and Fred Mecklenburg and lobbyists like Hartle and Marjory Mecklenburg was
crucial to MCCL in the fight against liberalized abortion legislation; these activists would
continue to be crucial forces in the national post-Roe debate.
MCCL faced another major challenge in the form of Minnesota v. Hodgson, a
1971 prosecution of Jane Hodgson, who became the first licensed physician convicted of
performing an illegal abortion in a hospital. Hodgson, a Mayo-trained obstetrician and a
founding member of MCLTP, tested the constitutionality of the Minnesota abortion law
by performing an abortion on a woman exposed to rubella (German measles) during her
pregnancy. 47
Well aware of the importance of the case (as it was eventually sent to the
Supreme Court), MCCL acted directly by filing an amicus curiae brief, adding to the
anti-abortion front against Hodgson. 48 Additionally, MCCL members were called as
expert witnesses in the trial. Just as MCLTP used the courts to argue its case in the
abortion debate, so also did MCCL take decisive action to defend the state’s 1873 law.
Although the abortion issue was perhaps becoming a political one as courts and
legislatures became involved, it was not yet a partisan one. Both Democrats and
Republicans attended MCCL events, proposed and fought pro-liberalization legislation,
and responded positively to the group’s opinions and efforts. The issue was not yet
widely accepted as part of party platforms; the debate was still too new on the public
scene. In addition, because the movement was single-issue, it could apply itself across
the political spectrum in these early years. 49 While MCCL’s greatest criticism was its
47 MCLTP Letter to Membership, 1971, Box 1, Folder: Hodgson, Dr. Jane. Legal Case, 1970-
1972, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
48 MCCL Newsletter, March 1971, MCCL Archives.
49 Christopher Anglim, Loaves and Fishes: A History of Pro-Life Activism in the Democratic-
Farmer Labor Party of Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District (1968-81), (Published by the Author: St.
Paul, 1981), 197; see also Donald T. Critchlow. Intended Consequences (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
36

efusal to fight for multiple issues, the group’s single-issue stance and focus on abortion
allowed the group to relate across party and religious lines. According to author
Christopher Anglim, this enabled MCCL to grow its support by “keep[ing] all doors open
[and] both sides happy.” 50
Halva-Neubauer argues that “while Minnesotans were not substantially more
opposed to abortion reform than the nation as a whole, the state’s political culture
provided fertile ground for the expression of anti-abortion sentiment.” 51
Debates between
Robert McCoy and MCCL founder and soon-to-be president Marjory Mecklenburg
occupied primetime television slots throughout the pre-Roe years and were clear proof of
citizens’ interest and involvement in Minnesota politics. 52 It is also crucial to note that
both of these leaders were ordinary citizens and added to the diversity of the movement’s
activists. They were not doctors or educators, lawyers or lawmakers, although many
actors in the two movements held such professions. McCoy was motivated by his
experiences with women he encountered in his abortion counseling agency; Mecklenburg
was a homemaker who was among the MCCL founders as a result of encouragement
from her neighbors. The mix of professionals with other citizens certainly contributed to
the spread and strength of both movements. There was no lawmaker who championed
Minnesota abortion reform or led groups like MCCL against it. Instead, ordinary, or
rather extraordinary, citizens organized themselves in YMCA centers and peers’
basements to make the abortion debate into what it became in Minnesota by 1973.
MCCL was able to mobilize Minnesotans of a variety of professions to present a broad,
50 Ibid., 198.
51 Halva-Neubauer, 31.
52 Marjory Mecklenburg’s husband, Fred, was the first president of MCCL and a fellow founder.
Marjory was a later president of MCCL and the first president and founder of American Citizens
Concerned for Life.
37

yet united front against abortion law reform on the state and (later) national level. It is
this grassroots organization, a result of Minnesota’s historically active citizens and
tradition of single-issue and informed politics, which made the Minnesota story, and the
MCCL and MCLTP stories, so unique.
For MCCL, the story of its purely state-focused efforts ends with the biggest
defeat of the movement’s existence, one that “disgusted…disappointed…and surprised”
anti-abortion volunteers, but certainly did not halt its most important sympathizers. 53 On
January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton,
which effectively legalized abortion throughout a woman’s pregnancy in all fifty states.
These decisions reversed Hodgson’s conviction and overturned Minnesota’s 1873
abortion law; this one act did what over six years of Minnesota pro-abortion lobbying and
organization could not. These decisions, however, did not end MCCL, but instead bound
the group more closely with anti-abortion groups in other states, and unified these groups
under the American Citizens Concerned for Life (ACCL) and National Right to Life
Committee (NRLC). While the NRLC revised its bylaws to allow loose affiliations with
state groups years after its founding, ACCL affiliated with state groups as a core part of
its mission statement upon incorporation. The creation of NRLC and especially ACCL as
umbrella organizations further demonstrates how the abortion issue had become a
national one. The stronger state anti-abortion groups like MCCL took the lead in
building up weaker right-to-life groups in other states, and also took positions of
leadership in the new national organizations.
However, while the anti-abortion movement garnered increasing enthusiasm and
passion after the 1973 decision, Minnesotans looked at the issue on a national scale as
53 Abernathy Interview Transcript, Boxed 9 April 1993, Box 2, Folder 300, Kristin Luker Papers.
38

early as 1969. MCCL’s scope became increasingly exemplary on the national scale
before the abortion issue became a national one itself. MCCL’s leaders and the
organization as a whole became such a force in the national movements and debate after
the decision in part because they had already been contemplating and mobilizing around
the issue as “national” years prior to the Roe v. Wade decision.
The previous arguments have clearly established MCCL as an early and effective
anti-abortion group through its tactics employed in tune with both the medical, political,
and religious climate and rhetoric of the state, while also sufficiently addressing its
opposition. MCCL spurred chapters around the state, from northern-most Brainerd to the
metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and south to Rochester and Red Wing.
Not only did MCCL spur action throughout Minnesota itself, but it also inspired action
throughout the United States. Beginning in the early 1970s, and increasingly after the
Roe v. Wade decision, MCCL also served as a model for other state groups and national
groups throughout the country. Other movements later reproduced MCCL’s structure,
organization, and tactics to found or further their own state and national efforts toward
promoting the anti-abortion cause. Additionally, the earliest leaders of MCCL travelled
around the country, visiting fifteen states in 1972, to meet with leaders of other local,
state and national groups. 54
Naturally, MCCL leaders soon ascended to national roles.
They served on boards and in various positions of national organizations, which gained
strength and importance after the Supreme Court decision. This progression stemmed not
only from their success in building MCCL as the most popular and successful statewide
54 Marjory Mecklenburg to MCCL Membership, Letter, 21 November 1972, American Citizens
Concerned for Life, Inc.: Records, Box 11, Folder: Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life 1972, Gerald R.
Ford Library.
39

anti-abortion movement, but also because these leaders helped brainstorm and develop
the national organizations themselves, as early as the 1960s.
Yet the root of MCCL’s propulsion into the national spotlight started small, as
stated previously, in 1968 in George and Alice Hartle’s living room by Lake Harriet in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. 55 There, the future founders, presidents, chairmen, board
members, writers, editors, and treasurers of future national anti-abortion organizations,
who have been traced extensively in this work, met to create one of the nation’s first antiabortion
groups. These future leaders were anonymous and typical in title and
occupation at the time; yet they would soon be recognized nationwide for their positions
and efforts. The very first document MCCL produced, its Articles of Incorporation,
highlighted the tactics adopted by other state and national groups. MCCL, as well as
those groups modeled after it, was formed
“[t]o engage in educational, charitable, scientific or literary activities and projects
or purposes, including…[t]o improve and further personal and social
responsibility for human life…[t]o inform the public on abortion and related
subjects…[t]o foster high standards of medical care in the State of
Minnesota…[t]o cause to be published and to distribute treatises, articles,
addresses, reports and other publications on any or all subjects related to those
above…[and t]o aid and assist individuals, corporations, associates or institutions
now or hereafter engaged in furthering any one or more of the aims set forth
55 Kathryn Boardman, “Chance Meeting Led To Anti-Abortion Drive,” St. Paul Dispatch, 4 July
1973, ACCL Records, Box 27, Folder: Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
40

herein and do such other things as maybe necessary or proper to carry out any of
the foregoing aims of the corporation.” 56
MCCL and groups across the country alike later adopted educational and scientific
projects and language to further their cause through conventions, seminars, weekly
meetings, guest speaker events, mail campaigns, and more. Further, MCCL’s plan for
appeals to and alignment with Minnesota’s medical community can be painted as efforts
to not only further their anti-abortion cause for moral reasons, but also to further the
cause as a movement to “foster high standards of medical care” throughout the state. 57
Further proof of MCCL’s efforts to develop the anti-abortion movement nationwide is
evident in many articles written to “aid and assist …institutions…engaged in
furthering…the aims” of the movement, and also in the similarities of other groups’
tactics and arguments to those of MCCL. 58
As early as 1972, MCCL’s most prominent leaders, including Mecklenburg,
drafted a document entitled, “State Pro Life Organization: A Possible Model Presented in
Outline Format” to be distributed nationwide. 59 The document outlined the “Basic
organization…Education functions…Political functions…Fund raising…[and] Chapters”
needed for any successful anti-abortion organization and campaign. 60
These efforts soon
came to fruition, as MCCL leader Joseph Lampe, who worked with Mecklenburg
throughout her entire activist career, exchanged literature on anti-abortion activism with
56 “Articles of Incorporation of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, Inc.,” 20 June 1968,
ACCL Records, Box 12, Folder: MCCL Constitution and Bylaws, Gerald R. Ford Library.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Dr. Paul Andreini, Marjory Mecklenburg, Joseph Lampe, Edythe Thompson, “State Pro Life
Organization: A Possible Model Presented in Outline Format,” ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: Natural
Right to Life Convention June 16-18, 1972, Gerald R. Ford Library.
60 Ibid.
41

emerging organizations across the country. 61
In particular, the drive to found a Right to
Life organization in Kentucky came about in mid-1973, when Robert Greene, serving on
the executive committee of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) at the time,
described the efforts being made to incorporate the new statewide organization. 62
Conflict arose, however, as Greene worried about how the new Kentucky group would
affiliate with a national organization. For, after Roe, multiple nationwide groups were
created out of tension and differing ambitions with previously established groups.
Statewide groups and nationwide groups had to adjust and navigate a changing pro-life
organizational structure. Mecklenburg’s new American Citizens Concerned for Life
would become prominent for brief moments in anti-abortion history. The NRLC,
however, was the longest-standing contemporary anti-abortion group, and had strengths
and allies of its own. The two groups would often disagree in fundamental ways; this
would soon split the allegiances of critical MCCL leaders, the organization itself, and
state organizations around the country in the post-Roe years. Yet, these divisions had
roots in the years before the 1973 decision; even then, state and national activists clashed
over the best direction and tactics for the cause as a whole to pursue.
61 Literature from Des Moines Right to Life (ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: Miscellaneous
Reference Materials (5), Gerald R. Ford Library), Kentucky Right to Life (Box 11, Folder: MCCL – 1973,
Robert F. Greene to Mr. Warren Schaller, Letter 24 April 1973), and Michigan Citizens for Life (Box 16,
Folder: NRLC 1975 (4)) were found in Joseph Lampe’s papers (ACCL Records). Lampe served as one of
the founding members for both MCCL and American Citizens Concerned for Life (ACCL), and helped
draft the MCCL Plan for national organization.
62 Robert Greene would later write a nationally distributed monthly report for the NRLC on
abortion legislation and debate in Congress, entitled The Greene Sheet. He would also become a founding
member of ACCL with Marjory Mecklenburg. The pair’s correspondence with regard to the Kentucky
Right-to-Life Committee is their first correspondence the author found in any archive explored.
42

Chapter 3: The Post-Roe Shift: Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life
Redirect and Progress at Home, While Founders Move Onward and
Upward
The New Wave of a Post-Roe Debate:
MCCL’s Accomplishments After a “Day of Infamy in American
History” 1
The United States Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade and Doe v.
Bolton decisions on January 22, 1973, changing American law and the abortion debate
for nearly forty years, and counting. The justices who held the majority opinion in Roe v.
Wade argued the Texas abortion statute that prevented first trimester abortions violated
the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. 2 Additionally,
the less familiar Doe v. Bolton decision ruled the multiple requirements in Georgia’s
abortion statute (that abortions must be conducted in hospitals, approved by the hospital’s
board committee, and that the woman seeking the abortion must be a citizen of Georgia)
all violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. 3 With these
decisions came a great wave of many more to come, and with increasing frequency.
While the twentieth century Supreme Court heard and ruled on only five cases relating to
abortion prior to 1973, it saw three in 1973 alone, fourteen more in the remaining years of
1 Marjory Mecklenburg, quoted in “Court’s Ruling on Abortion Hit,” UPI, Seattle Post
Intelligencer, A5, 29 April 1974, ACCL Records, Box 27, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg
1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
2 Palmer, 321.
3 Ibid., 91.
43

the 1970s, and an additional thirteen in the 1980s. 4
The January 22, 1973 decisions
caused activists on both sides of the issue to burst with renewed and increased
enthusiasm.
Some, like historian Suzanne Staggenborg, argue the anti-abortion movement was
in fact spurred to greater action by the decision than were its pro-abortion opponents after
Roe. Staggenborg argues that “[a]lthough anti-abortion groups had been active before
1973, the legalization of abortion provided a tremendous spur to the…movement as it
lobbied to overturn or block implementation of the Court ruling…[T]he war was
continuing on new fronts.” 5
The most prevalent new front for the pro-life campaign was
the national stage, where pro-life groups pressured Congress for amendments outlawing
abortion. For example, pro-life activists received a 1976 victory in the form of the Hyde
Amendment, which eliminated taxpayer funding for abortions. On the local level, Roe
boosted pro-life forces like MCCL to pressure state legislatures to publicly oppose the
decision. On an even smaller scale, state groups picketed and protested in front of
abortion clinics and hospitals to block the implementation of abortions in individual
communities. 6
Beyond the borders of Minnesota previously discussed, for example, prolife
activist Thomas A. Licciardi delivered a petition of 7,200 names to the Riverside
Hospital in Boonton, N.J. after it started allowing abortions in alignment with the Roe
decision. 7
Riverside soon returned to its previous restrictive policy, out of fear of losing
4 Ibid., 370-1.
5 Suzanne Staggenborg, The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion
Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 58.
6 “Fraser’s abortion stand draws fire in St. Joseph,” The St. Cloud Daily Times, No. 64, 26
August, 1978, page 1, given to author from personal archives of Mary and Robert Joyce.
7 Jeffrey A. Tannenbaum, “A New Cause: Many Americans Join Move to Ban Abortion;
Legislators Take Note,” The Wall Street Journal, 2 August 1973, page one, ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder:
NRLC – States Program Comm, 1973 (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
44

patients and financial resources from performing abortions. 8
Clearly, many pro-life
activists were not defeated by Roe, but instead continued their prior efforts and further
innovated to fight the decision in new ways after 1973.
On a more proactive (rather than preventative) level, MCCL specifically began
new statewide educational programs at local chapter meetings and presented displays and
lectures at religious and pro-life conventions. 9
While the group expanded its initiatives
and redefined its mission, MCCL was pressed to maintain, and even increase, its steady
pre-Roe membership rate. As the issue became a national one, MCCL needed to increase
its ranks. First, the group lost volunteers to national organizations in Washington D.C.,
and secondly, the group’s scope was ever-expanding and the victories became more
pressing; MCCL’s reach was becoming more widespread. While an MCCL newsletter
headlines from 1971 and 1972 claimed “Twenty New Chapters in Nine Days!,” “Several
New Chapters Are Being Organized,” and “MCCL Office Staff is Increased,” leaders
found the need to expand volunteer ranks increasingly pressing after the Roe decision out
of a heightened “Need for Volunteers, Equipment [that] Still Exist[ed]” at the time of the
1973 decisions. 10 Throughout 1974, the group still promoted plans to increase their
ranks, proclaiming “’Each One Bring One’: Our Motto for Membership Month” on the
May cover of the MCCL Newsletter. 11
8 Ibid.
9 “New MCCL Chapters Engaged in Productive Educational Programs, page 6, MCCL Newsletter,
April 1972, MCCL Archives; “Convention Tables Abortion Reference,” MCCL Newsletter, March 1972,
MCCL Archives.
10 “Twenty New Chapters in Nine Days!,” MCCL Newsletter, February 1971, page 1, MCCL
Archives; “Several New Chapters Are Being Organized,” MCCL Newsletter, February 1972, page
3“MCCL Office Staff is Increased,” MCCL Newsletter, April 1972, page 2, MCCL Archives; “Need for
Volunteers, Equipment Still Exists,” MCCL Newsletter, January 1973, page 8, MCCL Archives,
Minneapolis, MN.
11 “’Each One Bring One:’ Our Motto for Membership Month,” MCCL Newsletter, May 1974,
page 1, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN.
45

When news of Roe and Doe broke, MCCL had over 10,000 members and,
according to its own history, “scores of chapters ready to work” toward reversing the
decision and defending the cause. 12
While their immediate goals revolved around
reversing the decision, or enacting a Human Life Amendment, MCCL’s broader goals
were defined around the issue of “restricting the killing as much as possible” after what
MCCLers deemed “the Black Monday decision.” 13 Marjory Mecklenburg laid out goals
for the 1974 year at the second annual MCCL convention in October of 1973,
encouraging “[j]oining hands with other groups. It is not enough to fight [only] abortion
and euthanasia…[to] make life with dignity a reality for everyone.” 14 Soon after Roe, the
Minnesota Legislature passed a “memorialization resolution” asking Congress to propose
and pass a Human Life Amendment, which in essence proclaimed the state legislature’s
opposition to the January 1973 abortion decisions. Many other states joined, representing
an immediate morale victory for the movement, which was in large part led by MCCL
and its leaders. In May of 1973, Minnesota was one of seven states “to submit a ‘rightto-life’
amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would nullify the U.S. Supreme Court
abortion decision” by a vote of 51-12 in the Minnesota Senate and 98-21 in the
Minnesota House, which significantly cut across party lines. 15 More specifically, the
vote asked Congress to send the states a constitutional amendment for approval that
would ban all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. 16
12 History of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Pamphlet, February 1995, page 3, MCCL
Archives.
13 Ibid.; and letter to Justice Blackmun from Mary R. Joyce, 2 February 1973, given to author from
the personal archives of Mary and Robert Joyce.
14 Marjory Mecklenburg, quoted in “250 MCCL’ers Participate in Convention Activities,” MCCL
Newsletter, December 1973, page 1, MCCL Archives.
15 “Minnesota 7 th state urging abortion ban: State passes pro-life measure,” The Catholic Bulletin,
4 May 1973, ACCL Records, Box 3, Folder: Clippings 1973, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
16 Ibid.
46

To further the wave of state resolutions, MCCL intended to bond Midwestern
states together and rally all legislatures in the area to support a repeal of the 1973
decisions. Marjory Mecklenburg, then standing president of MCCL, sent letters to all
nearby right-to-life groups and individuals in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and North and
South Dakota, asking for “increased…cooperation among pro-life groups in the Midwest,
and [to] conven[e]…a meeting…to discuss how we might be of more help to one another
and create a stronger pro-life movement.” 17 Clearly, much of the abortion debate after
Roe v. Wade turned to the law through lobbying and letter-writing, rather than medical
lectures and general fundraisers; Staggenborg agrees, describing a shift from “directaction
tactics” before Roe to “institutionalized tactics” after the decision. 18
Additionally,
the success state and local pro-life groups often enjoyed spurred its opposition further; a
pro-choice Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Newsletter argued that “[s]ince the antiabortion
groups are proceeding largely through conventional pressure group channels –
lobbying, letter-writing, etc. – it seems reasonable for us in this instance to expend some
amount of energy to organize a counter-letter campaign.” 19 While the pre-Roe debate
demonstrated anti-abortion forces mimicking the tactics of their pro-abortion
counterparts, post-Roe tactics were defined by pro-life forces, which were then copied by
their pro-choice foes.
Indeed, MCCL focused their efforts after the Roe decision on obtaining pro-life
victories through the state legislature. MCCL did not copy the tactics of the opposition,
but instead countered Roe and Doe through new and more aggressive avenues. While
17 Letter to Midwest Pro-Life Leaders from Joseph A. Lampe and Marjory Mecklenburg, 15
August 1972, ACCL Records, Box 11, Folder: Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life 1972, Gerald R.
Ford Presidential Library.
18 Staggenborg, 59.
19 Chicago Women’s Liberation Union News, August 1973, quoted in Staggenborg, 70.
47

their efforts prior to the decision focused, and were largely argued, on medical
vocabulary and appeals to physicians across the state, the abortion issue was now an issue
of law, and MCCL began to treat it as such. After persistent lobbying and letter-writing
throughout 1973, the group obtained its first victory in the 1973 Human Conceptus Law
(MN Code § 145.422), which prohibited experimentation on living human fetuses
“except to protect the life or health of the conceptus…[Those in violation] shall be guilty
of a gross misdemeanor.” 20
Additionally, Minnesotan lobbyists framed the issue as a
religiously neutral one, and many of the lobbyists were Protestants. According to Darla
St. Martin, one of the lobbyists and a future president of MCCL, the group visited all 201
legislators to push the pro-life cause. 21
When asked how she attained success, she said
the non-religious view aided MCCL, as “[i]t would be easier for the legislators to say no
if they thought this was just a Catholic issue.” 22
Certainly, the early tactics and framings
of MCCL allowed the group to succeed even when the debate began to change in the
years after the Roe v. Wade decision. MCCL remained undefined by religion or political
party (although it did lobby and support certain candidates); the group realized that
“Individual Donations Keep MCCL Going,” not the financial backing of a party or
church. 23 This May 1974 newsletter stated, “MCCL is not financed by the Catholic
church or by a few wealthy patrons, but rather by dedicated individuals who believe that
they can put their money to no better use than to help protect the unborn and all other
20 Palmer, 229.
21 “Officers, New Directors Elected At Annual Board Meeting,” MCCL Newsletter, June 1974,
page 1, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN; “Leadership Positions Filled as MCCL Moves Forward,”
MCCL Newsletter, May/June 1975, page 1, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN; and “A New Cause: Many
Americans Join Move to Ban Abortion; Legislators Take Note,” The Wall Street Journal.
22 Ibid.
23 “Individual Donations Keep MCCL Going,” MCCL Newsletter, May 1974, page 3, MCCL
Archives, Minneapolis, MN.
48

defenseless human beings who are threatened by society’s anti-life attitudes.” 24
While
national groups like the NRLC ran into conflict and confrontation over the religiosity and
financial support of the Catholic Church, MCCL avoided the split the national movement
experienced. MCCL was successfully and effectively able to focus on its state efforts as
a unified group because of its well-established medical, moral, and non-religious rhetoric.
While a Human Life Amendment (HLA) or a repeal of the Supreme Court
decisions would take time, MCCL realized that smaller victories on the state level were
firstly more easily attained and secondly a more appropriate focus for a state-wide group.
National groups devoted most of their time and energy toward the HLA and a decision
repeal, so state groups largely focused on state- and local-level issues. However, these
statewide victories should not serve as evidence that MCCL, as an organization, had
maintained an exclusively state level focus. On the contrary, MCCL started to believe,
and years later reflected, that “no longer could a state group concern itself only with
legislation within its own state [after Roe v. Wade]. The issue had become national, and
it was now the responsibility of stronger state pro-life groups like MCCL to help build
organizations in states which had underdeveloped groups or no statewide groups at all.” 25
Arguably the largest and most successful statewide organization, MCCL became the
example to other state groups in tactics, success, and leadership.
MCCL members participated in their first annual march at the Minnesota state
capitol and in the national movement’s march in Washington D.C. on the first
anniversary of the Roe decision on January 22, 1974; the tradition still occurs today and
has every year since the decision itself. “March for Life” showed national behavior on
Archives.
24 Ibid..
25 History of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Pamphlet, page 2, February 1995, MCCL
49

the part of state groups and created some semblance of solidarity nationwide, despite
differing achievements and volunteer ranks from state to state. Realizing such
differences, MCCL launched its Mission Possible program in 1975 to develop other
statewide pro-life groups across the country. 26 MCCL targeted those states that did not
have a prominent or successful pro-life group prior to the Roe decision, or prior to 1975.
As a continuation of the Midwest coalition efforts previously mentioned, Mission
Possible was intended to help jump-start state pro-life groups more aggressively; MCCL
raised money and gave counsel and advice, often in the form of visits and literature, to
new groups, and gave matching grants to those pro-life organizations that had already
developed. Additionally, according to then-president Darla St. Martin, “[l]ocal leaders
have reported that in many chapters the program has inspired a renewed sense of pro-life
commitment and new hope for the ultimate success of our cause.” 27 Evidently, not only
did Mission Possible invigorate and organize pro-life activists in other states, but it also
helped further motivate Minnesotans locally. All this was aimed at MCCL’s and the
larger pro-life movement’s ultimate goal of “prepar[ing] the country to enact a Human
Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” 28
In 1976, MCCL began its Lifemobile effort; beginning in June, MCCL volunteers
travelled with a mobile exhibit around the state to educate and recruit Minnesotans about
and for their cause. According to MCCL, the Lifemobile “used literature and striking
graphics to inform hundreds of thousands of people about the facts of life before birth
26 MCCL: Forty Years Forty Victories Pamphlet, 12 June 2008, St Paul, MN, MCCL Archives.
27 Darla St. Martin, “Mission Possible off to good start,” MCCL Newsletter, December 1975, page
3, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN.
28 Ibid.
50

and the need to extend the law’s protection to the whole human family.” 29
The
Lifemobile was a prototype for other similar portable exhibits that would travel around
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and abroad in Australia. 30 Through its education
and lobbying efforts, Minnesota’s only (present-day) surviving abortion regulatory law
passed that same year with MCCL support; the law requires that only licensed doctors
perform abortions, and that a second physician must be present for abortions performed
after 20 weeks. 31
Made clear by the fact only one regulatory law remains in effect today
in the state of Minnesota, as the 1970s neared a close, MCCL’s statewide achievements
began to plateau. Other minor legislation passed, but was often overturned shortly after
becoming law. MCCL asserted it “worked hard to ban taxpayer-funded abortions” with
pro-life legislative allies and “encourag[ed] them to support the strongest possible prolife
language.” 32
A 1978 law banned government funding of abortions statewide, but was
reversed in 1995 with the Minnesota Doe v. Gomez decision. Convinced simple local and
state group efforts were not enough to enact aggressive change, in 1980 MCCL formed a
federal political action committee (PAC), the first anti-abortion/pro-life PAC in the
country. The PAC to this day supports pro-life candidates running for federal office.
According to MCCL, the PAC “has [also] been instrumental in building the pro-life
caucus in the U.S. Congress.” 33 In 1982, MCCL formed a statewide PAC called MCCL
Committee for State Pro-Life Candidates to specifically support pro-life candidates in the
state of Minnesota. MCCL’s efforts still continue today, and the group occupies the same
29 History of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Pamphlet, page 3, February 1995, MCCL
Archives.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 MCCL: Forty Years Forty Victories Pamphlet, 12 June 2008, St Paul, MN, MCCL Archives;
and History of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Pamphlet, page 3, February 1995, MCCL Archives.
33 History of MCCL Pamphlet, page 4, February 1995, MCCL Archives.
51

physical space in Minneapolis and role as the state’s most vocal and prominent pro-life
organization that it has held since the 1970s.
The MCCL struggle was one that has turned from a solely state battle, to one that
was often fought on national grounds. The 1973 decisions did what over six years of
Minnesota pro-abortion lobbying and organization could not. Yet despite the defeat,
MCCL enjoyed moderate success and thriving membership in the following decades
because its tactics and debate followed the trends set forth by the 1973 decisions; Roe and
Doe transformed the abortion debate from one fought on a principally state and nonpartisan
level, to one fought largely on a national front and in political debate. Indeed,
the 1973 decisions made the abortion debate “a whole new thing,” according to a 1973
Robbinsdale Sun article. 34
State groups like MCCL served as a model for activists in
other states, offering direct financial aid and guidance through its Lifemobile and Mission
Possible campaigns. Although MCCL as an organization largely maintained its
government lobbying efforts on a state level, it also reached nationwide to develop
grassroots groups like itself. Therefore, the abortion issue was one that continued on both
a national and a grassroots level after the Roe decision. In order to maintain its
effectiveness, MCCL successfully adapted its scope as one that was foremost stateoriented,
but also remained connected to national groups. MCCL fought at both the state
and federal levels in courts and legislatures, and also lent (or often, donated) its most
prominent and effective leaders to national organizations MCCL’s founders often created
themselves.
34 “Abortion: local reaction to the decision to legalize,” Robbinsdale Sun, 29 January 1973, Box 3,
Folder: Newspaper Clippings 1973, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
52

Perhaps greater than its contribution in education and example, MCCL gave much
of its founding leadership to national efforts and organizations in 1973. Even days after
the decision, the local New Prague Times described how MCCL volunteers knew the
“action by the court [wa]s not the end of abortion as a public issue,” but rather was the
beginning of a national movement. 35
MCCL leaders “continue[d] to pursue [their] legal,
educational and legislative effort to defend the right to life of all persons,” even if that
effort was not principally with MCCL. 36
As stated previously, the abortion debate
became a national one in 1973, and MCCL leaders followed that debate onward and
upward from Minnesota to Washington D.C.
The Changing Debate from State to Nation: The Politicization of the
Abortion Issue and the New Importance of Nationwide Groups
While the statewide abortion battle continued and state pro-life actors moved to
limit the reaches of the Roe v. Wade decision as much as possible, the national debate
became suddenly and increasingly vital to pro-life victory. National organizations, either
long-standing or newly-created, mobilized their forces to eventually enact a Human Life
Amendment, which would define the start of life at conception, and therefore give the
right to life to the unborn and reverse the Roe decision. According to historian Donald T.
Critchlow, 449 abortion-related bills were introduced in state legislatures after Roe, and
35 “MCCL dismayed at court decision,” New Prague Times, 29 January 1973, Box 3, Folder:
Newspaper Clippings 1973, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
Do
Ibid.
53

58 of them were enacted. 37 Even four years after the decision, in 1977, Planned
Parenthood reported that 80% of public hospitals and 70% of private hospitals still
refused to administer abortions. 38
While clearly this debate continued and even reeled on
the state level, the abortion issue became increasingly politicized on the national level.
Historian Mark Herring reports that in 1974, eighteen amendments, either proposing to
overturn Roe or in some way “protect the unborn,” had entered Congressional hearings. 39
In the twenty years that followed the decision, the Supreme Court ruled on twenty major
abortion issue decisions, “plac[ing] the Supreme Court in the role of a regulator, minutely
determining which state laws were acceptable or unacceptable,” according to Critchlow. 40
Additionally, the historian argues these Supreme Court “decisions set the context for
federal policy making” from Ford to Clinton. 41
As the debate shifted from state to national importance, the issue became
increasingly politicized and unhinged many of the religious and partisan norms of the
previous decades. For example, according to historian John McGreevy, the politicization
of abortion “weaken[ed] the liberal-Catholic alliance welded together by Franklin
Roosevelt and his New Deal.” 42
As pro-life became an increasingly important stance for
Catholics and a more Republican issue for candidates while Democrats “moved toward a
liberalism predicated on individual autonomy” (advocating the pro-choice view), the
prevalence of the Democratic Catholic began to fade. 43
Concerned with defending
human life against all harmful action, Catholics found this moral view irreconcilable with
37 Donald. T. Critchlow, Intended Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 200.
38 Ibid.
39 Mark Y. Herring, The Pro-Life/Choice Debate, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 109
40 Ibid, 201.
41 Ibid.
42 McGreevy, 259. For more on the abortion issue’s influence on the Catholic shift from the
Democratic to Republican Party, consult pages 265-281.
43 Ibid, 260.
54

a Democratic Party whose platform claimed reproductive freedom was “a fundamental
human right” by 1984. 44 More generally, pro-life activists increased their political work
after Roe v. Wade and tracked voting records, wrote letters to federal Congressmen, and
began voting for candidates based on the single abortion issue. The California ProLife
Council Action News proclaimed that, for these activists, abortion was “not the only
issue…[but] is simply the most important issue” in 1976. 45
To be specific, MCCL was
founded when the issue remained entirely bipartisan, yet by Richard Nixon’s reelection,
the issue was officially part of the Republican’s presidential campaign.
President Lyndon B. Johnson led the nation throughout MCCL’s earliest founding
years, and as such, supported family planning activity but did not address the abortion
issue explicitly. At the time, public opinion on the abortion issue was quite ambivalent;
presidential action was neither necessary nor lobbied for. 46
Under LBJ, “great strides had
been made” in family planning and general social issues were included in his Great
Society; yet with the announcement of Humane Vitae, many believed Nixon would
discontinue Johnson’s activist policies. 47
At the same time, the Republican Party
supported the population movement, which supported birth control and family planning
to limit startling population growth. During the Nixon years, the Party plank stated,
“[t]he worldwide population explosion in particular with its attendant grave problems
44 Democratic Party platform in 1984 Congressional Quarterly Alamanac, 93-B, quoted in
McGreevy, 280.
45 California ProLife Council Action News, October/November 1976, page 2, ACCL Records, Box
46, Folder: ACCL Political File: 76 Pres. Campaign – States (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
46 A 1965 Gallup poll showed 77% of Americans believed abortion should be legal when a
woman’s life was in danger (16% opposed), and 18% supported abortion when the family could not support
additional children (72% opposed). George Gallup, The Gallup Poll (New York, 1985), qtd. in Elizabeth
Adell Cook, Ted G. Jelen, and Clyde Wilcox, Between Two Absolutes: Public Opinion and the Politics of
Abortion (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992).
47 Critchlow, 88.
55

looms as a menace to all mankind and will have our priority attention.” 48
The president
pushed Congress for new family planning legislation for much of his presidency and
created the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.
Yet as stated previously, the abortion debate radically changed before and with
Roe v. Wade. Even prior to the decision, increasing presidential attention to abortion and
family planning indicated these issues would soon become national ones. In 1971, Nixon
proclaimed his “firm personal and religious beliefs” made him “consider abortion an
unacceptable form of population control,” but had never acted publicly on his private
beliefs. 49 Soon, the “clearest evidence that the issue had become politicized” arose when
in May 1972 Nixon rejected the report of his Commission on Population Growth that
recommended liberalized abortion laws. 50
According to Critchlow, Nixon rejected the
proposal not because of his personal beliefs, but rather for more purely political reasons
to capture the Catholic vote in his upcoming reelection in the fall of 1972. Nixon knew
the Catholic vote could prove critical to his reelection; according to historian Neil Young,
Catholics made up 25% of all voters. 51
The number and force of this group surrounding
the abortion issue proved further evident when over 500 letters and telegrams denouncing
the recommendations flooded its offices in the first month after the report was released. 52
Nixon took action; he made a public statement on the report, proclaiming, “[i]n my
judgment, unrestricted abortion policies would demean human life,” and released a letter
48 US Congress, National Party Platforms, vol. 2 (1960-1976) (Washington, D.C., 1976, 759,
quoted in Critchlow, 88.
49 Richard M. Nixon, “Statement by the President on the Report of the Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future,” 5 May 1971, Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard M. Nixon, vol. 2
(Washington, D.C., 1971), 576-577, quoted in Critchlow, 149.
50 Critchlow, 149.
51 Young, 200.
52 “Pro-Abortion Policy on the Population Panel Opposed 5-1,” New York Times, May 11, 1972,
quoted in Critchlow, 168.
56

in May to Terence Cardinal Cooke, stating, “I would personally like to associate myself
with the convictions you deeply feel and eloquently express.” 53 Nixon’s strategy proved
effective; he won 66% of the popular vote and captured 60% of the Catholic vote to
successfully defeat his opponent, George McGovern, whom he painted as an out-of-touch
liberal who stood for “abortion, acid, and amnesty.” It was one of the largest presidential
victories in American history.
However, Nixon’s letter to Cardinal Cooke indicated nothing more than just
words; Nixon failed to make a public comment about abortion after his reelection, even
after Roe. Away from the executive branch, however, pro-life forces were certain “We’re
going to win [the] battle.” 54
This Kentucky Post article reported the actions and opinions
of Robert Greene, an attorney who founded and served as the executive director of the
Northern Kentucky Right-to-Life Committee and joined Marjory Mecklenburg in the
NRLC and ACCL. Greene identified “a counter culture which says quality of life is more
important than life itself,” and cited the many Human Life bills that had already been
drafted and discussed in Congress. 55
A Wall Street Journal article from the same year
identified a new “army of unknown size – but certainly numbering many thousands – that
is forming around the country,” whose aim was to reverse the Roe decision and whose
cause was “an issue…that’s probably going to be bigger than anything since the Vietnam
53 Richard M. Nixon, “Statement by the President on the Report of the Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future,” 5 May 1972, in Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard M. Nixon,
576-577, quoted in Critchlow, 171; and Letter from Richard M. Nixon to Terence Cardinal Cooke, qtd. in
Theodore Herald White, The Making of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 244, quoted in
Critchlow, 171.
54 Carl West, “’We’re going to win battle,’” The Kentucky Post, 5 November 1973, ACCL
Records, Box 5, Folder: NRLC – 1973 Board and Executive Committee (6), Gerald R. Ford Library.
55 Ibid.
57

War.” 56 President Gerald Ford did not make strong statements on the abortion decision
either until rumblings in Congress in 1976, although he assumed the presidency from
Nixon long after the Roe v. Wade decision on August 9, 1974. In the same year, both the
Republican and Democratic Farmer Labor parties in Minnesota had Pro-Life Committees
and coordinators for every legislative district, which would organize the pro-life political
party efforts for caucuses, conventions, and elections. 57
People were moving toward
electing candidates based on a single issue, and urged others to do the same. The
Minneapolis Tribune argued that, by 1974, “[i]n some of the nation’s districts…this issue
could elect or defeat candidates, including incumbents.” 58 By the early 1970s, abortion
was certainly a very political issue, although it was not yet a partisan one.
Through the lobbying and voting power of pro-life activists in 1972 and 1974, in
1976 national pro-life actors celebrated one of their greatest victories yet. The Hyde
Amendment, although vetoed by President Ford “based purely and simply on the issue of
fiscal integrity,” had been passed by Congress. 59 In an effort led by Representative
Henry J. Hyde, a Republican from Illinois, the bill greatly restricted federally funded
abortions, although stricter language was originally included in the version passed in the
House of Representatives. Even though Ford’s wife, Betty, supported legalized abortion,
and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was also pro-choice (as he served as the governor
of New York when the state passed its liberalized abortion law in the 1960s), Ford
56 “A New Cause: Many Americans Join Move to Ban Abortion: Legislators Take Note,” The Wall
Street Journal.
57 “For Your Information” handout on Republican and DFL Committee contacts, ACCL Records,
Box 9, Folder: NRLC – Bylaws Revision 1974 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
58 David Kuhn, “Antiabortion lobby seeks new image,” Minneapolis Tribune, 5B, 22 February
1974, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
59 Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, “Women and Interest Group Politics: A Comparative
Analysis of Federal Decision Making,” Journal of Politics 41 (May 1979): 362-392, 375-377, quoted in
Critchlow, 202.
58

eventually supported a constitutional amendment that would pass the abortion debate
back to individual states. Faced with such strong Congressional opposition to a prochoice
stance, as made clear by the debate surrounding the Hyde Amendment, Ford soon
supported the opinion that abortion should be once again decided on a state level. To be
sure, when the Hyde Amendment was questioned in court, Ford asked his solicitor
general to file an amicus curiae brief in support of the amendment. The president’s
positioning around the abortion issue satisfied voters, as he soon won the Republican
primary against Ronald Reagan.
In the general election, the 1976 Republican Party platform remained sympathetic
to the pro-life cause, but did not yet fully endorse it on a party-wide basis. 60
This
support, together with Hyde Amendment’s success, gave the NRLC and the pro-life
movement a huge confidence boost. Mildred Jefferson, the NRLC president at the time,
proclaimed, “[w]e’re now the biggest movement in America” and explained the pro-life
movement had become fully ingrained in politics, alarming the opposition. 61 By this
time, the U.S. Catholic Bishops had not endorsed specific candidates, but did identify
abortion as their most important issue. 62 However, while the abortion issue did appear on
60 A portion of the party platform read: “The question of abortion is one of the most difficult and
controversial of our time. It is undoubtedly a moral and personal issue, but it also involves complex
questions relating to medical science and criminal justice. There are those in our party who favor complete
support of the Supreme Court decision, which supports abortion on demand. There are others who share
sincere convictions that the Supreme Court decision must b changed by a constitutional amendment
prohibiting all abortions. Others have yet to take a position; or they have assumed a stance somewhere in
between the polar positions. We protest the Supreme Court’s intrusion into the family structure through its
denial of the parents’ obligation and right to guide their minor children. The Republican Party favors the
continuance of the public dialogue on abortion and supports the efforts of those who seek enactment of a
constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right of the unborn child.” New York Times, Aug. 11
and 14, 1976; also Lifeletter, Aug. 23, 1976, quoted in Connie Paige, The Right to Lifers (New York:
Summit Books, 1983), 115.
61 New York Times, June 23, 1977, quoted in Paige, 115.
62 Charles Heatherly, CPLC President, “Is Abortion the Only Issue?,” California ProLife Council
Action News, October/November 1976, page 2, ACCL Records, Box 46, Folder: ACCL Political File: 76
Pres. Campaign – States (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
59

the 1976 Republican Party Platform, it was not yet an issue that dominated it, nor did
Republicans agree on the issue; this would not occur until Reagan ran for president in
1980. Ford’s opponent, Democrat Jimmy Carter, was “personally opposed” to abortion,
but did not wish to take action in the public sphere against Roe v. Wade. Carter’s
abortion stance was not widely vocalized, and he instead focused on other economic and
confidence issues. 63 Pro-life groups distributed literature comparing the candidates, but
from the author’s encounter with many archival materials, they were not as plentiful as
were materials in the 1980 presidential campaign. The literature that did circulate quoted
President Ford as stating, “I have consistently opposed the 1973 decision of the Supreme
Court” and reported he supported a Human Life Amendment. 64 Literature also quoted
Jimmy Carter as saying, “I oppose Constitutional amendments to overturn the Supreme
Court’s decision.” 65 Overall, pro-life literature concluded, “apparently both presidential
candidates are finding the pro-life issue a ticklish and confusing one.” 66
Clearly, both
candidates were aware of the abortion issue, but it did not yet appear as a central platform
pillar, nor did the issue form the basis and central opinion of any presidential candidate to
date.
Perhaps a large difference between the success of Nixon and Ford around the
abortion issue can be attributed to the lack of partisanship of pro-life activists at the time,
and also to the believability of appeals to the Catholic Church and the pro-life movement.
Firstly, not all pro-life activists sympathized with the Republican Party. In fact, a group
63 Alice Hartle, “GOP to focus on abortion,” National Right to Life News, vol. 3, no. 9, September
1976, ACCL Records, Box 45, Folder: ACCL Political File: 76 Pres. Campaign – Ford (1), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
64 “Where do the Candidates Stand” handout, ACCL Records, Box 45, Folder: ACCL Political
File: 76 Pres. Campaign – Ford (2), Gerald R. Ford Library.
65 Ibid.
66 South Carolina Citizens for Life Newsletter, October 1976, ACCL Records, Box 46, Folder:
ACCL Political File: 76 Pres. Campaign – States (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
60

calling themselves the National Democrats for Life formed in the days following the
adoption of a pro-choice plank by the Democratic Platform Committee. When “millions
of Americans were appalled” at such an act, Governor Richard Kneip, State
Representative Joanne Durn of Wisconsin, and State Senator H. Darrell Darby founded
and co-chaired the group with the goal of reopening the platform for discussion. 67
This
minority lost; however, the group did not end its efforts there, convinced that “[i]t was
easy for party leaders to dismiss our demands for they were unaware of the strength of
pro-life sentiment within the Party.” The group became a permanent organization, with
representatives in each state who would serve as a rallying point for pro-life Democrats.
In addition, like Nixon, Ford appealed to the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops and met with them to communicate his government would have “a responsibility
to protect life.” 68
Nixon did not run on a platform of pro-life championing either, but did
appeal to Catholics by communicating his anti-abortion stance to them. Ford, however,
was criticized for this action, believed to have “put himself in the position…of pursuing
political profit from a religious issue…a tactic usually considered deplorable,” according
to one Minneapolis Tribune writer. 69
Nixon was successful in swaying anti-abortion
voters; however, many pro-life voters were still Democrats in 1976, especially in light of
issues on economics and foreign policy. In the fall of 1976, Carter won the election by a
small margin, capturing 49.9% of the popular vote, compared to Ford’s 47.9%. 70
While the candidate with the more pro-life plank lost in the 1976 election, it
67 H. Darrel Darby, “National Democrats For Life Formed,” handout, ACCL Records, Box: 35,
Folder: ACCL Political File: 76 Pres. Camp. – Carter (3), Gerald R. Ford Library.
68 Critchlow, 204.
69 Tom Wicker, “Abortion: a lesser issue,” Minneapolis Tribune, 13 September 1976, ACCL
Records, Box 45, Folder: ACCL Political File: 76 Pres. Campaign – GOP Campaign, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
70 Critchlow, 204.
61

should be noted that pro-life activists and organizations on an individual and group level
were increasingly tracking candidates who would support their cause. After the Roe
decision, pro-life activists found the enactment of a Human Life Amendment a crucial,
and often their principal, cause. Indeed, according to a 1973 resolution, the NRLC’s
“first program priority… [wa]s the development and implementation of a political
campaign to effect passage of a Human Life Constitutional Amendment.” 71 In order pass
the amendment in Congress, a sufficient number of pro-life members needed to support
it; therefore, pro-life groups threw more of their efforts behind electing pro-life
sympathizers to office. MCCL newsletters told their readers to “consider platforms,
candidates before voting Nov. 2” in 1976. 72 Again, while the presidential candidate most
sympathetic to the pro-life cause did not emerge victorious in the fall of 1976, many
Congressional candidates did. 73
No strong evidence lies in the archives that pro-life
groups were strongly disappointed with Ford’s loss. In fact, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, then
President of the NRLC, proclaimed “[t]he right-to-life movement has won a great moral
victory in the 1976 political campaigns…there were more victories than defeats.” 74 Of
the presidential campaign, she said, “[t]he right-to-life movement made the presidential
campaign a contest to the bitter end and almost won the victory for President Ford,” but
71 “Resolution of Program Priorities of NRLC, Inc., 8 December 1973, ACCL Records, Box 9,
Folder: NRLC – Bylaws Revision 1974 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
72 “Pro-lifers should consider platforms, candidates before voting Nov. 2,” MCCL Newsletter,
page 2, October 1976, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN.
73 For example, Senator S.I. Hayakawa of California defeated incumbent Democrat John V.
Tunney, Senator John Danforth defeated former Democratic Missouri Governor Warren Hearnes, and
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (who still holds the seat today) defeated incumbent Democrat Vance
Hartke. These incoming pro-life Republican Senators were all elected for the first time in 1976, and all
defeated pro-choice Democrats. Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson, “Statement on the Outcome of the 1976 Political
Campaigns,” 3 November 1976, ACCL Records, Box 10, Folder: NRLC – 1976 (4), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
74 Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson, “Statement on the Outcome of the 1976 Political Campaigns,” 3
November 1976, ACCL Records, Box 10, Folder: NRLC – 1976 (4), Gerald R. Ford Library.
62

she said this was not the “sorest disappointment.” 75 Pro-life advocates focused on
Congressional success and also looked toward the 1978 (“just two years away”) and 1980
elections for more victories for their cause. 76
By 1979, many publications reported “the national right-to-life movement has
emerged from obscurity to become a potent, controversial force in American politics with
an ambitious agenda for 1980 and the future.” 77
Pro-life activists set a goal of preventing
the re-election of six senators and six congressmen, a threat that once “would have been
dismissed as ludicrous,” yet was taken seriously after an estimated 70,000 activists
marched on the Capitol on the fifth anniversary of the decision on January 22, 1978; their
numbers represented the largest march on Washington since the Vietnam War. 78
Pro-life
activists filled over 3,000 chapters, mobilizing and representing 11 million voters; they
composed a clear threat for the 1978 and 1980 campaigns. 79
Additionally, 1978 saw
many losses for the Democratic Party. In Minnesota, for example, the Democratic-
Farmer-Labor Party, which had dominated the state’s politics for years, lost the
governorship and both U.S. Senate seats to Republicans; one DFL executive director
admitted to The New York Times that the pro-life movement is “an extremely effective
political organization.” 80
Prominent pro-choice activists realized the shift in sympathy
for the pro-life movement, admitting, “[h]ad we made more gains through the legislative
and referendum processes, and taken a little longer at it, the public would have moved
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.
77 “Single-Issue Politics: The Emergence of the Right-To-Life Movement,” The Political Animal,
29 January 1979, Issue No. 283, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Political File: Political – political
Newsletters 1979/1980, Gerald R. Ford Library.
78 John Herbers, “Right-to-life movement prepares for 1980 election,” Minnesota Star Tribune, 27
November 1978, 1A, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Political File: Political – Political Strategy,
and “Single-Issue Politics,” The Political Animal.
79 Gelb and Palley, “Women and Interest Group Politics,” 379, quoted in Critchlow, 207.
80 Ibid.
63

with us.” 81 Needless to say, by 1978, the Republican Party Platform was decidedly prolife.
These forces did not stop in 1978, but instead continued their momentum and
prepared for the elections to come; political action committees were set up in seventeen
states to prepare and mobilize for the upcoming elections. 82 Newspapers attributed this
great change to the movement’s “fiercely dedicated supporters,” but also pointed to the
movement’s grassroots start, which raised questions about the declining power and
impact of national political parties. 83
This grassroots movement aligned with a growing
trend and acceptance of local beginnings in the late 1970s and early 80s. All this
occurred within the emergence of the New Right and evangelical Christian forces,
concerned with the morals and family values of American citizens. 84
Widely known among pro-life activists for his “[p]rolife stand as the strongest and
clearest of any presidential candidate,” according to ACCL, Ronald Reagan easily won
the presidency in 1980. 85 He carried 44 states in the electoral college and won 50.7% of
the popular vote to Carter’s 41%. 86
Reagan highlighted his opponent’s failures,
81 Director of NARAL, Karen Mulhauser, qtd. in Williams, “The Power of Fetal Politics,” 12, qtd.
in Critchlow, 210.
82 These seventeen states included: California, South Dakota, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana,
Wisconsin, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Iowa.
83 John Herbers, “Right-to-life movement prepares for 1980 election.”
84 For more reading on the rise of the New Right, see: Daniel Williams, God’s Own Party: The
Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); David H. Bennett The Party of
Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988); Matthew
Moen, The Christian Right and Congress (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1992); Robert Liebman and Robert Wuthnow,
The New Christian Right (New York, 1983); Clyde Wilcox, Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious
Right in American Politics (Boulder, Colo., 1996); Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right (New York,
1980); David Bromley and Anson Shupe, New Christian Politics (Macon, Ga., 1984), James David Hunter,
Cultural Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991).
85 “Reagan for President Letter,” 20 February 1980, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL
Political File: Political – Political Newsletters 1979/1980, Gerald R. Ford Library.
86 David Leip, “1980 Presidential General Election Results,” updated 2012, accessed 20 February
2012, .
Of note: Minnesota, did not give its electoral votes to Ronald Reagan in 1980 (nor in 1984).
Minnesota is currently the only state to give their electoral college votes to a Democrat every year
since Nixon’s re-election in 1972 (when he appealed to Catholic voters on an antiabortion stance).
White antiabortion activism has always been prevalent in the state (and therefore may infer the
64

increasing inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis, and in addition appealed to the Moral
Majority, the New Right, and to moral and social interests like pro-life. Additionally, by
the 1980s, the country and the media had made abortion a political issue. One paper said
of Mecklenburg, an MCCL founder and champion of pro-life activities, “a veteran of
abortion warfare in cold Minnesota where folks frequently warm themselves with fiery
liberalism, conservative Marjorie [sic] E. Mecklenburg has found the political climate in
Washington no more temperate.” 87 Once in office, Reagan continually gave lip service to
the pro-life movement, but would not always follow up with definitive action. In
addition, Reagan’s appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor, a prominent pro-choice
activist during the 1970s in Arizona, was seen as a “betrayal.” 88
To pro-life leader
Carolyn Gerster, who helped Mecklenburg and the early NRLC separatists organize
ACCL after the Roe decision, Reagan’s Supreme Court nomination was a further
“humiliation.” 89
According to Gerster, Reagan promised a pro-life appointment to the
Supreme Court in return for the movement’s support in his 1980 election campaign.
After the election and little pro-life action on Reagan’s part, he issued a statement in the
August 1981 issue of The National Right to Life News, asserting “I believe that most of
the talk about my appointment was stirred up principally by one person in Arizona, I have
done a great deal of checking on this and have found this person has something of a
state voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 in tune with the recent alignment of antiabortion forces
and the Republican party), the incumbent vice presidential candidate under Carter was Walter
Mondale, a native Minnesotan and US senator from 1964-1976. In 1984, he won on the
democratic ticket for president himself.
87 Sue Mullin, “The lady behind the ‘squeal rule,’” The Washington Times, 1B, 28 December,
1982, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
88 Wallis, op. cit.; also McAteer interview, quoted in Paige, 223.
89 Paige, 224.
65

ecord of being vindictive.” 90 Carolyn Gerster was an Arizona native, and pro-life
activists knew it; they saw Reagan’s response as a great insult and “a gratuitous display
of insensitivity,” further sustaining the increasing rough relations between the movement
and the president. 91
In Congress, pro-life momentum had largely come to a halt by the end of 1982, at
least with regard to a possible constitutional amendment overturning Roe v. Wade.
Senator Jesse Helms and Senator Orrin Hatch drafted competing constitutional
amendments at the turn of the decade, and debates became increasingly futile in 1981 and
1982. The amendments were attached to a debt-ceiling bill and filibustered in the Senate,
further frustrating legislators on all sides of the issue. The prolonged debate caused
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York to shout from his seat, “[w]e have before
us the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War!” 92 On September 15, 1982,
Hatch withdrew his amendment, and the Helms amendment was tabled soon after.
According to historian Donald Critchlow, this instance ended the movement for a
constitutional amendment that would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. Pro-life
activists soon went away from the New Right and from the President himself; Reagan’s
inaction compounded with the failures and stalemate in Congress, according to historian
Connie Paige, left “right-to-life activists…isolated, confused as to where to go from
there.” 93 90 National Right to Life News, July 13 and 27, Aug. 10 and 24 and Sept. 28, 1981, quoted in
Paige, 224.
91 Paige, 224.
92 New York Times, 19 August 1982, quoted in Critchlow, 232.
93 Paige, 222.
66

Chapter 4: The National Movement Emerges: Clashing Christian
Foundations, Progressive Protestant Leaders, and the Promotion of
MCCL’s Earliest Founders
American Citizens Concerned for Life and the National Right to Life
Committee: Alike in Organization, At Odds in Platform
As the abortion movement became increasingly politicized and nationalized
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, pro-life forces moved quickly to shift their focus and
follow the issue from the well-developed state stage to the new national stage. State
efforts continued, as previously explained through the lens of MCCL; the group still
operates in the same Minneapolis office today. MCCL was also relevant, in fact vital, in
the most important moments of the movement’s national transition to remain relevant and
effective with the announcement of Roe v. Wade. In the year before and decades after the
Roe decision, activists like Marjory Mecklenburg, Alice Hartle, Joseph Lampe, Darla St.
Martin, and more – all founders of MCCL – developed the national movement using the
experience, successes, and general experiences gained through five years of intense
MCCL activism. The path these founders took from grassroots lobbying to presidential
appointments shows why the Minnesota story is so vital to a full understanding of the
trajectory and development of the whole movement itself. Some actors transitioned to
the national movement only temporarily, while others remained with the movement
through Reagan’s presidency. Some are even still loosely involved today, after over four
67

decades of involvement. Yet before one can understand the trajectory of these actors, one
first must understand how these actors and the movement at large began to navigate the
new national stage upon which the abortion debate continued after Roe v. Wade.
The earliest contemporary movement did not develop as MCCL did. While state
groups formed on a largely grassroots level, and expanded thereafter, the most prominent
national group, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), materialized as a project
of the Catholic Church. The NRLC started its nationwide communication efforts as early
as 1966, when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops mandated Monsignor James
McHugh, the director of the Family Life Bureau, to begin tracking the abortion issue in
response to reform and rumblings in national and state governments. 1
The organization
in fact reached the early MCCL leaders in October of 1968 and set up a small office in
Washington in 1969, but it didn’t appeal for a broad base of nationwide support (in
particular, by involving existing statewide groups) until the after Roe. 2
The NRLC
started as an organization created and directed from above by the United States Catholic
Conference (USCC) and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). 3
Yet, as
the movement neared the Roe decision, state anti-abortion activists joined, provided
suggestions and advice, and shaped the organization itself. 4 Although the NRLC was not
a grassroots organization, activists who were products of grassroots beginnings became
members and leaders in the largely Catholic group. Soon statewide associations
themselves became affiliated and involved with NRLC; by 1973, 250 organizations were
1 Critchlow, 138.
2 National Right to Life Committee: Statement of Purpose of the National Right to Life Committee
and History, ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Committee 1973 (1), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
3 Young, 145.
4 Ibid.
68

somewhat affiliated with the NRLC. 5
Three main nationwide events spurred these
statewide groups to increase their coordination. In light of the passage of new abortion
laws in eleven states from 1966-1969, the perpetual introduction of new legislation in the
majority of states in 1970-1971, and news of two pending Supreme Court abortion cases
from Texas and Georgia in April 1972, abortion leaders throughout the country realized
the pressing need to organize nationwide quickly and effectively. 6
In August of 1970, the NRLC sponsored a small weekend meeting in Chicago for
anti-abortion leaders throughout the nation, drawing MCCL founders Robert and Mary
Joyce and Fred Mecklenburg. A second meeting was held in June of 1971 at Macalaster
College in St. Paul, MN, which again conveniently drew even more MCCL leaders.
However, the result of this initial involvement was not as constructive as Minnesota
activists, and the national organization in general, had anticipated. In fact, discussions in
each event upset representatives from statewide groups across the country, especially
those from Minnesota. State actors became frustrated with the inflexible agenda and
tactics of the group’s Catholic leaders and controllers. This clash came to a head in June
of 1972, when the NRLC again drew anti-abortion leaders to their third annual
convention in Philadelphia. MCCL founders Fred and Marjory Mecklenburg, Paul
Andreini, Joe Lampe, and David Mall were all in attendance. 7
For these MCCL
delegates, the NRLC conventions did not spur their subscription to the existing
5 Critchlow, 138.
6 “Comparison of State Abortion Laws Passed in 1966-1969 U.S.A,” ACCL Records, Box 6,
Folder: NRLC-1974 (2), Gerald Ford Library, and “Pennsylvanians for Human Life Newsletter,” Vol 3, No
1, April 1972, ACCL Records, Box 3, Folder: Miscellaneous Reference Materials (4), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
7 “Registration List, National Right to Life Convention,” ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: NRLC –
Rosters/Mailing Lists (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
69

nationwide effort organized by the Catholic-sponsored group, but rather drove them to
develop a wholly new and improved one themselves.
A handwritten memo, apparently written shortly after the convention, explains
how Marjory Mecklenburg, Joseph Lampe, and Dr. Paul Andreini met in Rochester, MN
to compile a proposal for “a more independent,…effective and representative national
pro-life organization.” 8
With regard to the 1970 meeting in Chicago, MCCL leaders
claimed “[e]ven at this early date it was obvious to those attending that Msgr. McHugh
totally dominated the NRLC and that it was a façade, not a national right to life
organization.” 9
The memo-writer, likely Marjory Mecklenburg or Joseph Lampe (from
similarities with their other handwritten notes, also included in consulted archives),
described how delegates raised issue with how both the meeting and the national
organization at large were run, while “no changes were made by Msgr. McHugh and no
alternative plans were offered…[T]here was great sentiment for a commitment to an
independently structured and funded NRLC, but to no avail.” 10 After three years of such
incidents, MCCL activists saw the NRLC as an organization completely dominated by
Msgr. McHugh and the Catholic Church, as an “autocratic organization” that could not
sufficiently meet the desires of the broadening base of the anti-abortion movement. 11
The
draft for a new group stated the improved national organization would be modeled after
the most successful statewide groups, which were on the whole older and more
established than the existing nationwide ones. MCCL was specifically mentioned as one
such model group. Marjory Mecklenburg certainly knew the NRLC, its tactics,
8 Untitled Memo, ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Convention June 16-18,
1972, Gerald R. Ford Library.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
70

organization, and climate both publicly and privately; her husband Fred was the
Chairman of the Board of Directors by November of 1972 and continued in the post into
1973. 12 Whether he felt as strongly about the organization as his wife did is unclear,
although he would leave his position only a year later. The memo deemed the NRLC “an
organization, not a coalition (a group of organizations). [There is t]oo much state loyalty
operative & not enuf [sic] NRLC loyalty.” 13
These NRLC separatists drafted a new
national organization based on everything they saw the NRLC lacked: a “strong, effective
president, participatory decision making, and [a]…structure…that…involves more
people and makes them more dedicated & loyal.” 14 The new organization (and its
drafters) wished to recruit the most effective talent and the most visible leaders of the
movement, as the ranks to lead the pro-life movement nationwide would be filled by
those with ample experience in the statewide arena. Indeed, as this paper will later
explore, the very Minnesotans who drafted this new and improved national group would
be the ones to found and lead it themselves (M. Mecklenburg and Lampe), or to
strengthen the group by writing the leading arguments and scholarship that would
underpin its actions (F. Mecklenburg and Andreini).
In the weeks before the Roe decision, the movement was clearly divided on the
development of a nationwide anti-abortion movement. Indeed, the statewide leaders
most successful in achieving their goals toward preventing liberalized abortion laws were
12 “National Right to Life Committee Letter to the Board of Directors: Meeting on National
Organization, Washington, D.D., Saturday, December 9, 1972, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,” 1 November 1972,
ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Convention June 16-18, 1972, Gerald R. Ford
Library and National Right to Life Committee: Statement of Purpose of the National Right to Life
Committee and History, ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Committee 1973 (1), Gerald
R. Ford Library.
13 Untitled Memo, ACCL Box 4, National Right to Life Convention June 16-18, 1972, Gerald R.
Ford Library. Underline in the original.
14 Ibid.
71

in drastic (at the extreme, irreconcilable) disagreement with the leading authority on the
national level (the NRLC) despite the group’s efforts to hold annual meetings and
conventions to unify and improve the nationwide cause. Additionally, these NRLC
conventions on organizing a national movement were strongly introverted. The agenda at
a 1972 National Organization Meeting did not center on “legislative strategy, court
strategy, educational programs, etc.,” but instead NRLC leaders advised against
discussing these topics entirely. 15
Monsignor James McHugh, the Catholic Church’s
chief on anti-abortion matters, wanted to maintain the NRLC’s centralized leadership,
seen by Protestants and others as controlled by the Catholic Church and its doctrine. To
compound the issue, non-Catholic activists like the Mecklenburgs and Judith Fink, a
Pennsylvania woman who had also helped found the most prominent Pennsylvania
statewide group, were angered by the NRLC’s and its Catholic leaders’ portrayal of the
issue as a specifically Catholic one. While it somewhat bothered Protestants that much of
the NRLC ranks were filled by Catholics (70% of NRLC leadership was Catholic,
representing 2.5 times the proportion of the American population), the public persona the
NRLC put forth with regard to the abortion issue was the primary frustration.
Throughout the 1970s, the prevalence of Catholic clerical voices on the abortion
issue upset many Protestant leaders. After the Roe decision, a delegation of four
cardinals spoke before a Senate committee on abortion legislation, immediately casting
the pro-life movement as one represented and directed by Catholic clergy members. 16
15 “National Right to Life Committee Letter to the Board of Directors: Meeting on National
Organization, Washington, D.D., Saturday, December 9, 1972, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,” 1 November 1972,
ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Convention June 16-18, 1972, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
16 Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts Lead to Forming Of New Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star
Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1, ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL
Records, Gerald R. Ford Library.
72

Headlines like “Catholics ‘Main Foe of Abortion,’” and “Cooke Blasts Abortion From
Pulpit,” which detailed the meetings and partnership between clergy and President Ford
and the general statements of Catholic clergy in Congressional hearings, cast the abortion
issue as a decidedly Catholic one. 17 After these incidences, Mecklenburg and Fink
“charged the Catholic Church with playing into the hands of abortionists by giving the
issue the appearance of being one of religious differences.” 18
These words indicated the
beginnings of the split, whose foundations lay far beneath simple annoyance with the
clergy testimony in the Senate. At first, these leaders tried aggressively to reform the
NRLC from the inside; however, they eventually realized the best way to continue their
efforts was apart from the NRLC.
Even among the NRLC’s elected leaders and board of directors, internal tensions
were high. In a letter dated November 1, 1972 about the upcoming national meeting of
the NRLC, Executive Secretary Michael Taylor set an agenda that would avoid strategy,
but instead focused on organizing the structure of the group itself. Questions like
“What…are organizational needs/goals of the pro-life movement on the specifically
national level?” and “What are the resources available/needed to accomplish some/all of
these goals?” were the scheduled discussion topics. 19
The previously mentioned proposal
for national organization drafted by MCCL leaders to instead expand national activity
17 Bob Protzman, “Catholics ‘Main Foe of Abortion,’” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2 April 1971, C9,
from the private papers of Mary and Robert Joyce, given to the author after interview; and George James,
“Cooke Blasts Abortion From Pulpit,” Daily News, 27 September 1976, page 3, President Ford Committee
Records, 1975-76, Office: William Russo Political Subject File, Abortion (1), Box C25, Folder: Abortion
Issue (2), Gerald R. Ford Library.
18 Catholic Star Herald, 29 March 1974, quoted in Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts Lead to Forming
of New Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1, ACCL
Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL Records, Gerald R. Ford Library.
19 “National Right to Life Committee Letter to the Board of Directors: Meeting on National
Organization, Washington, D.D., Saturday, December 9, 1972, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,” 1 November 1972,
ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Convention June 16-18, 1972, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
73

and increase political effectiveness was also presented at this December meeting. While
the questions asked by the NRLC executive board were vital to the continuation of the
national movement and highly anticipated and welcomed by the disgruntled non-Catholic
activists, the disagreement between attendees in answering these questions further
disorganized the movement, and in fact acted against the hopes of the NRLC executive
board and statewide leaders alike. This divide, introverted focus, and disorganization
sheds valuable light on the timing of the historic Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade
that would come just one month after the December NRLC national organization
conference.
Immediately after the Roe decision, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
formed the National Committee for the Human Life Amendment. The proposed Human
Life Amendment would constitutionally ban abortion, and would effectively and
temporarily place the debate back into the hands of the states. More specifically, the
proposed amendments (there were over fifty by 1976) would apply the due process clause
to any human from conception, or alternatively, extended the Fourteenth Amendment’s
rights to the fetus. 20
The most prominent Human Life Amendment was proposed by the
NRLC, which protected human life “at every moment of biological development.” 21
However, many Catholics, including American bishops, were unsatisfied with the
amendment despite its passage through the NRLC. In their view, it did not strictly align
with Catholic abortion doctrine, which forbid any abortions after conception (a word that
was absent from the HLA), despite risk to the mother’s life. In 1974, pro-life supporter
Dr. James Diamond wrote that the rigidity of Catholic and NRLC activists would be the
20 Critchlow, 202.
21 James J. Diamond, “The Troubled Anti-Abortion Camp,” America, 10 August 1974, Vol. 131,
Issue 3, 52-54, 53.
74

downfall of the amendment. Diamond encouraged the NRLC and Catholic bishops to
learn from their Protestant comrades. Protestants, Diamond argued, “have a more
cerebral sense than do rigorists of the civil order within which public moral issues must
come to rest.” 22
Diamond correctly observed that Protestants were not supporting an
amendment or the pro-life cause to push their own faith; rather, these actors were
motivated by moral and medical reasons. Catholics, on the other hand, were “defending
what they believe[d] to be their faith’s basic propositions, and they…threaten[ed] to jump
ship from the NRLC if laxism of any degree is manifested in the amendment.” 23
“That’s
no way to get a constitutional amendment,” said Carolyn Gerster, a brief president of the
NRLC; “[t]hey were not facing reality.” 24 Instead, Diamond realized, the movement
needed to “embrace a workable amendment that falls short of natural-law moral
theology,” in order to save some unborn and achieve some goals, rather than save none,
and achieve none. 25
In addition to its inflexibility on legislative matters, the NRLC found other ways
to further isolate its non-Catholic members. Protestants felt ignored and at odds with the
Catholic clergy that controlled the organization, and Catholic leadership was not
sincerely attempting to change their position. In 1973, Mecklenburg privately wrote to a
pro-life ally and reported that “one of Fr. McHugh’s confidants” asked a Protestant on the
NRLC executive committee that if the Catholic Church gave the NRLC $20 million and
could guarantee the passage of a Human Life Amendment, “would the Protestants be
22 Ibid., 53.
23 Ibid.
24 Carolyn Gerster, quoted in Paige, 181-182. Paige claims, “[w]hat changed their minds was the
New Right.”
25 Diamond, 54.
75

willing to be window dressing – no rocking the boat?” 26
This only infuriated and
exacerbated the frustrations of leaders like Mecklenburg, Lampe, and Fink, and increased
the divide within the NRLC. Given the high stakes, the success of the movement and its
principal goal of a constitutional amendment lay in a flexible, broad and open strategy,
rather than a strictly Catholic one. True to all the highlighted successes of MCCL, a nonreligious
and more universal approach was the most effective way of reaching pro-life
goals.
Identifying this sentiment prior to Roe v. Wade and growing tired of the internal
and external struggles that pervaded the NRLC that resulted in “little creative effort and
forward progress,” Marjory Mecklenburg and Joseph Lampe started to draft and move
toward forming a new national organization, free from overbearing ties to religion and
broader in its goals and aims. 27
American Citizens Concerned For Life (ACCL) was
announced on August 21, 1974, but was incorporated in the spring of 1973 (before the
NRLC); Mecklenburg and Lampe hesitated to leave the NRLC at first, still hopeful the
organization would become more open. 28 However, Mecklenburg, Lampe, former NRLC
Corporate Secretary Judith Fink, and former NRLC assistant executive director Rev.
Warren Schaller lost hope and soon, according to the Catholic Star Herald, “called it
26 Letter from Marjory Mecklenburg to Martin Ryan Haley, 3 September 1973, ACCL Records,
Box 4, Folder: NRLC 1973 (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
27 Correspondence from Marjory Mecklenburg to Martin Ryan Haley, 3 September 1973, ACCL
Records, Box 4, Folder: NRLC 1973 (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
28 “Minnesotans Prominent in New National Pro-Life Organization,” MCCL Newsletter,
September 1974, page 1, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN and Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts lead to
Forming Of New Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1,
ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL Records, Gerald R. Ford Library. Note: the
Sherwood article pins the ACCL incorporation date as “18 months ago,” meaning February 1973, in one
part of the article, but claims it was incorporated in May 1973, on the same day as NRLC, later on. The
author has chosen to generalize the incorporation as occurring in spring of 1973.
76

quits.” 29
Rev. Schaller, an Episcopalian minister, was in fact fired from his post in July
of 1974 and publicly introduced ACCL when he appeared at an August abortion
subcommittee hearing as the president and representative of a new national pro-life
group. 30 Mecklenburg was defeated in her run for NRLC president in May of 1974,
perhaps a last push to obtain greater leadership to change the direction of the
organization. 31
She soon cut all NRLC ties when she resigned her chairmanship and her
position as Minnesota’s NRLC board representative on August 21, 1974. 32 The same
day, Fink and Mecklenburg assumed co-directorships of the newly-formed American
Citizens Concerned for Life. Free from the confines of religious affiliation and defined
religious leadership, and organized based on the proposals Mecklenburg and Lampe had
been drafting for years, ACCL believed it was the most well-organized and well-prepared
group to carry on the national pro-life struggle. However, “delighted with the outcome”
of the split and well-funded and ever-powerful, the National Right to Life Committee
continued to press the pro-life cause through Catholic avenues using Catholic rhetoric,
which further portrayed the abortion issue and pro-life stance as religious ones. 33 This
was a stigma and association ACCL pushed back against throughout its time as a
prominent pro-life force on the national stage. After all, these frustrations comprised the
primary motivation for activists like Marjory Mecklenburg, Judy Fink, Carolyn Gerster,
29 Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts lead to Forming Of New Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star
Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1, ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL
Records, Gerald R. Ford Library.
30 Susan Fogg, “Abortion opponents part ways,” Newark Star Ledger, 29 September 1974, ACCL
Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
31 Ibid.
32 Correspondence (telegram) from Ken Vanderhoef, president of NRLC, to Kathy Sackett, of
Minneapolis, MN, ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
33 Ray White, NRLC director, quoted in Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts lead to Forming Of New
Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1, ACCL Records, Box 7,
Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL Records, Gerald R. Ford Library.
77

Warren Schaller, and others to form the a non-religious, broad-based, and multi-issue
American Citizens Concerned for Life.
The group’s purpose was “deliberate…clear…calm, it made no mention of
God.” 34 Headquartered in Washington D.C. with administrative offices in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, the group was informed by its founders’ MCCL past. Initially (and briefly),
former MCCLer and Reverend Warren Schaller served as the group’s first president and
executive director, until Fink and Mecklenburg took over as directors soon after. In
addition to Schaller, three other Minnesotans founded the new organization and served on
its steering committee: Marjory Mecklenburg, Rev. William Hunt (MCCL founder and
longtime executive committee member), and Joseph Lampe. 35
Mecklenburg stated this
clearly: “MCCL leaders bear a particular responsibility to help pro-life people in other
states to develop more effective organizations.” 36
In this way, leaders of this new
national group recognized “’[r]eligious motivations are [firstly] too easy for opponents to
dismiss as ‘private’ matters that should not be written into law,” and secondly, could
polarize potential supporters. 37 The group explicitly warned against opponents’ plots to
affiliate the pro-life issue and organizations that supported the cause as a Catholic issue
and Catholic movement, clearly informed by ACCL founders’ vivid recent experiences. 38
ACCL mainly assumed a “consultant” role to other activists and organizations. 39 The
group’s actors largely shied away from direct political action, and instead focused its
34 Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 178.
35 Minnesotans Prominent in New National Pro-Life Organization,” MCCL Newsletter, September
1974, page 1, MCCL Archives, Minneapolis, MN.
36 Ibid., page 13.
37 Darla St. Martin, Mobilizing Pro-Life Forces, pamphlet, 1 January 1974, p 4, ACCL Records,
Box 18, Folder: ACCL Admin File: OD Mobilizing Pro-Life Forces, Gerald R. Ford Library
38 Ibid.
39 Gerald R. Ford Library. “American Citizens Concerned for Life, Inc.: Records, (1968) 1974-
1982 (1986).” .
78

efforts on awareness, education, formation, and coordination with other grassroots and
national groups. The ACCL founders saw among the many NRLC weaknesses an
inability and unwillingness to affiliate and work with state groups. Full of experience on
the state level, Mecklenburg, Lampe, Schaller, and Fink wanted an umbrella organization
for state groups that still enacted programs aimed at tackling the issue on a national
level. 40 ACCL would be simultaneously in tune with the state and national abortion
debates; MCCL Vice-President Dr. David O’Steen proclaimed, “no matter how much
progress the pro-life movement makes in Minnesota, there can be no hope of passage of a
Human Life Amendment until 38 states are prepared to ratify such an amendment.” 41
Passing the Human Life Amendment would require coordination on the national and state
level; ACCL was the first group to fully grasp this concept.
Additionally, Mecklenburg did not want ACCL to be a single-issue group focused
on the life of the unborn. She wanted to embrace pro-life issues more generally and
initiate programs that created alternatives to abortion; Schaller explained this “means
counseling and education programs for young people, programs to aid single mothers,
and tax incentives for parents who have or adopt children who are born with
handicaps.” 42 More broadly, ACCL would tackle policies around healthcare and welfare,
world hunger, issues around death and dying, and support services for young pregnant
40 Others serving on the initial group were Area Representatives from Maine to Hawaii, including
Robert Greene (former executive director of NRLC), Albert Fortman, M.D. (former NRLC executive
committee member), Rev. Robert Holbrook (national coordinator of Baptists for Life), Thomas J. Mooney
(executive director of the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition), Joseph Stanton, M.D. and Edward Kilroy,
M.D. (members of the executive committee of Americans United for Life) and others, who were officers in
prominent state organizations – Kathleen Barthen (South Dakota), John Beliveau (Maine), TJ Bosgra
(Hawaii), Dennis Cook (Utah), Dorothy Czarnecki, M.D. (Pennsylvania), Otto Harling, Ph.D. and Beth
Harling (Washington), Charles L. Heatherly (California), Dolores Horan (Illinois), Betty Johnson (New
Jersey), Patricia Kelley (Illinois), Dorothy Shald (Nebraska), Paulette Standefer (Texas), and Jeanna D.
Sweeney (New York).
41 MCCL Vice-President Dr. David O’Steen, quoted in “MCCL Directors Attend Special Board
Meeting,” MCCL Newsletter, November-December 1974, page 3, MCCL Archives.
42 Fogg, “Abortion opponents part ways.”
79

women, which would become the specific cause Mecklenburg championed for over a
decade. 43
On the contrary, the NRLC had made its sole goal the enactment of a Human
Life Amendment, and at that point had obviously taken no action on sex education or
birth control.
With all this in mind, ACCL pushed back on the NRLC’s image dominated by
“conservative Catholic male[s]” and moved forward in its efforts to broaden and
invigorate the pro-life cause. 44 One of ACCL’s first programs was the annual Prayer
Breakfast for Life, which brought together prominent clergy, Congressmen, and
laypeople of many faiths to Washington, D.C. to discuss and advocate a pro-life stance in
the American abortion debate. Additionally, ACCL formed organizational development
teams to help nurture new groups in several states, and also assisted established pro-life
groups in improved structure, fundraising, education programs, and other hurdles ACCL
founders had dealt with since MCCL’s founding in 1968. 45 ACCL held conventions
around the nation, attracting religious leaders, professionals, and government leaders to
speak about the abortion issue, and held small group workshops at the state, regional, and
chapter levels around the country. Through these programs, ACCL developed an image
and a name for itself, attracting the attention of supporters and critics nationwide, among
them Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who proclaimed that “[i]n a society which seems
43 Gerald R. Ford Library. “American Citizens Concerned for Life, Inc.: Records, (1968)
1974-1982 (1986).” .
44 Internal note written by Joseph Lampe, 1973, ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: NRLC 1973 (5),
Gerald R. Ford Library.
45 For example, Patricia DeGrinney, the President of Maine Right to Life Committee, said of
ACCL, “Maine Right to Life Committee has found ACCL to be an invaluable resource for the past two
years. The materials, particularly those on organization and development and, more importantly, the
personal counsel in all facets of pro-life activity, have helped us to respond to the growing needs in our
state. A truly wise and dependable sister organization!” Patricia DeGrinney, quoted in ACCL
Congressional Action Project literature, ACCL Records, Box 15, Folder: Letters Re: ACCL Organization
from Late 1974, Gerald R. Ford Library; and ACCL Pamphlet, ACCL Records, Box 15, Folder:
Mailings/Pamphlets, Gerald R. Ford Library.
80

preoccupied with death, not life and with self-centeredness not service, the ACCL stands
for a more compelling tradition: protection of all human life, compassion for the unborn
and the aged, caring for the helpless and the handicapped. As we search for that dimly
perceived goal of justice, the ACCL can well serve as a compass for our conscience.” 46
Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota deemed ACCL’s programs “the way to wage
the battle” to pass the Human Life Amendment. In fact, many legislators, Republicans
and Democrats alike (provided they were against abortion), praised ACCL’s efforts in
Congress. 47 In tune with these sentiments, ACCL attained much success at the turn of the
decade in promoting, lobbying for, and testifying on social welfare legislation offering
alternatives to abortion, including an “adolescent pregnancy bill, pregnancy disability
benefits bill, and maternal and child health legislation,” which were all eventually
passed. 48 By 1981, the group boasted a congressional advisory committee and over 3,500
contributors in all fifty states. 49
46 Eunice Kennedy Shriver, quoted in ACCL Pamphlet, ACCL Records, Box 15, Folder:
Mailings/Pamphlets, Gerald R. Ford Library.
47 Senator Mark O’Hatfield (R-Ore.) said, “I continue to rely heavily on the sound judgment of
those involved with ACCL and appreciate especially their commitment to work for alternatives to
abortion,” Representative John Breaux (D-La. 7) asserted, “ACCL’s approach to the legislative battle on
abortion is the best way the message can be delivered to Congress. It is a nation al effort that I find many
Members of Congress agree with. I’m looking forward to working with you and other members of the
organization during this 95 th Congress,” and Representative Albert H. Quie (R-Minn. 1) said, “It was truly
a pleasure to work with ACCL during the 94 th Congress. Your cause is vital; your knowledge, thorough;
and your politics, savvy. In looking at the 94 th Congress, the most important pro-life item was the seven
days of hearings on constitutional solutions to the Supreme Court’s decisions. It was only through the
efforts of ACCL that the hearings were able to be organized so the greatest impact could be made…[I]f
ACCL’s approach to the problem can be spread, I feel the cause in the end will be successful.” All quoted
in “Praise from civic leaders for the work of American Citizens Concerned for Life…,” ACCL Records,
Box 15, Folder: Letters Re: ACCL Organization from Late 1974, Gerald R. Ford Library.
48 “Some Accomplishments of American Citizens Concerned For Life,” handout, ACCL Records,
Box 17, Folder: ACCL Admin File: Programs – Accomplishments Jan 1981, Gerald R. Ford Library.
49 “American Citizens Concerned for Life 1981-1982 Campaign for Human Life Objectives,” page
2, ACCL Records, Box 29, Folder: ACCL Admin File: Fundraising, Gerald R. Ford Library; and William
C. Hunt, American Citizens Concerned for Life 1981-1982 Campaign for Human Life Objectives,
December 1981, ACCL Records, Box 29, Folder: ACCL Admin File: Fundraising, Gerald R. Ford Library.
Note: Hunt estimated “we need at least 25,000 [members] to continue our task,” perhaps highlighting the
dim prospects for antiabortion success in the 1980s.
81

On multiple levels, ACCL became a prominent voice like the NRLC, but one that
was broader and more widespread. Informed by their MCCL past, ACCL activists were
well aware that a broad-based and flexible approach to pro-life activism was the most
successful avenue to navigate. While the abortion issue became politicized after the Roe
decision, causing some groups to revert to partisan tactics, ACCL maintained a nonreligious,
non-partisan approach and instead focused on a moral and medical perspective.
These tactics led the group to great recruits and success, just as its founders enjoyed in
their MCCL years. Through this exposure and success in spreading its message, other
organizations and even the government began to reach out to ACCL leaders for more
prominent and prestigious positions.
In the early 1980s, Mecklenburg departed the organization to assume roles in
other pro-life organizations and in government agencies. Joseph Lampe assumed the role
of ACCL executive director and president in 1981 and Judith Fink continued her work in
ACCL leadership positions as well. 50 By this time, ACCL leaders were able “to attract a
cross section of the intellectual and spiritual elite in America,” and could call upon
doctors, pastors of many faiths, journalists, researchers, leaders of other pro-life groups,
professors, senators, and congressmen from around the country as members of its board
to help shape its broad-based and universal pro-life goals. 51 The group was on the whole
50 Telegram from Joseph A. Lampe, Executive Director of ACCL, to Emily Fahey of Billings,
MT, 9 March 1981, ACCL Records, Box 29, Folder: Telephone Scripts, Gerald R. Ford Library.
51 Some of the figures listed on the ACCL board included: Matthew J. Bulfin, M.D. (President,
American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians & Gynecologists), Sidney Cornelia Callahan (author), Dr.
Calvin J. Eichhorst (Pastor and Ecumenical Leader, American Lutheran Church), Hymie Gordon, M.D.
(Professor and Chairman, Department of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic), Mark O. Hatfield (US Senator,
Oregon), Rev. Robert R. Holbrook (President, Baptists for Life), David W. Louisell (Professor of Law,
University of California, Berkeley), Fred Mecklenburg, M.D. (Clinical Assistant Professor of OB-GYN,
University of Minnesota), John T. Noonan (professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley), David
Novak, Ph.D. (Author and Rabbi, Beth Thlah Congregation, Baltimore), Grace Olivarez, J.D. (Institute of
Social Research and Development, University of New Mexico), Albert H. Quie (Congressman, Minnesota),
82

completely severed from the NRLC, although ACCL did display a booth at the 1975
National Right to Life Convention, ironically themed, “Strength Through Unity.” 52
Additionally, while many pro-life organizations began to be politicized in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, ACCL was always motivated to remain bi-partisan. 53 Darla St. Martin,
a former MCCLer who also worked with ACCL, told the Wall Street Journal of the
group’s diversity in its earliest years. The article described how “[a]ctivists…are
attracting a wider following, by no means all of which is Catholic. [They] include
Republicans and Democrats, veterans of the antiwar and civil-rights movements and a
host of otherwise unaffiliated middle-class Americans. As a consequence of this,
national politicians as well as state legislators are beginning to take them seriously.” 54
While the NRLC began to affiliate itself with the New Right and the Republican
Party, ACCL kept track of legislators’ voting records, but never threw its full weight
behind a particular party. ACCL’s ability to maintain a non-religious, universal, and
Paul Ramsey, Ph.D. (Professor of Religion, Princeton University), Victor G. Rosenblum (Professor of Law,
Northwestern University), Nick Thimmesch (Journalist, Washington, D.C.), and George H. Williams
(Professor of Divinity, Harvard University, and Founder and Director of Americans United for Life),
among many others. State Pro-Life Organization, mailing, ACCL Records, Box 18, Folder: ACCL Admin
File: OD State Organizational Booklet, Gerald R. Ford Library; and Correspondence, From Marjory
Mecklenburg to Members of 1976 Democratic Platform Committee, 27 May 1976, ACCL Records, Box
44, Folder: ACCL Political File: Political Letter to Platform May 17, 1976, Gerald R. Ford Library; and
Rabbi David Novak, Ph.D. quoted in ACCL Congressional Action Project literature, ACCL Records, Box
15, Folder: Letters Re: ACCL Organization from Late 1974, Gerald R. Ford Library.
52 Letter from Patty Duke, NRLC Convention Co-ordinator to Friends of Life, 9 March 1975,
ACCL Records, Box 10, Folder: NRLC – Convention 1975 June 1975, Gerald R. Ford Library; and receipt
for NRLC Convention exhibit space payment by ACCL, 1975, ACCL Records, Box 10, Folder: NRLC –
Convention 1975 June 1975, Gerald R. Ford Library; and receipt for NRLC Convention exhibit space
payment by ACCL, 1977, ACCL Records, Box 11, Folder: NRLC Convention 1977, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
53 An ACCL Pamphlet from December 1980 asserts “ACCL will not be co-opted by the left or
right in our quest to reinstate respect for life within American society” and “ACCL does not engage in
partisan politics; we give priority to educating the public toward consensus on the value of human life,
[and] participates in broad coalitions, building on points of similarity and common interests.” No Other
Vehicle Quite Like Ours, pamphlet, ACCL Records, Box 26, Folder: America 12/80, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
54 “A New Cause: Many Americans Join Move to Ban Abortion; Legislators Take Note,” The Wall
Street Journal.
83

multi-issue approach was a tactic and a skill that largely came out of its founders’
decades of successful work and experience within MCCL. Minnesota and MCCL were
vital schoolhouses for its leaders that would soon drive the national movement’s success.
However, while ACCL employed an effective strategy, its finances were in poor shape
(in large part due to the alternative strength of the NRLC), and leaders recognized that the
motivations of many ACCL members had greatly diminished by the early 1980s. As the
hopes for the HLA faded, so also did the ranks and enthusiasm of pro-life activists, no
matter their affiliated group. 55
While ACCL and NRLC travelled in different directions, many pro-life activists
felt lost by 1981. The movement had privately split on a grassroots and national level;
publicly, not even Reagan addressed the destiny of the issue in a coherent way. As
previously mentioned, while he remained pro-life in opinion, he rarely did more for the
cause than occasionally appoint pro-life activists to government positions. Additionally,
old wounds between Mecklenburg and the NRLC were clearly persistent into the early
1980s, as the National Right to Life Convention invited her as its keynote speaker in June
of 1982, but she declined. Morton Blackwell, a conservative activist who served as a
Special Assistant to President Reagan, spoke instead and introduced a pre-taped video of
Ronald Reagan, which according to one 1982 Cherry Hill convention attendee, offered
“warm and congenial, if vague, blessings.” 56
All this caused the convention itself to be
very underwhelming, according to attendees. 57 Therefore, historian Connie Paige writes
55 For a very detailed report on the status and strategy of ACCL in the early 1980s, consult
William C. Hunt’s Strategic Plan for American Citizens Concerned for Life, Inc. and American Citizens
Concerned for Life, Inc. Education Fund, 19 July 1984, ACCL Records, Box 21, Folder: ACCL Admin
File: Board of Directors Rev. William C. Hunt, S.T.D: (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
56 Personal attendants at National Right to Life annual conventions, Omaha, 1981, and Cherry
Hill, N.J., 1982, quoted in Paige, 232.
57 Ibid.
84

that “[r]ather than banding together for support, [pro-life activists] responded by
attacking not only their opponents but also each other…threaten[ing] the very existence
of the ‘winning coalition’ and ma[king] their goal of consolidating right-to-life support in
the Congress appear all the more unattainable.” 58
While pro-life forces could no longer
rely on outside lobbyists working to convince Congressmen to pass pro-life amendments,
the cause instead turned to the few pro-life activists who had won positions on the inside.
“The abortion picture is grim,” Jan Wilkins, then President of ACCL, wrote in 1983, but
she saw potential in pro-life education and in the leaders within Reagan’s administration
for pro-life change. 59
While Marjory Mecklenburg and pro-life activists like her once
fought for the cause from the Hartles’ living room in Minneapolis, at the St. Paul capitol,
in front of Minnesota abortion clinics, in the Chicago O’Hare Airport, against Catholic
biases, in Washington, D.C. forming ACCL, and lobbying ever since, she would attain a
position that allowed her to advocate change within the government itself. Marjory
Mecklenburg was the grassroots activist who became a government insider.
Away From the Catholic Mold: Pro-Life Leaders Progress Within An
Established and National Organization Framework
A 1974 ACCL pamphlet distributed to pro-life leaders nationwide gave nearly
twenty pages of advice to unfounded and developing groups and activists. The pamphlet
58 Paige, 222.
59 Letter from Jan Wilkins to Rev. Leonard A. Hirman, 14 June 1983, ACCL Records, Box 14,
Folder: ACCL – Admin File: General Correspondence: 1983 (2), Gerald R. Ford Library.
85

asserted, “often a few key people make decisions that affect many lives.” 60 Indeed,
throughout the history explored in this paper, it is clear many supporters took part in the
pro-life movement, but the main decisions and the main victories were largely made and
won by a few major activists who progressed from grassroots beginnings to the state and
national scenes. Contrary to the 1970s view that most pro-life activists were
“predominantly male and overwhelmingly Roman Catholic,” many of the most
successful activists in the early contemporary anti-abortion/pro-life campaign were not
Catholic, and were often women. 61 As early as 1974, Marjory Mecklenburg asserted,
“[w]e need to let the press see the kinds of people working on the issue” to properly
explain and progress it. 62 Given that sentiment, leaders outside the 1970s antiabortion/pro-life
activist stereotype proved vital to the movement’s continuing relevance
throughout the post-Roe years. Further, while Mecklenburg was the most visible non-
Catholic grassroots activist to ascend to national leadership roles, she was not the only
one. Many national leaders came out of Minnesota and demonstrate how vital the state
and the actors it produced were to the early anti-abortion/pro-life movement.
Alice Hartle began her pro-life work as a primary founder of MCCL, hosting the
group’s founding meeting in her own living room in 1968. From there, Hartle became
the editor of the MCCL Newsletter from its start in 1969 until December of 1973, when
she departed Minnesota for Washington D.C. and became the founder and editor of the
National Right to Life News. According to author Connie Paige, activists nationwide
60 Darla St. Martin, Mobilizing Pro-Life Forces, pamphlet, 1 January 1974, p. 2, ACCL Records,
Box 18, Folder: ACCL Admin File: OD Mobilizing Pro-Life Forces, Gerald R. Ford Library.
61 David Kuhn, “Antiabortion lobby seeks new image,” Minneapolis Tribune, 5B, 22 February
1974, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford
Library.
62 Ibid.
86

ecognized that MCCL “produced one of the more professional-looking newspapers in
the movement.” 63
Naturally, the NRLC wished to recruit the best; overall, the NRLC
often looked to the Minnesota ranks for leadership in cause and communication. Just like
so many MCCL founders beside her, Hartle followed the trajectory of the abortion debate
in a self-defined “mind-stretching experience” to move from the state to the national
level. 64 She remained at the NRLC News as editor until 1976, and later founded the
Human Life Alliance in 1977. 65
The Human Life Alliance represented yet another push
and group of interested activists in support of a Human Life Amendment to the
constitution. Alice remained active in the movement for decades, until she passed away.
While Hartle no longer remains active in the pro-life cause, both the Human Life
Alliance and MCCL maintain their offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota today.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Judith “Judy” Fink became involved in
the anti-abortion movement by founding Pennsylvanians for Human Life, a group similar
in structure and tactics (although not in rank) to MCCL. By 1973, she moved from the
state to national level with many leaders as the chairman of the Inter-Group Liaison
Committee of the NRLC. 66
Like Mecklenburg, Fink was a Protestant woman determined
to counter the stereotypes of the 1970s anti-abortion/pro-life movement as one led by,
and primarily concerned with, Roman Catholic males. As part of a campaign to place
more women in positions of power, the NRLC appointed Fink secretary in 1974. She
held this position when the largely Protestant clan (of Mecklenburg, Greene, Schaller,
63 Paige, 83.
64 Alice Hartle, “Thanks a Lot, Alice – Lotsa Luck, Nancy!,” MCCL Newsletter, December 1973,
page 2, MCCL Archives.
65 Marlene C. Reid, “35 Years of Roe: The Killing Continues,” 22 January, 2008, accessed 25
February 2012, .
66 “250 MCCL’ers Participate in Convention Activities,” MCCL Newsletter, December 1973, page
1, MCCL Archives.
87

Lampe, and others) split to form ACCL. Fink held the position throughout the 1970s, but
disappeared from NRLC letterheads in 1980. The degree of Fink’s activism remains
unclear in the 1980s, but regardless, she represents a woman like Mecklenburg who
wished to broaden the scope of the national movement to grant it greater success.
Mildred Jefferson also represented a woman far from the media stereotype of the
pro-life activist. Originally from Texas, she was Methodist (and was in fact, the daughter
of a Methodist minister) but did not actively practice the religion. She was an African
American surgeon and the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. 67
Jefferson served as the NRLC president from 1975-78 and ascended to the role after
serving as the vice-chairman of the board under Mecklenburg for two years. 68 Unlike
Mecklenburg, however, Jefferson did not believe there were any circumstances under
which abortions should be performed, nor did she believe in birth control. In line with
Catholic doctrine but atypical as an activist in the organization, Jefferson was seen as the
“ideal candidate to shatter stereotypes” for the NRLC. 69
The New York Times once
questioned her leadership against that of the Catholic bishops; furthering the NRLC’s
attempt to avoid alienating non-Catholics, she replied, “[t]he Catholic Church is not
leading the Right to Life Committee, I am.” 70
Jefferson was also valuable for identifying
potential aid from and alignment with the Right on the political spectrum during the
67 Charles B. Fancher Jr., “Much in common but worlds apart,” Inquirer, 23 April 1978, 1G,
ACCL Records, Box 22, Folder: ACCL Admin File: People – General – Mildred Jefferson, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
68 National Right to Life News, September 1973, Ford Vice Presidential Papers, Deputy Assistant
for Scheduling and Appointments Files: 1973-74, Warren S. Rustand, Executive Protective Service
Clearance Forms to Jerry Ford Day, Box 175, Folder: Invitations/Visits: Anti-Abortion Groups, Gerald R.
Ford Library.
69 Jefferson “alludes to the fact that most of the country’s poor are non-white, and she has called
free abortions were a type of genocide.” She claimed, “The people who are fewer…will disappear faster.”
Charles B. Fancher Jr., “Much in common but worlds apart,” Inquirer, 23 April 1978, 1G, ACCL Records,
Box 22, Folder: ACCL Admin File: People – General – Mildred Jefferson, Gerald R. Ford Library; and
Paige, 85.
70 New York Times, 1 March 1976, article quoted in Paige, 85.
88

politicization of the abortion issue. She identified the “left, liberals, Democrats, and
feminists” as becoming a cohesive force, so she reached to the Right. 71 However,
Jefferson encountered resistance as the NRLC debt consistently hovered around $25,000
throughout her presidency, which eventually led to her resignation after three terms as
president. Jefferson then progressed beyond the private organization of the NRLC and
instead sought the Republican nomination to run against Senator Kennedy (D-Mass.) in
1982. 72 Emphasizing her upbringing as a minister’s daughter, Jefferson campaigned on a
platform based on decreased government intervention and on her relatability to both the
rich and the poor, as a Senator who would not be “known as a champion of the poor, but
to be one who has helped the poor become champions of themselves.” 73
Additionally,
Jefferson advocated a Human Life Amendment and states rights (in line with a statedetermined
abortion policy), asserting “the greater the need is, the closer that help should
be to its source of funding.” 74
Jefferson’s advisors recommended she avoid social issues
on her campaign; instead, she seemed to base her campaign on them, asserting “key
concerns [like] forced busing, the right to life, prayer in the schools, gun control are real
concerns of the real people…I want…[to] let people know exactly what I represent.” 75
Perhaps hindered by such specific and conservative social views in a more liberal district,
Ted Kennedy was re-elected in 1982. Jefferson did not get the chance to campaign
against Kennedy in the long run, as businessman Ray Shamie won the Republican
71 Paige, 86.
72 James J. Drummey, “Doctor Mildred Jefferson: An Exclusive Interview With The Distinguished
Boston Surgeon Who Has Thrown Her Hat In The Ring Against Teddy Kennedy,” The Review Of The
NEWS, 17 March 1982, 39-50, ACCL Records, Box 22: ACCL Admin File: People – General – Mildred
Jefferson, Gerald R. Ford Library.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
89

nomination. Jefferson’s tactics were quite different from those that made MCCL and
ACCL activists successful in their own campaigns. The pro-life cause still could not be
pushed on a political, single-issue level. Although the issue was politicized, it was still
not the aggressively partisan issue Jefferson believed it to be. Jefferson also emphasized
her religious background in her NRLC years and in her run for Senator, unlike MCCL
and ACCL activists that maintained a non-religious approach for the duration of their
most vital years (as MCCL still remains non-partisan and non-religious today). While
Jefferson was a vital actor who progressed far to a Senatorial candidacy, her tactics were
not as effective as others,’ and her pro-life activism on a national scale ended with her
defeat.
Carolyn Gerster was Jefferson’s successor as NRLC president, and was known as
“one of the bright Protestant lights of regional right-to-life activity” in her Arizona home
during the early statewide debates of the 1960s and 70s. 76
She was an Episcopalian. 77 In
1971, she became the co-founder and first president of the Arizona Right to Life
Committee, a position she held until 1973. With Marjory Mecklenburg, she drafted the
original NRLC bylaws in 1973 and served on the national organization’s first executive
committee as a representative of Arizona. 78
Gerster served as the NRLC vice-president
from 1973-75 and president and chairman of the board from 1977-80. She was a
practicing physician and also served to promote a broader Christian label to the NRLC.
Historian Connie Paige writes that, with Gerster, the NRLC “finally developed enough
76 Gorney, 178.
77 “There’s something for everyone at this year’s state convention,” MCCL Newsletter, October
1977, page 1, MCCL Archives.
78 Ibid.
90

sophistication to be taken seriously.” 79
Prior to her presidency and the ACCL founders’
split, former chairman of the board Mecklenburg attempted to cut NRLC ties with the
Catholic bishops, while former president Jefferson increased the efficiency, organization,
and reach of the NRLC. Gerster “got the apparatus finally oiled and ready for the most
difficult challenge, entering the political process.” 80
She had a three-year plan for the
organization to support and help elect enough pro-life Congressmen to pass an HLA by
the spring of 1983. Yet before her three-year plan was realized, or barely even started,
Dr. John “Jack” Willke took over her position in 1980. Prior to his NRLC involvement,
Willke originated Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio and wrote and published his
wildly popular Handbook on Abortion, released in 1971. Gerster’s three-year plan soon
became entangled in the New Right’s political plan, and the NRLC largely lost control of
determining an independent course of action in national politics.
Joseph “Joe” Lampe, unlike others who helped found ACCL, was a Catholic man;
although he was perhaps expected to agree with the direction of the NRLC, he did not.
Well-versed in the successful tactics of his decades of MCCL activism, Lampe became
the coordinator of states’ services with the ACCL headquarters in Minneapolis upon its
founding. Prior to ACCL, Lampe served as an NRLC coordinator and incorporated
NRLC and ACCL on the same day. He kept ACCL “in cold storage” between its 1973
incorporation and 1974 action, convinced it would serve in some future function. 81
On
the state level, Lampe served as the executive director of MCCL until he decided to focus
on ACCL full-time in 1980 when Mecklenburg left for her appointment in the Reagan
79 Paige, 88.
80 Ibid.
81 Carlton Sherwood, “Conflicts lead to Forming Of New Right-to-Life Unit,” Catholic Star
Herald, Vol. 24 No. 18, 30 August 1974, page 1, ACCL Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), ACCL
Records, Gerald R. Ford Library.
91

administration. 82 Lampe took over for Mecklenburg as ACCL executive director in 1980.
He was a long-time friend of Mecklenburg as a co-founder of both MCCL and ACCL.
Wherever Mecklenburg tended to go, so also did Lampe. He was regarded as “one of the
most knowledgeable pro-life leaders in the U.S.” and was known as “Marj’s right-hand
man” by fellow MCCL founders. 83
ACCL leaders identified him as an activist who was
particularly interested in tracing the history and learned lessons of the pro-life movement,
from its earliest days to the present. One ACCL leader said Lampe “has a keen insight on
the current pro-life picture as well as the history.” 84
Indeed, Joseph Lampe kept track of
documents ranging from internal memos, to MCCL and NRLC newsletters, and from
newspaper articles to MCCL, NRLC, and ACCL meeting minutes. As such, he has
played a vital role in the continuing analysis and history of the early anti-abortion/pro-life
movement; Lampe donated the ACCL records upon which this thesis relies immensely.
In 1983, historian Connie Paige believed the golden age of the right-to-lifers was
fading. She predicted, “[t]he bleak outlook leaves the right-to-lifers nowhere to run to
except back where they started.” 85
However bleak Paige’s predictions, the movement in
fact would go forward to some degree using tactics and actors with whom the whole
contemporary movement started. NRLC did not achieve its HLA, and ACCL did not
obtain all of its goals, either. However, Marjory Mecklenburg was promoted to the
highest and most inside position of any contemporary pro-life activist by the 1980s. The
82 “Leadership Positions Filled as MCCL Moves Forward,” MCCL Newsletter, May-June 1975,
page 1, MCCL Archives.
83 Letter from Jan Wilkins to “Keith,” undated [assumed 1983], ACCL Records, Box 14, Folder:
ACCL – Admin File: General correspondence: 1983 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library; and Mary and Robert
Joyce interview.
84 Letter from Jan Wilkins to “Keith,” Gerald R. Ford Library.
85 Paige, 239.
92

movement continued most prominently through actors promoting tactics and rhetoric that
had proved successful for over fifteen years.
The Common Thread: Marjory Mecklenburg as the Last, and Most
Distinguished, Activist Standing
A former home economics teacher and mother of four, Marjory Mecklenburg had
moved to set up support services for pregnant teenagers in Minnesota, and progressed to
head the same project on a national level under Reagan, all by 1981. 86 According to
historian Michele McKeegan, her “major job qualification was her superb pro-life
résumé.” 87
Far before the politicization and national scale of the abortion issue,
Mecklenburg began her anti-abortion work as a founding member of MCCL in 1968.
According to fellow founders Robert and Mary Joyce, Mecklenburg was hesitant at first,
and unsure about related issues to abortion like birth control and family planning. Yet
convinced those issues would be dealt with later in the group’s journey, Mecklenburg
agreed to join and helped found the group. 88 As previously mentioned, she was not a
typical national anti-abortion activist at the time, at least not what newspapers often
identified as such. She was not a Catholic, but a Methodist, and was a liberal antiabortion
woman who also supported family planning and birth control. Her husband,
Fred, was an obstetrician-gynecologist, who was considered a family planning expert,
86 Ginsburg, 270.
87 Michele McKeegan, Abortion Politics: Mutiny in the Ranks of the Right (New York, Free Press,
1992), 67.
88 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
93

and was also a member of Planned Parenthood. 89
While many would suspect her
credentials (especially combined with her husband’s) would cause many to deem her a
pro-choice activist, Mecklenburg was one of the most progressive actors of the early
contemporary pro-life movement; she wanted to involve alternatives to abortion in her
approach, rather than take an absolutist stance. That more absolute stance was one she
countered most aggressively on the national level as a member, chairman of the board,
and as brief president of NRLC. Mecklenburg was more liberal than the NRLC bishops
wished. For instance, in wanting to help underage pregnant women however she could,
Mecklenburg was a strong advocate of birth control. Distributing birth control to
teenagers was a position that the Catholic-controlled NRLC leadership would never
accept. 90 Mecklenburg was elected chairman of board of directors of NRLC in May of
1973, and accepted its ideals early in the national movement “to promote respect for the
worth and dignity of all human life,” according to Mecklenburg herself, especially by
passing a Human Life Amendment to prohibit abortion and euthanasia. 91 At the time,
five of the top six officers and board members of the NRLC were Protestant women, but
as previously mentioned, the appointment of non-Catholics to NRLC posts did not mean
89 Marjory Mecklenburg, “Developing Alternatives to Abortion, testimony given 14 march 1972 to
Governor’s Commission on Abortion – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL
Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
90 Paige, 85.
91 National Right to Life News, September 1973, Ford Vice Presidential Papers, Deputy Assistant
for Scheduling and Appointments Files: 1973-74, Warren S. Rustand, Executive Protective Service
Clearance Forms to Jerry Ford Day, Box 175, Folder: Invitations/Visits: Anti-Abortion Groups, Gerald R.
Ford Library; and Marjory Mecklenburg, quoted in “City woman to head National Right to Life,”
Minneapolis Tribune, 3B, 12 June 1973, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M.
Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
94

it was not controlled by Catholic clergy and doctrine. 92
As early as 1974, The Free Lance
Star identified the conflict between non-Catholic leaders and Catholic clergy, and
deemed the “Anti-abortion crusade crumbling.” 93 The Star described the battle between
the Protestant leaders of the NRLC and the clergy-controlled National Committee for a
Human Life Amendment throughout the article. Judy Fink’s and Marjory Mecklenburg’s
comments against the clergy’s overbearing involvement were included, deeming the
battle proof that “Catholics are trying to control the pro-life movement.” 94
Mecklenburg
initially reached out to Carolyn Gerster of Phoenix, Arizona, who later became the
president of the NRLC. Mecklenburg phoned Gerster in Arizona days after Roe, asking
for her help on the national level. Mecklenburg asserted the NRLC “was too Catholic, it
placed multistate meetings on Catholic campuses, [and] its director was a priest.” 95
Gerster recalled that Mecklenburg found the solution simple: “[t]his is obvious, now that
the court decision has occurred – we need a national nonsectarian organization.” 96
Mecklenburg had a broader scope than the NRLC and many pro-life sympathizers cared
to take on; Mecklenburg was concerned with human life more broadly. Yet in her wish
to tackle issues like capital punishment, birth control, and adoption, combined with her
non-religious and non-partisan approach, she maintained herself as one of the less
controversial and more wide-reaching pro-life advocates of the contemporary debate.
92 As of June 10, 1973, these women were: Marjory Mecklenburg, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Dr.
Carolyn Gerster, Judith Fink, and Gloria Klein (of Michigan Citizens Concerned for Life). Marj
Mecklenburg Elected Board Chairman, NRLC Reorganizes to Push Amendment, ACCL Records, Box 35,
Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
93 “Anti-abortion crusade crumbling,” The Free-Lance Star, 24 June 1974, page 4,
.
94 Ibid.
95 Gerster, quoted in Gorney, 178.
96 Ibid.
95

As previously explored, Mecklenburg, other MCCL founders, and other non-
Catholics turned away from the NRLC, certain the organization was overly controlled by
Catholic bishops and Catholic agenda, to found their own national group (ACCL) to
champion the pro-life agenda on a broader and often more liberal level. In this way,
Mecklenburg represented a common thread and common characteristics throughout this
work’s pro-life story. She founded, stayed with, and led the movements traced
throughout this thesis and represents an alternative to the stereotypically Catholic,
Republican, male, and largely religious and conservative anti-abortion movement that
history and the public has tended to construct during its early years and ever since.
Beyond her status as an exemplar of this alternative anti-abortion/pro-life trend and
movement, she progressed further as an activist than any other figure explored here.
Mecklenburg was first recruited to join the Ford-Dole Campaign Committee in 1976,
while serving as the president of ACCL. She travelled to Washington as a volunteer
worker to help with the campaign; in keeping with her ever-broad approach to abortion
and family planning issues, she asserted “[m]y activity…is not to be construed narrowly
or exclusively as dealing with abortion.” 97 Pro-life activists had reached a national stage
to propel their message; Mecklenburg, according to the National Catholic Register, in
fact “express[ed] confidence…her input reache[d] the President in some form.” 98
Already a prominent player on the national stage, Mecklenburg soon obtained a
government appointment, which made her an insider, rather than a struggling lobbyist
and volunteer worker constantly appealing for pro-life legislation. As the decade turned,
97 Patrick Riley, “Pro-Life Leader Marjory Mecklenburg Joins Ford-Dole Campaign Committee,”
National Catholic Register, 10 October 1976, ACCL Records, Box 45, Folder: ACCL Political File: 76
Pres. Campaign – Ford (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
98 Ibid.
96

Mecklenburg’s promotion allowed her to instigate her own actions on the government
level, rather than appeal to others to push necessary legislation. This proved a huge
immediate victory for the pro-life movement; it had now progressed farther than it had in
the two decades before.
When Reagan took office, the debates surrounding abortion and family planning
were as political and controversial as ever. Right-wing pro-life activists, especially the
Catholic Church and other religious interests, regarded both issues as “expressions of the
same anti-life, anti-family, anti-God mentality” they saw seeping into the American
culture of the 1980s. 99
Title X, passed by Congress in 1970 to provide birth control to
poor women, was deemed ineffective by the left and anti-life by the right and therefore
faced especially intense scrutiny under Reagan. Painting the issue as one that could
decrease government spending and increase the program’s efficiency and organization,
Reagan’s administration decided power over these programs should be given to
individual states. Yet by the summer of 1981, it was clear Congress would not support
this proposal. 100
Instead, the Senate passed the Adolescent Family Life Act, which would
support and develop programs to promote chastity among minors and provide social
services and education to expecting adolescents. 101
At the time, the Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS) counted many pro-life actors among its ranks.
Richard Schweiker served as Health Secretary and had proposed and sponsored a Human
Life Amendment when he served on the U.S. Senate. After his appointment in 1981,
Schweiker soon cut the family planning program budget from $162 million to $100
99 New York Times, 21 January 1980, A18, Quoted in McKeegan, 64.
100 McKeegan, 66.
101 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Population Affairs, “Adolescent
Family Life,” updated 2011, accessed 1 March 2012, .
97

million; Schweiker’s stance and agenda on family planning quickly became clear to
all. 102
Schweiker’s plan also involved appointing pro-life activists to DHHS posts.
Given this need, few activists seemed better-suited to a position than Marjory
Mecklenburg, who was named and sworn in as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Population Affairs at the DHHS and director of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy
Programs (the Title X family planning program, OAPP) on March 2, 1981. 103
Mecklenburg would lead government action in areas concerning family planning, teen
pregnancy, abortion, and birth control. She was presented, in her words, “a chance to
effect real social change.” 104 Mecklenburg had recently served on the federal level on the
Population Advisory Board of the Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress and
on the boards of the National Committee for Adoption and Human Options, Inc., and
resigned those positions with her directorship of OAPP. 105 ACCLers saw this
appointment as a huge turning point and “a validation of the approach ACCL has taken
toward the abortion issue during the past six years.” 106
Joseph Lampe further proclaimed,
“the tide has turned, Reagan administration is publicly committed to Human Life
Amendment and pro-life legislative program of alternatives to abortion. The time for
102 Public Affairs Action Letter, 23 November 1981, quoted in McKeegan, 66. Funding was
restored somewhat, to $125 million in 1982
103 Warren M. Hern, “The Antiabortion Vigilantes,” New York Times Op-Ed Page, 21 December
1984, ; and Letter from Joseph Lampe to ACCL Board of
Directors, 2 March 1981, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
104 Jacqui Banaszynski, “Mecklenburg: Grass-roots work vital to abortion foes,” Minneapolis Star
& Tribune, 26 May 1983, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford
Library; and Sue Mullin, “The lady behind the ‘squeal rule,’” The Washington Times, 1B, 28 December
1982, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
105 “Minneapolis Woman Appointed To Head Office Of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs,” 2
March 1981, ACCL Press Release, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald
R. Ford Library.
106 Letter from Joseph Lampe to ACCL Board of Directors, 2 March 1981, ACCL Records, Box
35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
98

action is now.” 107
While Mecklenburg and ACCLers alike celebrated the appointment,
she “had her work cut out for her,” according to McKeegan. 108
Mecklenburg soon faced attacks from more conservative pro-life activists for her
support of birth control for teenagers, and also faced a Title X program staff that was “out
of control.” 109
The staff comprised a majority of career health professionals, who insisted
all patients be fully briefed on the abortion option in counseling; McKeegan argues
Mecklenburg could not change the program for her cause without shifting control away
from these “public health careerists.” 110 Externally and in line with the fears of the New
Right, Mecklenburg identified a decline in moral values that would prove difficult for the
rising generation of teenagers. In a 1983 Minneapolis Star Tribune article, Mecklenburg
explained she worried because “[t]he world has changed so quickly…Teen-agers are
bombarded with messages about…sex without responsibility. Parents don’t talk to their
children about sex, so young people are left without the information they need to make
decisions. It is our generation that has created the environment these teenagers live in.
So our generation has to help somehow in giving them the tools to cope.” 111 In tune with
the New Right sentiment of declining values and increased promiscuity, Mecklenburg
publicly called for and implemented government action responding to this moral fear and
controversial issues of abortion and birth control. As had been the case for Mecklenburg
in the past, she would take decisive and pioneering action, but not without resistance.
107 Telegram from Joseph A. Lampe to Mrs. Emily Fahey, 9 March 1981, ACCL Records, Box 29,
Folder: Telephone Scripts, Gerald R. Ford Library.
108 McKeegan, 67.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Jacqui Banaszynski, “Mecklenburg: Grass-roots work vital to abortion foes,” Minneapolis Star
& Tribune, 26 May 1983, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
99

Almost immediately after her appointment, Congress defeated a proposal to give
states the power to run the program. Always an advocate of state action, Mecklenburg
responded to the Congressional defeat by shifting the OAPP’s programs and over $175
million in funding to, in effect, give the states power. She gave one Title X grant per
state health department. Mecklenburg constantly pushed to place the abortion debate
back on a state level throughout her pro-life activist career. She was most familiar with
that type of debate, as the state was where her activism began; even in her work in NRLC
and ACCL, she always wanted open affiliation and dialogue between the state and
national groups. Mecklenburg once again brought the abortion debate back to the states
when serving in her government appointment. Perhaps she was motivated by the
possibility some states would grant money to conservative family planning organizations
and remove funds from more liberal ones (which would not happen if the grants were
made on a national level). Dividing grants among the states, rather than distributing them
at a national level, gave the pro-life movement hope that at least some victories could be
won. 112 Additionally, for “reasons of efficiency,” Mecklenburg began reassigning
members of the DHHS Washington office who were pro-choice. 113 Some had directly
countered her in the past. Bill White, for example, a Title X supervisor, had recently
been involved in a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood on accusations of
mismanagement. Pro-life activists filed over 500 complaints against the organization in
112 This plan obtained the results Marjory and pro-life activists hoped for; the state of Utah
transferred $440,000 from Planned Parenthood to its state health department. The state health department
required parental permission for minors to obtain birth control; Planned Parenthood did not. Without
needing to draft or pass any national legislation, Marjory had successfully (and secondarily) imposed
greater restrictions on family planning, a result that certainly pleased pro-life activists.
113 McKeegan, 67.
100

Minnesota. Bill White praised Planned Parenthood for its compliance with DHHS
standards and went public with the results; he eventually cleared the organization of all
complaints. Mecklenburg reassigned White in January of 1982. 114 Essentially,
Mecklenburg and Schweiker soon reorganized the majority of the Title X program
administration. The pair moved the staff to Mecklenburg’s office in Washington, D.C.,
which would give the program’s leadership greater control and make the program more
susceptible to political sway. Pro-choice activists reacted to this reorganization, which
was largely motivated by pro-life interests, and attacked Mecklenburg herself. Scott
Swirling, the executive director of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Association asserted, “[t]he real story was that the woman who headed Minnesota
Citizens Concerned for Life [who] was now in charge of the nation’s family planning
program.” 115
In the wake of the defeat of the Human Life Amendment, pro-life activists
focused on increased controls on abortion and family planning services wherever they
could obtain victories. In line with this sentiment, Mecklenburg used her small amount
of power over a fraction of Title X funds to defund three “left-leaning” organizations,
among them Planned Parenthood and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). 116
The office
cited Reagan’s view that the government should not provide direct aid; therefore,
Mecklenburg would have to defund many of the organizations her office supported. 117
114 Ibid., 68.
115 Scott R. Swirling, executive director, National Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Association, personal interview with Michele McKeegan, 20 June 1989, quoted in McKeegan, 69.
116 Conservative Digest (April 1982): 6, quoted in McKeegan, 69.
117 Early in Reagan’s presidency, he met with antiabortion activists on multiple occasions. At one
meeting, Reagan and Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman were given a paper
prepared by antiabortion groups that laid out how $3.9 billion a year could be saved by “scrapping most of
the government’s family planning, birth control, sex education, teenage counseling and world population
control programs,” Bill Peterson, “Foes of abortion taking over key federal positions, Washington Post, 8
101

The last straw came when Mecklenburg and Schweiker mandated all federally funded
clinics require parental notification of teenage birth control distribution, nicknamed the
“squeal rule” by its opponents. Mecklenburg, historically one to argue using medical
terms, rather than religious ones, cited contraception’s dangers to teenage health when
questioned on the new restriction. 118 This ruling opened the floodgates to DHHS
opposition; over 100,000 letters poured into her office, and 8 out of every 10 letters
opposed the new regulation. 119 Additionally, the American Academy of Pediatrics and
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists countered Mecklenburg’s claim
that the rule prevented possible contraceptive harm. Soon, a federal judge denounced the
rule, asserting Schweiker had overstepped the bounds of his position. The Adolescent
Family Life Act as a whole was brought to the Supreme Court in 1988, but upheld by a 5-
4 majority, in large part because of three new Reagan appointees.
After a whirlwind of court appeals and newspaper attacks, Mecklenburg’s
problems began to affect the work she faced in her office. According to DHHS staff
members, “Marjory used to come into your office and talk to you…At the end, not only
did she not come into your office, you couldn’t get in to see her.” 120 In time, DHHS
staffers suspected Mecklenburg wanted to dismantle the entire program, perhaps
exhausted and discouraged by the type and also lack of accomplishment the program
faced in the early 1980s. Another staff member reported, “[t]here was no data collection,
no information or guidelines to agencies. They wanted to weaken family planning until it
March 1982, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library; and
Jim Castelli, “A New Assault on The Problem of Teen Pregnancy,” Our Sunday Visitor, 31 January 1982,
ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
118 McKeegan, 71.
119 Public Affairs Action Letter, 12 February 1982, 5, quoted in McKeegan, 71.
120 Interviews with four DHHS staff members with Michele McKeegan, summer 1989, quoted in
McKeegan, 73.
102

was ineffective so they could say, ‘It’s not working; let’s defund it.’” 121 Eventually,
Mecklenburg increasingly travelled around the country, often spending only a few hours
in the office at a time. All this proved enough for her superiors to recommend her
resignation in 1985. Staff members leaked Mecklenburg’s travel vouchers and telephone
logs from 1983 and 1984 to the press, amounting to $13,000 in taxpayer money. The
inspector general deemed these trips as “poor judgment,” and requested Mecklenburg
step down. 122 Her letter of resignation regarded the claims against her as “unfounded and
unfair…[,] nothing more than philosophical differences with this
administration…[brought up] by those in the bureaucracy who are too inflexible to adapt
to pursuing the goals of this administration.” 123 Regardless of the specific accusations
made against her, Mecklenburg admitted and believed she could no longer be effective in
the job she was asked to complete. 124
Perhaps exhausted by years of activism with little change that chipped away at the
Roe decision, or discouraged by her inability to champion the pro-life cause she once
helped successfully found and lead with others, Mecklenburg’s final months in office
were certainly not her strongest ones. Combining trips for pleasure with a personal
disillusionment that grew as years passed, her resignation likely represented the end of
the ascension of pro-life leaders in the contemporary movement. While the ACCL
remained hopeful for their founder in her new post, a sense of worry lay even in her
initial 1981 moments in office; a 1982 Washington Times article described, “Advancing
121 Interviews with four DHHS staff members with Michele McKeegan, summer 1989, quoted in
McKeegan, 74.
122 Washington Post, 27 February 1985, A4, quoted in McKeegan, 75.
123 Ibid.
124 “Mecklenburg of HHS quits after trip probe,” Minneapolis Star and Tribune, 15A, 27 February
1985, ACCL Records, Box 24, Folder: ACCL Admin File: People – General: M. Mecklenburg, Gerald R.
Ford Library.
103

on the national scene cautiously, meekly, virtually unnoticed, the 48-year-old mother of
four sits atop an explosive keg of federal family policy.” 125
As one of the founders of the
anti-abortion/pro-life movement itself, she was thought as one who could champion that
cause from the inside when she was first appointed through to the end of the pro-life
struggle. 126 Yet given the ever-changing rhetoric and tactics the abortion debate required
and her lack of government administrative experience, Mecklenburg could not effectively
push certain programs and retain her insider position.
Additionally, the contemporary pro-life movement saw fewer major victories
since the more conservative era of the 1980s. Mecklenburg’s resignation signaled an
increasing decline within the movement, and clearly among the actors themselves, as
strongly demonstrated by Mecklenburg’s increasing disillusionment in her government
post. While she first convinced the public, “[e]xperience has taught me the complexity
and difficulty of these issues, but working together with the Administration, Congress,
social service agencies and the volunteer sector – including young people and their
families – I am confident we can make progress,” she eventually could not achieve all she
wished to in her time as Director of OAPP. 127
Despite her unheroic resignation, she did
represent the rise and fall of an overall enthusiastic contemporary pro-life movement.
This movement, and Mecklenburg herself, was traced from early and small grassroots
beginnings in a neighbor’s living room to organized and major statewide efforts that
survived well beyond the Roe decision. The movement maintained enthusiasm,
125 Sue Mullin, “The lady behind the ‘squeal rule,’” The Washington Times, 1B, 28 December
1982, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
126 Paige, 223.
127 “Minneapolis Woman Appointed To Head Office Of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs,” 2
March 1981, ACCL Press Release, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald
R. Ford Library.
104

inclusion, and success through broad based tactics and medical and non-religious rhetoric
in ACCL, and eventually led to the appointment of a pro-life activist turned government
insider. Mecklenburg had little or no administrative and government experience when
she was appointed to her DHHS post. She continued her aggressive pro-life tactics and
skills that had developed over the previous decades; Mecklenburg perhaps did not know
any other way to run an organization. She never pressed a religious doctrine or agenda,
as she had asserted back in 1974, “I don’t feel it’s a religious issue.” 128 By pushing back
on the Catholic Church and religious reasons for the abortion cause, she did not alienate
herself or become too religiously outspoken to be considered for a government post. Yet
perhaps largely due to her inexperience in government, she could not effectively
communicate and also stay within the bounds of her position in the 1980s. Mecklenburg
was accustomed to setting a boundless agenda; this is certainly a strength of grassroots
organizations. However, she found that government could not work as private grassroots
organizations did.
The tactics MCCL drafted, spread to other states, and continued in ACCL were
successful on the state and national level in the public abortion debate, but not in
government. As much as the abortion debate dominated political conversation, there was
very little to show for it by the mid-80s; the increasing case of abortion as campaign issue
went hand in hand with an increasing inability to achieve legislative victories.
Mecklenburg shows one small example of this general trend. The tactics Mecklenburg
employed in her post were simply ill-suited and ineffective in addressing the new
128 David Kuhn, “Antiabortion lobby seeks new image,” Minneapolis Tribune, 5B, 22 February
1974, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford
Library. Additionally, no compelling evidence exists that Mecklenburg’s denial of abortion as a religious
issue ever changed significantly.
105

abortion debate she encountered as a government insider. McKeegan characterizes this
debate as a “clash between pro-choice health professionals and anti-abortion enthusiasts
whose passionate convictions undermined their ability to make orderly change.” 129
Unable to address and participate in this new kind of debate, Mecklenburg was forced to
step down, and the pro-life movement lost valuable government insiders, crucial assets
and advocates of the cause as the debate faced the latter part of the decade. Yet despite
this unhappy end to Mecklenburg’s pro-life progression, her résumé remained a “Who’s
Who of anti-abortion groups.” 130
She was the common thread of everything this thesis
has addressed; even in 1982, The Washington Times proclaimed, “Marjory Mecklenburg,
the woman, is virtually inseparable from Marjory Mecklenburg’s cause.” 131 She was an
example of the pro-life drive that steered away from inflexible national causes and
religious motives and doctrines, and she also sketched the limits of that strategy. The
limitations of her achievement clearly showed how far MCCL and ACCL strategies could
progress to be successful. Mecklenburg and the movement she represented showed a
pro-life story concerned with moral and medical language, employed through grassroots
and national coordinated action, toward a broad and flexible goal of protecting all human
life. Yet in the end, her pro-life political strategy lost out. Today’s pro-life movement is
religious in its public presentation and largely propelled through religious or affiliated
institutions and organizations. While the MCCL and ACCL non-religious approach
proved successful prior to the 1980s, the rise of religious conservatism in public debate
and the increasing affiliation of the pro-life stance with that religious conservatism left
129 McKeegan, 75.
130 Sue Mullin, “The lady behind the ‘squeal rule,’” The Washington Times, 1B, 28 December
1982, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford Library.
131 Ibid.
106

little or no place for the tactics Mecklenburg and her allies had championed throughout
the previous decades.
107

Conclusion
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun returned again to his home state of
Minnesota two years after the Roe decision was announced. Far from the welcome he
received at the Mayo Clinic half a decade before, many Minnesotans soon rebelled
against the Supreme Court justice the state once helped foster. On August 2, 1975,
MCCL staged a demonstration entitled “Liberty and Justice for All” at the Town and
Country Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. The focus of the demonstration was Blackmun and
the Roe decision he authored as he returned to Minnesota for his 50 th reunion of the
Mechanic Arts class of 1925. Frustrated by two years of protesting from afar, MCCL
decided to take its message, with its argumentative language based in the Declaration of
Independence, to the Justice himself. Protesters compared the decision to the 1858 Dred
Scott case, in which a slave was ruled a non-citizen; “similarly,” one demonstrator
declared, “Blackmun and his colleagues have defined the pre-born child as a nonperson.”
1
Carrying signs asking for “Life, Liberty and ‘Justice’ for All,” and proclaiming
“Justice Blackmun is a Fetal Veteran,” entire MCCL families marched and protested
along the entrance and front driveway of the country club. 2 The event was aired on local
television networks, and reached a significant Minnesota audience. The same ethics of
community and active citizenry Minnesota fostered in Blackmun as a child were directed
against him and his decision just two years after he made it. This instance highlighted the
sharp divisions the abortion debate had spurred within Minnesota and the nation more
1 “Justice Blackmun the Focus of St. Paul Pro-Life Rally,” MCCL Newsletter, September 1975,
page 6, MCCL Archives.
2 Ibid.
108

oadly. At the same time, Minnesota represented a unique and important battleground
for the evolution, development, and continuation of the state- and nation-wide abortion
debate.
While Carolyn Gerster, the pro-life activist from Arizona, recalled her state as
“very slow awakening” in joining the abortion debate, the Minnesota pre-Roe MCCL
story begs the opposite conclusion. 3
In this way, MCCL provides a lens to observe the
successes of the pre-Roe anti-abortion movement, when the debate was held on a state
level and employed non-religious, bi-partisan, moral, and medical language, and involved
and recruited activists on a local and community grassroots level. MCCL effectively
entered the debate its MCLTP opposition constructed to hold off what many other states
could not: the liberalization of nineteenth century anti-abortion laws.
While MCCL leaders started to develop a more unified contemporary national
organization in the late 1960s and early 1970s in light of the less organized and Catholicdominated
National Right to Life Committee, the story of MCCL’s purely state-focused
efforts in hindsight came to an almost predictable close with the biggest blow of the
movement’s existence, one that “disgusted…disappointed…and surprised,” 4 but certainly
did not halt, its sympathizers. Roe v. Wade did not discourage many MCCLers nor its
founders, but instead bound the group more closely with pro-life groups in other states.
Despite its continuation, the group could not effectively achieve everything the general
pro-life movement wished on its own, as the primary movement shifted from a state to a
national stage; the Supreme Court decision both nationalized and politicized the abortion
debate. Instead, state groups fought some of the decision’s restrictions in their own
3 Gerster, quoted in Gorney, 178.
4 Abernathy Interview Transcript, Boxed 9 April 1993, Box 2, Folder 300, Kristin Luker Papers.
109

legislatures, and celebrated occasional victories there. MCCL still continues its mission
today in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with efforts that extend across the state in its role as the
voice of the Minnesota pro-life stance.
MCCL founders and leaders followed the abortion debate to the national scale
under the National Right to Life Committee. Yet MCCL activists soon grew frustrated
with the Catholic-controlled NRLC, and split to found its own ACCL. Armed with half a
decade of pro-life activist experience, rooted in successful tactics like employing nonreligious
and bi-partisan rhetoric to appeal to a broad base of support, Mecklenburg,
Hartle, Lampe, and others continued their pro-life charge. However, the split between
the national groups “reflected ideological tensions, even ideological inconsistencies,
within the ranks of antiabortion activists,” according to Critchlow. 5
Moving forward,
activists found success for the movement increasingly difficult to obtain, as the national
debate became politicized, often religious, and at times, seemingly too large and driven
by a ruling too decisive to overturn.
Indeed, Roe was a defeat that discouraged some and mobilized others. While
Mecklenburg continued to progress in her pro-life work all the way to a Reagan
appointment, many first generation actors were gradually more discouraged by the
absence of decisive success in countering the Roe decision. William C. Hunt, a pre-
MCCL founder involved in 1967 and an early actor and board member of ACCL,
asserted in a 1981 open letter to ACCL membership that he was “bone-weary of the
whole abortion issue…Over the years I have been discouraged – discouraged by the 1973
decision of the Supreme Court which removed legal protection from the unborn;
discouraged by my own powerlessness to halt the carnage (1.5 million abortions per year
5 Critchlow, 140.
110

amount to three every minute in this country); discouraged by the bickering and lack of
direction in the pro-life movement itself.” 6
While he later maintained “I am hopeful
because ACCL has a long-range vision…unique in the pro-life movement,” many actors
were not as optimistic. 7
Even Mecklenburg became overwhelmed. Her eventual
resignation from the Reagan administration showed her increasing frustration and
discouragement, not dissimilar to Hunt’s sentiments, as the pro-life movement progressed
forward, but its achievements often did not.
While the Minnesota story explored in this thesis does not end with a necessarily
satisfying nor celebratory outlook for the pro-life movement in the mid-1980s, the most
valuable points made rather rest in the importance of the Minnesota story of innovative
tactics in tune with a constantly-shifting abortion debate. Although this debate eventually
entered a large, national scale, the anti-abortion movement’s origins were largely
grounded in the activism of Marjory Mecklenburg, the majority of ACCL founders, and
MCCL itself - all products of the Minnesotan community and issue-based ethic. ACCL
and Mecklenburg more specifically constantly pushed back on a movement they saw as
limited in obtaining support and tangible achievements and characterized as “politically
conservative, religiously fundamentalist and sexually puritan.” 8
While MCCL and
ACCL offer this narrative an institutional connection throughout, Marjory Mecklenburg
and Minnesotans like her offer a personal common thread that spans the development of
the early contemporary anti-abortion/pro-life movement. Mecklenburg specifically was
6 William C. Hunt, American Citizens Concerned for Life 1981-1982 Campaign for Human Life
Objectives, December 1981, ACCL Records, Box 29, Folder: ACCL Admin File: Fundraising, Gerald R.
Ford Library.
7 Ibid.
8 Susan Fogg, “Abortion opponents part ways,” Newark Star Ledger, 29 September 1974, ACCL
Records, Box 7, Folder: NRLC – 1974 (5), Gerald R. Ford Library.
111

ecognized nationwide as “one of the most open, thoughtful and insightful antiabortion
advocates in the country.” 9
All the actors explored in this work were prominent thought
leaders by local and national pro-life activists alike. Minnesotans like Joseph Lampe, the
Mecklenburgs, the Joyces, the Hartles, and many others largely defied Catholic
stereotypes. All attained national positions and established publications toward the cause
of the pro-life movement throughout the pre- and post-Roe era. Minnesota, therefore,
was a vital breeding ground for the movement, its institutions, and its people. The state’s
unique culture nurtured an active citizenry with a community ethic, which proved wholly
appropriate and fitting for an effective and successful pro-life cause.
The trajectory of pre- and post-Roe episodes therefore does not tell a segmented
story, but rather a continuous one. The headline of a 1983 Minnesota Star & Tribune
article detailing Mecklenburg’s position in the Reagan administration proclaimed “Grassroots
work vital to abortion foes;” the article attributed her success to her experience
gained in grassroots Minnesota. 10
The institutional structures out of Minnesota, the
political arguments traced, and the individual people who acted in the decades before and
after the decision clearly show this. Minnesota’s pro-life history challenges the
conception of pre- and post-1973 terms often told in the abortion historiography. It
demonstrates the story of the contemporary pro-life movement as one that was
simultaneously Catholic and Protestant, religious and non-religious, medical and moral,
grassroots and national. This historical and political debate must be seen in binaries and
9 “Mecklenburg good choice,” The Forum – Fargo-Moorhead, 18 March 1981, ACCL Records,
Box 35, Folder: ACCL Admin File: M. Mecklenburg 1973-76 (1), Gerald R. Ford Library.
10 Jacqui Banaszynski, “Mecklenburg: Grass-roots work vital to abortion foes,” Minneapolis Star
& Tribune, 26 May 1983, ACCL Records, Box 35, Folder: M. Mecklenburg Fed Positions, Gerald R. Ford
Library.
112

terms more, as Supreme Court Justice Powell said, “broadly defined,” and the Minnesota
story established, displayed, and proved this. 11
Blackmun, 94.
11 Former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, quoted in Linda Greenhouse, Becoming Justice
113

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