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

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