How Americans Thought About Abortion in the Run-Up to Roe

Susan Matthews: “A groundbreaking 1965 photo spread in Life magazine changed the way people understood human reproduction. Swedish photojournalist Lennart Nilsson spent years photographing fetuses, mainly from miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and abortions. Most notably, he was able to capture a photo of a fetus still inside the womb by inserting an endoscopic camera into a woman’s uterus. The result was highly detailed, technical yet artistic photos that helped demystify the stages of fetal development. Most people had never seen anything like Nilsson’s photographs—ultrasound technology was relatively new (and not yet widely available) in the 1960s and 1970s. That issue of Life was the fastest-selling in the publication’s history. I hadn’t realized how mysterious pregnancy had been all the way up until the 1960s considering that these photos were the first opportunity many people had to look at a fetus.”

SM: “New York’s 1970 change to its abortion law was a turning point in the national debate over abortion rights. The state senate’s debate over it was contentious, with the majority leader weeping at the bill’s passage. The bill removed most restrictions to abortion—another senator told his colleagues, ‘Your hands will reach into the womb with the doctor and you are going to kill, KILL, when you pass this law.’ Signed into law by Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the change was made after legislators, including Constance Cook, a Republican, insisted that they do something to address the harms of illegal abortions. Crucially, New York’s law did not have a residency requirement to obtain an abortion, opening the door to out-of-state patients.”

SM: “Before Roe v. Wade established a national right to abortion, New York’s 1970 law made the state a haven for women seeking abortions. From 1970 to 1972, more than 400,000 abortions were performed in New York, with the vast majority of patients coming from out of state. Thanks to this influx, the state law attracted the ire of the early pro-life movement, primarily led by the Catholic Church.”

SM: “Jack and Barbara Willke got their start giving lectures on sex education from a Christian perspective. Then, in the early 1970s, they shifted their focus to abortion, pioneering much of the anti-abortion movement’s most common and persuasive rhetoric that is still in use today. At the time Cynthia Gorney profiled Jack Willke in this Washington Post piece, he had been president of National Right to Life for almost a decade.”

SM: “The Willkes’ influence is keenly felt in Cincinnati, where they raised their six children, founded the country’s first Right to Life chapter, and wrote the Handbook on Abortion, the foundational anti-abortion text. As Horn writes, ‘They, quite literally, wrote the how-to manual for overturning Roe.’ Before doing this project, most of my understanding of the pro-life side came from the movement’s latter efforts, protesting outside of abortion clinics—but the Willke approach has been just as influential.”

SM: “In 2012, Todd Akin, then a Republican congressman from Missouri, said in a TV interview that he opposes abortion even in cases of rape in part because victims of ‘legitimate rape’ rarely become pregnant. Akin drew widespread condemnation for his comments. This talking point can be traced back to the ideas of Jack Willke, who has asserted for years that the trauma of sexual assault ‘can radically upset [a woman’s] possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.’ When the L.A. Times asked him about Akin’s comments, Willke defended the congressman, saying that Akin’s only error was using the term ‘legitimate’ rape rather than ‘forcible’ rape. I remember hearing about Akin’s comments in 2012 and being baffled by where he would have come up with that—context of the Willkes and their hugely influential handbook makes the incident make a lot more sense.”

SM: “There was not a cohesive, organized anti-abortion movement in America until the 1960s and ‘70s. During this time, abortion legalization was gaining momentum on the state level, driven by a few important factors. Two were medical in nature: Thalidomide, a sleeping pill from Europe, and German measles both caused birth defects and stillbirths. Women whose pregnancies were complicated by these events were some of the first to argue for liberalized abortion laws. The feminist movement was also taking off, with women arguing that they couldn’t have full rights without bodily autonomy. As states such as Colorado, California, and New York liberalized their abortion laws, organized opposition began to crop up, driven by Catholic professionals, clergy, and housewives. A key tactic used by pro-life activists, including the Willkes, was promoting the notion that ‘legally and culturally’ fetuses were humans with rights.”

For the seventh season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Susan Matthews explores the path to Roe—a time when more Republicans than Democrats supported abortion rights.