How Missouri Synod Lutherans Sought to Defend Privacy and Human Life

“There you go again.” That was Candidate Ronald Reagan’s famous retort to Jimmy Carter’s jabs in the 1980 Presidential Debate. It was the only line voters remembered as they headed to the polls that fall.

I must echo the Gipper to my Pro-Life friends. There you go again! In framing our arguments, we must never, ever speak of overturning Roe v. Wade—or overturning anything else.

I had the honor of representing The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) in Washington in the 1980s. I was attracted to the LCMS by its strong stance for human life and against Roe since it had been issued in 1973. We watched with concern the development of abortion as a divisive issue in American politics—and among churches. 

Pro-choice activists always use the “overturn” formulation and their allies in the press always frame their questions in those poll-tested words. They know what even the shrewd pro-choice James Baker, Chief of Staff in the Reagan White House, knew: The vast majority of Americans are opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. No poll asking the question thus framed has found a majority support for overturning.

For them, this is politically savvy. Overturning suggests to Americans something radical, something alarming. They are against SUVs overturning in ditches. They are against overturning governments—like the ones we support in struggling nations. LCMS congregants were unlikely to back anything that sounded disorderly, radical, as something labeled “overturning” would seem.

If a poll was conducted asking Americans if they favored overturning the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, doubtless a majority of respondents would oppose that, too.

This is not to disdain Americans and their opinions. Truth is, millions of our fellow citizens have better things to do than study the tortured language of Roe. And the press has consistently misinformed the public on the radical reality of Roe.

I was in Washington, D.C. the day Roe was handed down. I recall reading in The New York Times that the Court had legalized the killing of unborn children in the first trimester. Then, the press would attempt to describe the protections for the unborn child in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

But when tested, those supposed protections for unborn human life proved to be non-existent. Any abortion sought with a will could be obtained in America—anywhere for any reason at any time.

Abortion on demand. Or, politely re-phrased, abortion on request. That is what its advocates demanded. That is what they got.

And in so demanding, they pressed the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the laws for protecting unborn human life in all fifty states. That was the overturning.

The radicalism of Roe was recognized by few. One of them was President Kennedy’s nominee, Justice Byron White. He called the ruling “judicial usurpation.”

Washington state had raised concerns even before Roe. In 1970, radicals pushed Referendum 20 to repeal that section of the legal code that dealt Abortion as Homicide.

Radicals knew it would be difficult to achieve their result if voters learned where in state law abortion was covered.

The referendum process in Washington required any change by popular vote must inform voters on the ballot what the law is, what reform is proposed, and what would be the impact of the change sought in the law.

The radicals simply pressured the state legislature to ignore informed consent. They paid no notice to the protective law. They simply offered voters language of the law as it would be if the measure passed.

“Homicide” gave defenders of unborn children their best argument against the radical Referendum. This must be gotten around.

A Caesarotomy abortion is one in which the unborn child is surgically removed from the womb and simply set aside. And left to die.

Ironically, even before the Washington state Referendum 20 was approved by voters, the radicals performed a Caesarotomy Abortion on the body of the law.

In a raucous referendum campaign, the press was all in for overturn of state law.

Anti-Catholicism was brazenly employed, even though Catholics there were aligned with the Democratic Party and labor and civil rights legislation.

Seattle Magazine set the tone for the debate with a cover photo depicting a healthy infant. The caption read: The Enemy. The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich threatened the world with overpopulation and made the case for environmental harms from unrestricted births.

This far corner of America had a radical reputation stretching back decades. Washington was the only state that saw a General Strike (Seattle 1919). Anarchist saboteurs of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) left their telltale imprint in logging country.

The Democrats’ National Chairman in 1940 could jokingly dismiss the Evergreen state’s rowdy radicalism.  Jim Farley said: “The Democratic Party is in fine shape in all forty-seven states—and in the Soviet of Washington.”

To have won their Referendum 20 in such a state with such a slim margin led radicals nationwide to reassess their state-by-state effort to remove all protective laws on abortion. Demographer Dr. Judith Blake warned that the electoral process would never achieve the goal they sought—abortion on demand.

Significantly, however, Blake noted that the only demographic that strongly supported abortion on demand was young male graduates of Ivy League colleges. That gave Blake an insight. While those young white males were not the governing elites, not yet, their fathers were sitting on federal benches.

Thus, she urged her colleagues to short circuit the democratic process and rush into the federal judiciary. That road was the most direct—if least democratic—route to overturning fifty states’ laws on abortion. This included those safeguarded in state homicide statutes.

As if to underscore Blake’s warning, popular referendums on abortion in Michigan (60%) and North Dakota (76%) went down to crushing defeat in the 1972 election. Of particular note was the vote against legal abortion by working class Blacks and Whites in Michigan, normally reliable Democratic voting blocs.

Quickly, then, the radicals pushed their appeals in the Supreme Court. They hastened to seize the high ground in a sweeping ruling in Roe that could be hailed in the press as “landmark.”

So it was. My church body, the LCMS, held an unusual stance for a religious opponent of abortion. While many religious communities argue for the overturn of Roe and reconsideration of court precedents based on privacy, the LCMS has a long history with constitutional right of privacy cases.

Most cherished by LCMS was Myer v. Nebraska (1923). The largely German-speaking church body resisted world war anti-foreign hysteria that had led the Ku Klux Klan and other xenophobic bands to try to outlaw parochial schools—mostly Catholic and Lutheran.

A favored anti-immigrant tactic was to ban teaching parochial schoolchildren in their parents’ German language. In defense, LCMS took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and was rewarded with a truly landmark ruling. Myer is still cited as a bulwark against state infringement on family privacy.

With that strong foundation, LCMS could conscientiously oppose killing of unborn children while defending constitutional privacy.

Avoiding all radical talk of overturning, and retaining a healthy respect for constitutionally protected privacy, Pro-Lifers can make a genuine contribution to this unending debate by standing for privacy in the family and standing against the violence of abortion. Here we stand.

Robert Morrison represented The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in Washington in the 1980s. He wrote his Master’s Thesis on Washington state’s abortion referendum of 1970. He spoke for Pro-Life concerns to LCMS congregations in Michigan during their funding referendum.