What Roe started
By David P. Gushee

After the 1973 court ruling, the battle lines in this country’s culture wars were drawn, setting the stage for the demonization we’re witnessing today.

Something has changed in our country since the time I was growing up in the 1960s and early '70s. It involves the disappearance of an approach to public life in which stark differences could be debated without adversaries slipping into the demonization of one another.

Of course, there have always been Americans who demonized those they disagreed with. But it has not always been accepted as a routine feature of American life.

(Milestones in a culture war: An interactive timeline highlights some of the country's most contentious battles.)

My father worked in Washington at the Congressional Research Service on energy and environmental policy during the late '60s and early '70s. He would come home and talk about how much fun it was to help Congress hammer out that first round of environmental legislation. He said he admired how leaders could clash strongly over one issue but then work together on a different one. In those days, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, could disagree without turning each other into mortal enemies.

That's what demonization is: viewing those we disagree with as if they are the embodiment of evil. It involves a profound loss of perspective on the humanity of our opponents. They stop being people just like us, who happen to disagree with us on something; they instead become a kind of insidious demonic force let loose in the world. Former president George W. Bush and President Obama know something about this.

A number of factors have contributed to a national slide from civility to demonization in the past 40 years. Redistricting has given us more politicians from overwhelmingly "blue" or "red" districts who represent extreme views. The voracious 24-hour news cycle thrives on conflict and spectacle. Incendiary rhetoric carries the day.

But I suspect it was the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision and the ensuing religious mobilization into political combat that have made the greatest difference. This ruling — however one might regard it — drew the battle lines of our current culture wars. Politics of decency gave way to blood sport.

The Roe decision, which established a very permissive national legal framework on abortion, became the centerpiece for religious right organizing. Not immediately, but within a few years after Roe, abortion policy became viewed not just as another difficult arena where differences could be debated in good faith, but instead as a life-or-death struggle between good and evil. Nuances and shades of gray disappeared. Pro-lifers called abortion-rights supporters "pro-death." Pro-choicers called those who reviled Roe "anti-choice." You get the point.

Activist groups built their empires on absolutist stances and aggressive postures toward their foes. As the fight deepened, longstanding gulfs between conservative Catholics and Protestants were bridged, as leaders of these communities coalesced around a fierce rejection of Roe and equally fierce condemnation of a society that could live with such a decision. This in turn triggered an equally fierce response by the various religious and secular groups who supported Roe. The cycle had begun.

It is a truism that anything you do for 40 days in a row becomes a habit. If so, anything a political community does for 40 years most certainly becomes a habit. This response and counterresponse to Roe have distorted our culture by creating the habit of demonization in American public life. If abortion was the seed, the fruit has blossomed with many other issues — everything from gay rights to immigration to energy policy has become fair game not just for debate, but also for the routine reliance on demonization.

The pattern remains most obvious whenever anything related to abortion is under consideration — as with health care reform, in which abortion has played a supporting role in the debate despite the efforts of most Democratic leaders to keep the legislation abortion-neutral. The entire health care reform effort has become an episode in demonization. Even arcane policy decisions related to the best way to keep down insurance costs evoke wild denunciations. Though Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst at the president's health care address this month is symptomatic of our problem, the South Carolina Republican is not a lonely voice.

Demonization involves a shift from debating issues to attacking persons. Demonization has a deathly logic to it: If we could just destroy (the career of) that person who is getting it all wrong, all would be well in our country. The left has found its figures to hate: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, George W. Bush and even, at the time, Ronald Reagan. So has the right had its demons, beginning with Jimmy Carter, spiking with Bill and Hillary Clinton and now focusing intensely on Barack Obama.

I myself am an evangelical Christian who thinks Roe is bad law. But I am also drawn toward any effort to find common ground, whether on abortion reduction strategies or on other issues. For this, I have been demonized. Some of these experiences have led me to reflect a bit on why, as a Christian, I am so committed to the effort to find common ground — and why I seek to resist the demonization of adversaries that I find very tempting sometimes.

I try to start by recognizing the God-given fellow humanity of everyone whom I encounter, even those I sharply disagree with. My faith teaches that every human being is made in the image of God and beloved by him. Each shares humanity's common pool of frailties and strengths. Every humanbeing is worthy of being treated with basic human decency and respect. I try to do that. I remind myself that every human being is capable of error and sin. But I am also painfully aware that whatever must be said about the weakness and vulnerability of others must also be said about me.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "The line separating good and evil passes ... right through every human heart." A society is in trouble when people forget this and everyone begins to think that "we" are "the good" and "they" are "the demonic." Religious people might be especially susceptible. Reading history and looking around the world, it is abundantly clear that the democracy we have here in America is a huge achievement in human civilization. Christians need to celebrate this achievement rather than toying with language that comes right up to or over the threshold of endorsing violence. To play with fire in this way is unconscionable.

I dare to think that it's still not too late to be the kind of nation in which differences are debated honestly, the votes are cast, the decisions are made and we move forward together as one people. I would like to see Christians contribute to that kind of society, rather than to the demonization that undermines it at its foundations.

this is what I've been saying for a long time. I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one

I don't care if you're left or right. The unreasonable hate and unrelenting false propaganda is getting old

yes, it is getting very old...enough already

Whenever you apply "I am right" and all others are wrong, you set battle lines and proving it to be true then becomes the job of the "soldiers".

I have issues with some of the Democrat's and Obama's policies. But I never get the chance to discuss them with anyone because I am constantly defending the man's rights to exist and not be demonized in the fervor of the hatred we see now.

I don't know if Roe started it though. I believe we had it here in this country already in the form of racism. Our country was based from racially biased ideals and we demonized any not like us for many centuries and still do.

I quoted this from another thread

yeah I dont know if I agree that Roe started it cause McCarthy predates Roe

but the rest I agree with


I doubt this thread will get much traction cause there isnt any room in here to demonize anyone and that seems to be all we get in the threads

That's the first I've heard of where it started. Of course I don't have much of a memory of times before 1973.
It's very interesting. I know abortion is a hard choice for a woman to make.
Now isn't Roe pro-life? I wonder if she has read that article?

Grabing at straws here. I wonder if she would have gone forward with the case had she known it would be the cause of this?

It's not your job to defend him, if you disagree with him you need to say so but you don't. Instead you constantly berate the opposition and call everyone a racist who disagrees. I don't give a damn the he's half black...he's also half white, ever think of that?

It is my damn job to defend anyone I know is being unfairly treated, that would be your *** too if I saw it was being abused.

You cannot even hold your hatred in a thread designed to stop the damn hatred.

Some people really piss me off.

I can hold my own, and I doubt that Hussein gives a crap anyway.

It is you who could not give a hoot about others who are different from you. It is not a matter of Obama caring, it is about the right thing to do. I will continue on the good fight and you will either ignore me or whatever but I will continue to fight the battle.

You're not fighting anything.

That is what you think.

So then when you disagree with people on this site because they say they are against policy and you call them a racist because you think they are only against Obama that doesn't fall into the "I am right" category? Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me.

You better watch out, you said black...that might garner you a "racist" comment!

That's ok I've been called it before on here.

I suppose Bush was never unfairly treated? If he was did you defend him?

I look at who is saying it and just Laaaaaauuugh my bottom off!

That doesn't even make sense. I don't call anyone racist. I say there are racists who are agaisnt Obama and perpetrate hatred and hatefilled propaganda that is not true to demonize him because of his race. People on here who buy into it may buy into it because they are racists or not, I don't know if they are or not. But they need to know if they are buying into racists propaganda. My job to call it when I see it.

Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya;
Kum bay ya, the Lord, kum bay ya;
Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.


Someone's crying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Someone's crying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Someone's crying, Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.


Hear me singing, Lord, kum bay ya;
Hear me singing, Lord, kum bay ya;
Hear me singing, Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.

Someone's praying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Someone's praying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Someone's praying, Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.


Hear me praying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Hear me praying, Lord, kum bay ya;
Hear me praying, Lord, kum bay ya,
O Lord, kum bay ya.

I did have to defend him a couple of times but for the most part he was not unfairly treated.