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

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
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