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

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.
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