The Catholic Culture Podcast: 153 – The Lost Radical History of the Pro-Life Movement

Feb 9, 2023

One might assume abortion has always been a
hot-button topic in American politics since the Supreme Court
ruling legalizing it in 1973. But that is not the case. The US
pro-life movement was so non-robust for many years that by 1987,
abortion was not even one of the top 10 issues for American voters.
Then suddenly, in ABC’s 1988 election exit poll, abortion had shot
to the number one issue for voters. What made abortion into a
political litmus test so suddenly?

Operation Rescue was what happened. Little
remembered now, OR was, believe it or not, the largest civil
disobedience in American history. Between 1987 and 1994, about
75,000 pro-life activists were arrested for peacefully interfering
with abortion clinic operations – that’s ten times more people
arrested than in the entire civil rights movement.

And though Operation Rescue quickly fizzled
out in 1994 because of the Clinton administration’s FACE Act
(recently used to prosecute Mark Houck), it gave the pro-life
movement the jump-start it needed to get us to the overturning of
Roe v. Wade. Arguably, were it not for Operation Rescue, the U.S.
would be much like Europe, with even anti-abortion conservatives
more or less accepting it as the “law of the land”, and little
political will to fight it.

It is a great honor, then, to have the founder
of Operation Rescue on the Catholic Culture Podcast. Randall Terry,
who ran OR for its first few years and was arrested 50 times for
his pro-life activism, is producing a documentary
series, Dragonslayers, which will tell the history of
OR using many hours of amazing footage that exists from the time.
He is currently raising funds so that the series can be made.

Randall joins the show to talk about OR and
its decisive role in the history of the pro-life movement, the need
for direct action in the pro-life cause today, and the political
tools that will be indispensable for ending abortion in all 50
states – which he calls Randall’s Rules for Righteous
Revolution.

Links

Donate to support the documentary production
and find pro-life training resources at www.RandallTerry.com

Ep. 2 of the Catholic Culture Podcast – “The
Largest Civil Disobedience Movement in U.S. History”, with Bill
Cotter and Phil Lawler
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-2-largest-civil-disobedience-movement-in-us-history

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