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

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.
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