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

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