Moral Combat
Page 44
88. Barbara Abel, “Angry Critics Don’t Bother Sex Educator,” Milwaukee Journal, December 14, 1969, 2.
89. Mary S. Calderone, “Human Sexuality—Battleground or Peaceground?” in Progress in Sexology: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the 1976 International Congress of Sexology, ed. by Robert Gemmé and Connie Christian Wheeler (New York: Plenum, 1977), 587–593, quotes on 589, 591, 592, 593.
90. Mary Calderone, “Sex Education for the Society: The Real Stumbling Block,” Pastoral Psychology 21, no. 9 (November 1970): 51, 52.
91. Ibid., 52.
92. Ibid., 52, 4.
93. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 34–35. For a contemporary sociological analysis of the turn-of-the-twenty-first-century conflicts over abstinence-only education versus the comprehensive sexuality programs favored by SIECUS, see Irvine, Talk About Sex, 187–199.
94. Billy James Hargis, with Cliff Dudley, My Great Mistake (Green Forest, AR: New Leaf, 1985), 89, 93, 108–109.
CHAPTER 6
1. George Gallup, “Abortion Seen Up to Woman, Doctor,” Washington Post, Times Herald, August 25, 1972, A2. See also Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 156. The literature on abortion politics is voluminous; Self provides a thorough analysis with admirable brevity, 134–160.
2. Laurence H. Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 145; Catherine Whitney, Whose Life? A Balanced, Comprehensive View of Abortion From Its Historical Context to the Current Debate (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 78.
3. Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on Abortion,” 1971, http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/13/resolution-on-abortion; W. A. Criswell, quoted in Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 117.
4. David Noebel was one conservative Protestant who strongly opposed abortion at the time of Roe; see David A. Noebel, The Slaughter of the Innocent (Tulsa: American Christian College Press, 1973). For a look into Hargis’s Americans Against Abortion organization, see Dan Lyons and Billy James Hargis, Thou Shall Not Kill… My Babies (Tulsa: Christian Crusade, 1977).
5. Early profiles of Moody include “Folk-Singing Pastor: Howard Russell Moody,” New York Times, May 8, 1961, 41; and Lyn Tornabene, “Way-Out Minister of Washington Square,” New York Times, June 6, 1965, SM116.
6. Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 15, 265n11.
7. Ibid., 21.
8. Tom Davis, Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 122.
9. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 209–210.
10. Mary Steichen Calderone, ed., Abortion in the United States: Report of a Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 181, 182.
11. “Proposed Functions and Powers of the National Clergymen’s Advisory Council… as Defined by the Executive Committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America,” June 6, 1944, quoted in Davis, Sacred Work, 55.
12. Unsigned letter, quoted in Davis, Sacred Work, 56.
13. PPFA News Exchange, February 1946, 2, quoted in Davis, Sacred Work, 60.
14. “Catholics Draft Human-Rights Aim,” New York Times, February 2, 1947; John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 258; Pius XII, “Marriage and the Moral Law,” Address to the Italian Association of Catholic Midwives, Rome, November 26, 1951; all quoted in Daniel K. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before “Roe v. Wade” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 37–38.
15. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn, 38.
16. Lawrence Lader, Abortion (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 114, 115; “Abortion and the Law,” America, March 25, 1961, 811. See also Davis, Sacred Work, 123.
17. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime, 229.
18. On the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, see Arlene Carmen and Howard Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change: From Illegal Act to Medical Practice (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1973); Davis, Sacred Work, esp. 126–135; and Joshua D. Wolff, “Ministers of a Higher Law: The Story of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion” (BA thesis, Amherst College, 1998). Gillian Frank is working on a new history of the Clergy Consultation Service across the United States, tentatively titled “Making Choice Sacred: Liberal Religion and Reproductive Politics in the United States Before Roe v. Wade”; for a preview, see Gillian Frank, “The Surprising Role of Clergy in the Abortion Fight Before Roe v. Wade,” Time, May 2, 2017, and Frank’s web page about the project, https://gillianafrank.wordpress.com/the-clergy-consultation-service.
19. Carmen and Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change, 23. In A Voice in the Village: A Journey of a Pastor and a People (Xlibris, 2009), Howard Moody wrote that this incident took place in 1957 (312), but if it truly was immediately after he began his ministry, then the 1956 date reported by Carmen and Moody’s much earlier book is correct.
20. Ed Gold, “Profile: Rev. Howard Moody Reflects on 50 Years of Activism,” Villager, December 24–30, 2003, http://www.thevillager.com/villager_34/reverendhoward.html. Other biographical details can be gleaned from Moody, Voice in the Village.
21. “Folk-Singing Pastor,” 41. Interview with Harvey Cox, Cambridge, MA, August 14, 2008.
22. Ellen Chesler, “Interview with Arlene Carmen,” January 1976, 8, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
23. Moody, Voice in the Village, 50.
24. Ibid., 313.
25. Elizabeth Mehren, “Champion of Choice,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1995; Douglas Martin, “Lawrence Lader, Champion of Abortion Rights, Is Dead at 86,” New York Times, May 10, 2006, A23.
26. Lader, Abortion, 175.
27. Joshua D. Wolff, “Ministers of a Higher Law: The Story of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion” (B.A. Thesis, Amherst College, 1998), 42.
28. Lawrence Lader, Abortion II: Making the Revolution (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 44.
29. George Dugan, “Bishops Ask Fight on Abortion Bill: Pastoral Letter Read,” New York Times, February 13, 1967, 1.
30. Moody, Voice in the Village, 313.
31. Carmen and Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change, 18–19, 19.
32. Ibid., 24.
33. The statement is reprinted in ibid, 30–31.
34. Ibid, 31.
35. Edward B. Fiske, “Clergymen Offer Abortion Advice,” New York Times, May 22, 1967, 1.
36. “35 Call Clergymen for Aid on Abortion,” New York Times, May 24, 1967, 95.
37. “More Clerics Plan Advice on Abortion,” New York Times, May 26, 1967, 32.
38. Donald Janson, “A.M.A., in Reversal, Favors Liberalizing of Abortion Laws,” New York Times, June 22, 1967, 1.
39. Davis, Sacred Work, 131.
40. Carmen and Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change, 36.
41. See Nanette J. Davis, From Crime to Choice: The Transformation of Abortion in America (Westport CT: Praeger, 1985), 129.
42. Susan Brownmiller, “Abortion Counseling: Service Beyond Sermons,” New York Magazine, August 4, 1969, 26, 28, 29.
43. Lader, Abortion, 7.
44. Sarah Weddington, A Question of Choice, 40th Anniversary Ed., rev. and updated (New York: Feminist Press, 2013), 38.
45. Howard Moody, “Statement by Reverend Howard Moody at NARAL Press Conference,” April 25, 1972, CCS Archive, cited in Wolff, “Ministers of a Higher Law,” 220 (emphasis in original).
46. Moody, Voice in the Village, 329 (emphasis in original).
47. Ibid., 329. For a recent Christian defense of abortion rights from an obstetri
cian and abortion provider, see Dr. Willie Parker, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice (New York: Atria, 2017).
48. Weddington, Question of Choice, 20.
49. Ibid., 51.
50. Arlene Carmen and Howard Moody, Working Women: the Subterranean World of Street Prostitution (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 151, 47.
51. Ibid., 164, 165, 166.
52. Ibid., 171, 172, 174, 175.
53. On the pre-Roe pro-life movement, see especially Williams, Defenders of the Unborn.
54. Quoted in Patricia Miller, Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 73.
55. His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Manning, “Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary,” March 7, 1974, http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/cardinalmanningtestimony.htm.
56. George Dugan, “Catholic Bishops Approve a Plan to Mobilize Public Support Against Abortions on Request,” New York Times, November 21, 1975, 19.
57. Henry Hyde, quoted in Mary Ziegler, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 50.
58. Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 138; Beverly LaHaye, Who But a Woman? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 25. For a richly detailed account of anti-feminism and the rise of this evangelical movement for family values, see Self, All in the Family, 309–338 and passim. Self’s book does an excellent job of analyzing the nation’s religiously inflected political battles over gender roles and the traditional family since the 1960s.
59. Frances Kissling, interview by Rebecca Sharpless, transcript of audio recording, September 13–14, 2002, Population and Reproductive Health Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, 2, 10–11. The length of nine months in the convent is noted on page 3.
60. Ibid., 16, 37, 38, 56–57.
61. Ibid., 58, 59, 71.
62. Ibid., 63, 66, 67.
63. Rick Atkinson, “Ferraro Denies Charge on Abortion Stand,” Washington Post, September 11, 1984, A9.
64. Joe Klein, “Abortion and the Archbishop,” New York, October 1, 1984, 38.
65. William B. Prendergast, The Catholic Vote in American Politics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 189, 187.
66. Mary E. Hunt and Frances Kissling, “The New York Times Ad: A Case Study in Religious Feminism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 3, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 115–127.
67. “A Diversity of Opinions Regarding Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics,” display ad, New York Times, October 7, 1984, E7.
68. Hunt and Kissling, “The New York Times Ad,” 118, 120. The battle continued until most of the sisters’ canonical superiors finally relented and offered “clarifications” of their views that amounted to retractions. Only two nuns, Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey, refused to “clarify” or retract their statement; four years later, feeling a strong sense of betrayal, both left the Sisters of Notre Dame.
69. Prendergast, Catholic Vote, 193.
70. Kissling, interview, 105, 108, 110, 111. On his own shift away from “Catholic pelvic theology,” see Daniel C. Maguire, A Merry Memoir of Sex, Death, and Religion (Thiensville, WI: Caritas Communications, 2013). He uses the term on page 60.
71. Kissling and Hunt, “The New York Times Ad,” 123.
72. “NCCB/USCC President Issues Statement on Catholics for a Free Choice,” May 10, 2000, archived at http://www.usccb.org/news/2000/00-123.cfm.
73. Interview with Frances Kissling, Washington DC, June 3, 2009. Also cited in Frances Kissling, “Blogging for Bottle Caps,” Women = Books, September 14, 2009, http://www.wcwonline.org/Women-=-Books-Archive/blogging-for-bottle-caps. Response was to Frances Kissling, “Mel Gibson’s Family Values,” Salon, April 26, 2009, http://www.salon.com/2009/04/26/mel_gibson.
74. Maguire, A Merry Memoir, 21 and passim. As pro-life Christian leader and World magazine editor Marvin Olasky told me, “Thirty-five years in the pro-life movement have shown me that the abortion issue has such salience among Christians because it is about life and death, not about sex” (Marvin Olasky, email message to author, March 22, 2017).
75. Hannah Fingerhut, “On Abortion, Persistent Divides Between—and Within—the Two Parties, Factank, July 7, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/07/on-abortion-persistent-divides-between-and-within-the-two-parties-2/.
CHAPTER 7
1. Bill Bearden, quoted in Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 87.
2. Nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to Be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Cong. 37 (October 11, 1991) (Testimony of Anita F. Hill, Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK).
3. Ibid., 44. Thomas has written that, rather than his inviting her to come with him, Hill herself “immediately said that she wanted to go with me” and that he had to “think about it.” Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 150. He writes elsewhere in this book about Hill and tells things differently; interested readers should consult his memoir for his own depiction.
4. Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (New York: Anchor Books, 1997), 89.
5. Maya Angelou, “I Dare to Hope,” New York Times, August 25, 1991, E15; Julian Bond, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, September 12, 1991, A24.
6. The most comprehensive version of Hill’s account is found in her autobiography: Hill, Speaking Truth to Power.
7. Nomination of Clarence Thomas, 257 (Further Testimony of Hon. Clarence Thomas, of Georgia, to be Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, afternoon session).
8. Nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas, 157 (Further Testimony of Hon. Clarence Thomas, of Georgia, to be Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court).
9. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Black Women Still in Defense of Ourselves,” Nation, October 5, 2011; Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves,” New York Times, November 17, 1991, 53.
10. Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son, 280.
11. This campaign is recounted in several places, notably Mayer and Abramson, Strange Justice. Thomas’s experience is well told in John C. Danforth, Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas (Norwalk, CT: Easton, 1994). Senator Danforth later wrote again about the hearings, and their impact on Thomas, in John C. Danforth, Faith and Politics: How the “Moral Values” Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006), 204–208. Hill’s account of her own experience appears in Hill, Speaking Truth to Power.
12. See, for instance, “Clarence Thomas Hearings,” Saturday Night Live, Episode no. 309,, directed by Dave Wilson and written by James Downey, NBC, October 12, 1991; “The Strange Case of Clarence and Anita,” Designing Women, Episode no. 6.8, directed by David Steinberg and written by Linda Bloodworth-Thomas, CBS, November 4, 1991; “Send in the Clowns,” Murphy Brown, Episode no. 4.18, directed by Lee Shallat Chemel and written by Diane English and Peter Tolan, CBS, February 24, 1992.
13. Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son, 282.
14. Ibid., 282 (emphasis added). Other references to “my enemies” appear on 158, 229, 233, 239, 257 (“my liberal enemies”), 260, 266, 274, and 276.
15. Hill, Speaking Truth to Power, 199–200.
16. Ibid., 5, 6.
17. Ibid., 200.
18. Orlando Patterson, “Race, Gender and Liberal Fallacies,” New York Times, October 20, 1991, E15. As far back as 1979, the feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon had argued, “Objection to sexual harassment is not a neopuritan protest” (Carol Krucoff, “Careers: Sexual Harassment on the Job,” Washington Post, July 25, 1979, B5). This quote was repeated by reporters the day after Patterso
n’s op-ed appeared, along with a contrasting quote from the critic Camille Paglia more in line with Patterson’s view: “This psychodrama is puritanism reborn.” Ted Gest and Amy Saltzman, “Harassment: Men on Trial,” US New & World Report, October 21, 1991, 40.
19. Charles Colson, “The Thomas Hearings and the New Gender Wars,” Christianity Today, November 25, 1991, 72.
20. Limbaugh’s mock advertisement for “Feminazi Trading Cards” began with a woman saying, “I’ll give you two Gloria Steinems for one Anita Hill.” Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), 115, 121; quote in this note from 202.
21. Mayer and Abramson, Strange Justice, 356, 357; Jeffrey Toobin, “The Burden of Clarence Thomas,” New Yorker, September 27, 1993, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/09/27/the-burden-of-clarence-thomas. The affection and respect between Limbaugh and Thomas is evidenced in Rush Limbaugh, “Rush Interviews Justice Clarence Thomas,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, October 1, 2007, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2007/10/01/rush_interviews_justice_clarence_thomas4.
22. Felicity Barringer, “One Year Later, Anita Hill Interprets Thomas Hearings,” New York Times, October 17, 1992, 6; Joe Holley, “Rosalie Silberman; Created Independent Women’s Forum,” Washington Post, February 21, 2007, B6.
23. Thomas L. Jipping, “‘Judge Thomas Is the First Choice’: The Case for Clarence Thomas,” Regent University Law Review 12 (1999–2000): 400, http://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/student_life/studentorgs/lawreview/docs/issues/v12n2/12RegentULRev397.pdf.
24. “Interview of Tom Jipping, March 25, 1992,” quoted in David Brock, The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story (New York: Free Press, 1993), 81; Thomas L. Jipping and Phyllis Berry-Myers, “Declaration of Independence: Justice Clarence Thomas, One Year Later,” Free Congress Foundation, October 1992, quoted in Brock, Real Anita Hill, 26.
25. David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002), 99.
26. Ruth Marcus, “Thomas, Allies Step Up Counterattack,” Washington Post, October 13, 1991, A1.