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

movement continued most prominently through actors promoting tactics and rhetoric that
had proved successful for over fifteen years.
The Common Thread: Marjory Mecklenburg as the Last, and Most
Distinguished, Activist Standing
A former home economics teacher and mother of four, Marjory Mecklenburg had
moved to set up support services for pregnant teenagers in Minnesota, and progressed to
head the same project on a national level under Reagan, all by 1981. 86 According to
historian Michele McKeegan, her “major job qualification was her superb pro-life
résumé.” 87
Far before the politicization and national scale of the abortion issue,
Mecklenburg began her anti-abortion work as a founding member of MCCL in 1968.
According to fellow founders Robert and Mary Joyce, Mecklenburg was hesitant at first,
and unsure about related issues to abortion like birth control and family planning. Yet
convinced those issues would be dealt with later in the group’s journey, Mecklenburg
agreed to join and helped found the group. 88 As previously mentioned, she was not a
typical national anti-abortion activist at the time, at least not what newspapers often
identified as such. She was not a Catholic, but a Methodist, and was a liberal antiabortion
woman who also supported family planning and birth control. Her husband,
Fred, was an obstetrician-gynecologist, who was considered a family planning expert,
86 Ginsburg, 270.
87 Michele McKeegan, Abortion Politics: Mutiny in the Ranks of the Right (New York, Free Press,
1992), 67.
88 Mary and Robert Joyce interview.
93