As recently as 1984, abortion was not a deeply partisan issue. “The difference in support for the pro-choice position was a mere six percentage points,” Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, told me by email. “40 percent of Democratic identifiers were pro-life, while 39 percent were pro-choice. Among Republican identifiers, 33 percent were pro-choice, 45 percent were pro-life and 22 percent were in the middle.” …
Fifty years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in St. Louis approved what by the standards of 1971 was a decisively liberal resolution on abortion: “Be it further resolved, that we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
This year, at a June meeting in Nashville, the convention demonstrated just how much has changed on the religious right when it comes to abortion. Members endorsed a resolution declaring, “We affirm that the murder of preborn children is a crime against humanity that must be punished equally under the law.” CONTINUED
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times
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