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Allison Vander Broek

Allison Vander Broek is a historian of American religion and politics, whose research focuses on the development of the antiabortion movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Her work was published most recently in the essay collection Evangelicals and Presidential Politics: From Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump (Louisiana State University Press, 2021).

CultureFeatured

The Texas Abortion Law, the Antiabortion Movement, and the Politics of Cruelty

Texas’s new law is particularly cruel. Abortion is banned after six weeks, so early that some women won’t even know they’re pregnant. Private citizens are authorized to enforce the law and sue those who help people access abortion care in any way. Sadly, it’s not a surprise that this is the tactic antiabortion activists and legislators would pursue. In many ways this cruelty is baked into the movement—a movement that’s spent decades devising ways to make abortion care inconvenient, demeaning,…
November 15, 2021
American HistoryFeaturedPoliticsWhite American Evangelicalism

Subversion & Sabotage: The Right-to-Life Movement, the Consolidation of Conservsative Power, and the End of Compromise

Right-to-lifers understood the arguments and goals of the women’s movement and were willing to engage with feminists to a certain extent . . . Unfortunately, a growing conservative contingent in the antiabortion movement viewed the women’s movement as an existential threat to their larger goals and actively sabotaged and undermined attempts by right-to-lifers to work with feminist groups.
June 7, 2021
As We See ItMagazine

On Crafting Coalitions: Lessons from the Right-to-Life Movement of the 1970s

I know half of you just saw that title and are ready to take me to task. Learning a lesson on building political coalitions from the right-to-life movement? Baloney. From one of the most stalwart conservative movements of the past 40 years – a movement on an issue that remains one of the most polarizing issues in American society? Good luck. And you’re right to be skeptical. The polling numbers continue to show stark polarization on abortion, at least in the political realm. And…
June 30, 2018