Posted on 11/24/2019 1:51:24 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Back then, many abortion opponents were Catholic Democrats, while many conservative Republican Protestants wanted nothing to do with the issue, viewing it as the province of Catholics, their theological adversaries.
In 1967, California State Senator Anthony Beilenson rose to speak to his fellow legislators, making a simple plea to those who opposed the abortion bill he had introduced for debate.
“This bill is a request that they respect the sincerity, the religious beliefs, and the convictions of the majority of their fellow Californians.”
The religious beliefs that Beilenson was defending were those of the state’s Protestants and Jews.
Despite Beilenson’s plea, the Catholic Church fought hard against the bill, which would allow abortions when the pregnancy endangered the life or health of the woman or if she was the victim of rape or incest. Cardinal James McIntyre compared it to Herod ordering the slaughter of “Holy Innocents” in Bethlehem. But the legislature passed the landmark bill, which was then signed into law by the new governor, Ronald Reagan. Within a few years, some 20 states would follow.
The evangelicals’ ambivalence on abortion...is striking.
Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical professor who later became a major anti-abortion activist, at first refused to get involved. After his son, Frank, pushed him to join the anti-abortion movement, Schaeffer exasperatedly blurted out, “They’re Catholics!”
At first, abortion politics only served to cement the divisions between the two groups, with Evangelical protestants taking the more pro-choice position. The year after California’s Therapeutic Abortion law passed, Billy Graham declared that he supported loosening the laws so rape and incest victims could get abortions, and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina took no position.
Abortion politics, however, would come to thaw relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants...
(Excerpt) Read more at religionnews.com ...
Until the odious Argentinian somehow ended up as Pope. Now it’s the remnant Catholics and the still faithful Evangelicals hanging together for dear life!
DEPLATFORM eugenicist’s puppets. Planned, pre-meditated extermination.
I am a pro-Life evangelical. For about the last 5-6 years we’ve gone to March for Life.
Flame away but I firmly believe that the pro-Life movement would be farther along if the concentration was more on science, heartbeat and the fact that these are live babies. The huge amounts of Catholic imagery at the March is detrimental.
Appreciate your thoughts. I have been contemplating how indiscriminate embrace of ‘non-abortive’ contraception among Christians (regardless of denomination) has harmed the pro-life witness more than we realize as well.
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