15 Anti-Feminist, Pro-Life, and Anti-ERA Women

For more than a century, women have organized for anti-feminist and conservative¹ causes, including opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and legal abortion. Through an analytical review of the scholarly literature, this chapter explores women’s roles in these movements, with particular attention paid to how women’s involvement, with an emphasis on their gendered identities, helps to legitimate these conservative causes. An analysis of how maternalism factors into anti-ERA and pro-life politics, and the extent to which this reinforces traditional gender roles, will also be featured.

While feminists and other progressives may dismiss politically active conservative women on the grounds that they lack a feminist consciousness or do not represent women (Dworkin 1983; Valenti 2010), these political actors are notable in that their activism involves perspectives and motivations that differ from those of conservative men (Blee and Deutsch 2012; Celis and Childs 2012; Deckman 2016; Klatch 1987; Schreiber 2002, 2012). By acting as women, and defining women’s interests in ways that differ from both feminists and their conservative male counterparts, anti-feminist women expand the scope of what we consider to be conservative values and policy goals and provide legitimacy to issue positions that would be dismissed if conservative men were the ones making the political claims. They also mobilize and bring women into conservative campaigns and demonstrate the centrality of female political actors to movements that have been charged with sexism and with hindering women’s social and professional mobility (Melich 1998). Through their activist efforts, conservative women make it more difficult for feminists and other liberals to criticize conservatives for not caring about women. When they speak as and for women, they project an image of conservatism that is friendly to women. As such, conservative women activists are well positioned to shape public opinion and influence how policymakers think about issues. As women’s political clout grows, and as these particular activists continue to institutionalize their work, we should expect to see a conservative women’s movement in formation (for more on the mobilization of right-wing conservative women, see Rohlinger and Claxton, Chapter 7 in this volume). This has been especially true after the nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008. Her bid put conservative women in the spotlight and generated significant enthusiasm and energy. For conservatives, this is good news, but for feminists it means the necessity to clarify and specify movement claims, and requires accounting for women who take issue with feminist policies and goals.

Generally, conservative women activists and organizations represent either (or sometimes both) social or economic conservatives (Klatch 1987; Schreiber 2012). Social conservatives in the United States are usually Protestant evangelicals who lobby for policies that prohibit abortion, same-sex marriage, and pornography, but promote prayer in public schools and a strong and well-funded U.S. military. Politically active social conservative women consider their advocacy to be a mission dedicated to living out their religious commitments. In contrast, economic conservatives favor free-market capitalism, decreased regulations on businesses, and low taxes. Their tendency toward libertarianism means that they generally shy away from supporting laws that ban abortion or same-sex marriages. They also contest the existence of intentional or institutional discrimination and specifically challenge the goals and successes of the feminist movement (Klatch 1987; Schreiber 2012). They might also be termed “right-wing,” but because they explicitly and directly engage with institutions of government (e.g., Congress), other interest groups, and the media, they are not generally considered to be extremists. While some economic conservative women’s groups contest the need for identity-based politics, they engage in it to counter feminist organizing around gender (Schreiber 2012).

For context, feminist organizations are those that self-identify as feminist, support women’s equal rights under the law, and/or believe that women’s oppression relative to men is the result of discrimination. In addition, feminists believe that women’s status is predominantly shaped by processes of institutional and structural inequality, not individual actions or circumstances. The use of the term “feminism” in this chapter reflects how conservative women activists conceptualize it. Of course, there are different ways to conceptualize feminism and engage in feminist activism (see, e.g., Reger 2012), but when these leaders talk about the feminist movement they are mostly referring to liberal feminists who are nationally organized into groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and/or well-known individual feminist leaders and scholars like Catharine MacKinnon, professor of law and an anti-pornography advocate.

Historically, women have always organized to battle feminist policies and successes. Groups like the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) and STOP-ERA were run by capable women leaders intent on undermining feminist claims of representation and promoting conservative points of view (Critchlow 2005; Jablonsky 2002; Mansbridge 1986; Marshall 1997). Their gender-identified activism often referenced maternalism and valuing women’s domestic labor. Such arguments were central to women organized against women’s suffrage.

The first evidence of women’s opposition to suffrage in the United States was documented in 1868, when a group of women fought against a Massachusetts initiative promoting female voting rights (Jablonsky 2002). The proposal went nowhere, but both sides continued to mobilize as the push for women’s suffrage gained momentum. As the intensity of the battle grew, more women became involved, both in the suffrage and anti-suffrage movements. NAOWS, headed by Josephine Dodge, represented a countermovement of women who challenged the fight for women’s right to vote (Jablonksy 2002; Lo 1982; Marshall 1985). Founded in 1911, it peaked at 350,000 members and coordinated activities in twenty-five states. The majority of its leaders and members were White women whose husbands were prominent politicians and industrialists, many from elite Eastern states. Dodge and others argued that suffrage would undermine women’s privileged status and burden them with duties that would detract from their more important and central domestic lives. Premised upon the concept of “separate spheres,” these advocates did not necessarily consider women to be unequal to men, but felt that the “sexes [should be] matched in their valuation as to intellectual gifts and oral virtue,” which should be applied in distinct fashions (Jablonsky 2002: 127).

Attention to gender role distinctions meant that women who actively opposed suffrage faced “mobilization dilemmas” because they sought to reaffirm a doctrine that placed women within the domestic realm, while simultaneously engaging in “public” life to do so (Marshall 1985). To mitigate this tension, anti-suffragists arranged their spaces of activity to look genteel, like parlors, and claimed to be waging “educational,” not “political,” campaigns (Marshall 1997; Stevenson 1979). Anti-feminist rhetoric was also central to the anti-suffragists’ cause. They constructed suffrage supporters as radicals whose efforts would destroy family life, women’s status, and the “right of females to lifetime financial support” (Marshall 1985: 350). Ultimately, NAOWS and others failed, in part because they did not establish a coordinated nationwide strategy. Although they were defeated, their efforts illuminate how some women sought, and found, political power and voice during a period when men dominated political and economic life (Marshall 1997).

Following the battle over women’s suffrage, some feminist women moved into Progressive era politics, engaging in direct service work for poor and immigrant families and working to pass social welfare legislation. Others, however, chose a different route: they opted to participate in racist efforts and organizations, and were driven by anti-immigrant, White supremacist, and nationalistic ideologies (Blee 1991). While not explicitly anti-feminist, these women engaged in politics that countered progressive visions of equality and did so by invoking their gendered identities. In this way, they represented alternative forms of women’s political activism and demonstrated that women need not be feminist to act on behalf of women. For example, they formed Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), a group that bolstered the terrorist activities of the KKK, but also acted independently by calling on White Protestant women to protect “pure womanhood” and assert their newfound political rights. WKKK drew on traditional conceptions of maternalism to guard their home life and through their efforts expanded our understanding of what it means to be political: inspired by their gendered roles, women coordinated events like Klan wedding services and funerals to promote Klan-based ideology and to create a “sense of the totality of the Klan World” (Blee 1991). During World War II, a smaller but no less conservative group of women invoked similarly racist and purportedly patriotic appeals to rally against U.S. involvement in the war. This “mothers’ movement” promoted isolationism, anti-Semitism, and opposition to New Deal policies (Jeansonne 1996). Like WKKK, these activists were marked by their gender-conscious activism and argued that women should have equal opportunity to participate in politics, but on terms having to do with their motherhood.

In the early 1960s, a broader conservative movement started to take hold in the United States. Conservatives formed organizations like the John Birch Society and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) (Diamond 1995; Klatch 1999; McGirr 2001; Perlstein 2001), groups that reflected growing pockets of conservatism in the suburbs and on college campuses. Women were well represented among these political actors (McGirr 2001). Newly forming Christian Right organizations also groomed anti-feminist women like Connie Marshner, who later became active in campaigns to elect Ronald Reagan and other social conservatives to office (Klatch 1987). Often linked to the presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, this growing collective effort also mobilized women eager to support Goldwater’s (ultimately unsuccessful) presidential campaign against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 (Critchlow 2005; Diamond 1995; McGirr 2001).

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly emerged and rose to prominence during this time and eventually formed Eagle Forum in 1972 (Critchlow 2005). With her publication of the widely distributed A Choice, Not an Echo (Schlafly 1964), Schlafly attacked what she considered to be the narrow and elite Eastern Republican establishment and led a charge to change the focus of the Republican Party and promote Goldwater. Klatch documents that Schlafly played an important role in training and encouraging other “traditionalist” women to be politically aware and effective (1999: 266). Through their involvement in right-wing electoral and mobilization efforts, these women gained important organizing and political skills, enlisted other women, and developed substantial conservative political and social networks. As will be discussed later, many applied what they learned through these nascent years to organize other women in subsequent anti-feminist activism (Klatch 1999).

Since the 1990s, other anti-feminist groups like Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI) have sprung up, creating a solid network of conservative women that spans generations and views about issues. IWF was founded by a group of economic conservative women who were angered when feminists challenged Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (Schreiber 2012). CBLPI, founded in 1993, is committed to principles such as “individual freedom” and sponsors a conservative speakers program to bring women leaders to college campuses. Similarly motivated are the students who formed the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW), an association generated to “foster the education and leadership skills of conservative university women … [and] devoted to expanding the intellectual diversity on college campuses.”² Also founded in 1993, the Susan B. Anthony List “assists pro-life women candidates and works to defeat pro-abortion women candidates and incumbents.”³ In so doing, it aims to rectify the fact that the entry of Republican women into elective office has lagged behind that of Democratic women and to show the political power of women within the party. Overall, these organizations not only are part of a larger conservative movement, but also challenge feminist claims of representation and bring female-friendly faces to conservative causes (Schreiber 2012).

Acting in conjunction with conservative organizations are a number of prominent anti-feminist women who have made names for themselves as spokespeople and pundits. Dubbed “conservative chic,” women like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Laura Ingraham have captured significant media attention and have given right-wing politics a female face (Spindel 2003). CBLPI promotes the importance of these women by publishing a “Great American Conservative Women” calendar, which has featured Ann Coulter, former CWA president Carmen Pate, and IWF advisory board member and U.S. secretary of labor Elaine Chao. Perhaps the most popular of these “great Americans” is Coulter. Known for her miniskirts and outrageous comments (she called women who lost their husbands in 9/11 “a gaggle of weeping widows” whose advocacy efforts were “rabid” (Coulter 2007: 102–103), Coulter has published numerous books castigating liberals and commented that feminists are “marauding, bloodthirsty vipers” (2005: 325). Another commentator whose career is more closely defined by her ardent attacks on feminists is Christina Hoff Sommers. In Who Stole Feminism? she contends that women have been victimized by “gender” feminists—self-interested, elite, privileged actors who pit women against men (1995). She further chastises feminists’ alleged preoccupation with pain and oppression and argues that most women are not represented by feminists, either within the academy or in national organizations. A resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Sommers’s research has been supported by conservative donors like the John M. Olin Foundation. She has worked closely with IWF and gives speeches through CBLPI’s speakers series. Scholars like Daphne Patai and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese also attack women’s studies and the supposed liberal bias of academia in general (Fox-Genovese 1992; Patai 2000).

Whatever their particular intent, the advocacy of anti-feminist women has been premised on the idea that feminism is too radical and threatens a preferred gendered order of social relations. Although their activities have differed in approaches, goals, and rhetoric, these women have been integral to conservative movement politics. As women who have organized as women to oppose feminist advocacy, they are mostly bound by gender-based visions of maintaining a culture premised on women’s social and biological differences from men. Appeals to maternalism are often featured, with women claiming legitimacy as actors through their status as mothers, or by arguing that feminism devalues women’s roles as primary caretakers (LaHaye and Crouse 2012; Venker and Schlafly 2011). This chapter’s subsequent sections highlight two political movements in which anti-feminist women’s activism has been central: efforts to block the passage of the ERA and campaigns to oppose legal abortion.

Although the quest for the ERA began in 1923, the fight for its passage gained significant momentum in the 1970s (Conover and Gray 1983; Mansbridge 1986). The proposed amendment, written to specifically protect citizens from sex discrimination, read: “[e]‌quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Initially, prospects for its passage were good. The amendment sailed through Congress in 1972 with bipartisan support and proceeded to the states for ratification. Twenty-two states quickly supported it, and eight more followed. By 1979, thirty-five of the thirty-eight states needed to ratify it were on board; proponents then successfully lobbied Congress to extend the time needed to get the other three states (the original seven-year deadline was extended to 1982). Despite the extension and national public opinion support, the proposed amendment was not ratified.

To understand the demise of the ERA, it is critical to appreciate the role of women activists and gendered norms in promoting its defeat. On the surface, it seems counterintuitive that women would oppose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that codifies protection against sex discrimination. However, political context, anxiety over social and cultural change, a growing conservative movement, and savvy gender-identified organizing led to its death. After feminists had some success in moving the amendment forward, they encountered an intense countermovement, in part generated by Phyllis Schlafly (Critchlow 2005; Lo 1982; Mansbridge 1986; Marshall 1991, 1985). A former congressional candidate and Republican Party activist, Schlalfy started publishing the Phyllis Schlafly Report in 1967 and, as noted earlier, subsequently founded the conservative Eagle Forum in 1972, an organization she continued to oversee until her death in 2016 at the age of 92 (Critchlow 2005; Felsenthal 1981; Marshall 1991). Until the ERA, Schlafly had not really engaged in explicit anti-feminist activism, but through Eagle Forum and her STOP-ERA campaign (STOP stands for “Stop Taking Our Privileges”), Schlafly ran a well-organized, top-down operation to block passage of the amendment (Critchlow 2005).

As Berry convincingly argues in her book on the ERA, it is extremely difficult to pass constitutional amendments (1986). Conditions at both the national and state level must be amenable, and sustained activism is essential. While national public opinion favored passage of the ERA and gave it some momentum (Mansbridge 1986), more localized views, especially in Southern states that still needed to ratify it, were not as supportive (Critchlow and Stachecki 2008). Given the necessity of passing the amendment in three-quarters of all states, generating public opinion and activism in these realms rendered them critical sites of contestation (Critchlow and Stachecki 2008). Opponents, especially the adroit Schlafly, ably took advantage of these conditions and targeted states where backing was weak or wavered (Burris 1983; Critchlow and Stachecki 2008). Public opinion, however, was not the only critical variable. It was incumbent upon Schlafly and others to mobilize women to take action. Having women speak out against an amendment regarding sex discrimination gave ERA opposition more legitimacy than if only men were engaged in this claims-making process. To this end, Schlafly marshalled concerns over gender role changes and invoked her own gendered identity to do so. Beverly LaHaye, who founded Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1978, did the same. On its website, CWA recounts that mobilizing women to oppose the ERA was central to the founding of this conservative women’s organization:

Beverly LaHaye watched a television interview of Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women. Realizing that Friedan claimed to speak for the women of America, Beverly LaHaye was stirred to action. She knew the feminists’ anti-God, anti-family rhetoric did not represent her beliefs, nor those of the vast majority of women. The first meeting to educate and alert Christian women on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), led by Beverly LaHaye, occurred in San Diego, California. More than 1,200 attended. This was the springboard to beginning Concerned Women for America as a national organization.⁴

Tactically, opponents also employed traditional feminine practices such as giving homemade pies and breads to state legislators to sway lawmakers and reify the importance of domestic work. Marshall (1985) argues they also did so to appear less militant than their pro-ERA counterparts.

As Mansbridge shows, a significant challenge for ERA proponents was to summon activism for codifying an abstract or symbolic right (1986). Lacking the ability to specify how the ERA would concretely change and affect women’s lives, proponents faced a difficult battle persuading the public. Conversely, Schlafly and others referenced specific gendered issues like women being drafted, men leaving their wives without child support and alimony, abortions being federally funded, and gays and lesbians gaining more rights. Contextually, the fight for the ERA took place during a time when civil rights, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements were all gaining momentum and having marked successes. In this political climate, “[t]‌aken for granted social boundaries and hierarchies” were being challenged (Staggenborg 1998: 63) and conservative women were becoming increasingly anxious. Schlafly’s focus on issues that reflected this anxiety was successful. Ultimately, the debate over the ERA tapped into competing meanings over womanhood and gender roles, with those favoring traditional heterosexual families and essentialist notions of women eager to fight its passage (Foss 1979; Marshall 1985; Staggenborg 1998). Schlafly and other opponents, including conservative women’s groups like CWA, rallied women by exploiting this unease and arguing that defeating the ERA would prevent more “catastrophic changes” (Foss 1979: 287). They also claimed that men were inherently immoral and that passage of the ERA would enable husbands to shirk their responsibilities to their wives (Klatch 1987). As Schlafly wrote,

Most husbands do support their wives because of love, but the high divorce rate proves that many husbands do not love their wives. Love may go out the window, but the obligation remains, just as children remain. ERA would remove that obligation. (1973)

These messages hit a nerve among certain groups of women, but were rejected by others. For example, Burris (1983) found that women with higher potential for economic independence (i.e., those with more formal education), tended to be ERA proponents and were not swayed by Schlalfy’s arguments. Those women who felt more vulnerable, were full-time homemakers, held lower prestigious jobs, or had less income and/or less education were more likely to be opposed (Burris 1983; Chaeftz and Dworkin 1987). Rhetoric claiming that men could abandon their families and related financial duties resonated differently with women depending on their class status. To reinforce this, opponents blamed feminists for trying to make women’s lives more difficult (Klatch 1987), framed the ERA as a burden not a right, and argued that the ERA “would wipe out the most basic and precious legal right homemakers now enjoy: the right to be a full-time homemaker” (quoted in Marshall 1985: 356). Compounding these explicit anti-feminist arguments, Schlafly and others claimed that feminists were miserable, whiny, and disgruntled (Marshall 1985) and did not represent women. In doing so, the countermovement she spearheaded constructed anti-feminist women as those who could truly speak to women’s interests.

The intersection of race and gender also shaped how women viewed the ERA. For both men and women, support for ERA was much higher among non-Whites than among Whites (Brady and Tedin 1976; Burris 1983). Scholars also found that White women who opposed the ERA also opposed civil rights, school busing, and affirmative action (Burris 1983). Conversely, the “greater sensitivity of minorities to the rhetoric of equal rights” (Burris 1983: 314) meant that women of color tended to support the ERA’s passage. Understanding women’s attitudes toward the ERA thus requires attention to how race and class intersect with gender.

ERA adversaries also successfully employed gendered appeals to mobilize new constituencies—notably, conservative White religious women who had not been particularly politically active before the ERA ratification battle (Arrington and Kyle 1978; Brady and Tedin 1976; Burris 1983; Critchlow 2005; Tedin 1977). Evangelical women, especially in the South, “provided an ideological orientation that framed the battle of many of these women,” who perceived social and cultural changes to reflect a secular turn in the United States (Critchlow and Stachecki 2008: 167). The U.S. Supreme Court ruling making abortion legal in Roe v. Wade intensified religiously conservative women’s antithetical feelings about the ERA, as leaders claimed that “ERA would put abortion rights into the U.S. Constitution, and make abortion funding a new constitutional right.”⁵

Ideologically, there was consistency among these issues and activists, but Schlafly’s past political experience and connections were central to her ability to link them and rally women to work against the ERA (Critchlow 2005; Marshall 1985). The battle against the ERA also helped revive conservative movement politics (Critchlow 2005) and, as noted, mobilized White women who were already conservative on such issues as civil rights, states’ rights, and opposition to social welfare spending (Burris 1983; Lo 1982; see also Boles 1979, who suggests these positions are also linked to racial attitudes). Indeed, public opinion showed that women who opposed the ERA were more conservative overall (Brady and Tedin 1976; Burris 1983). Although social conservative causes and activists were expertly joined by Schlafly and others, economic conservatives also opposed the ERA. For instance, Schlafly’s argument that the ERA would “take away important rights and powers of the states”⁶ helped to recruit those opposed to federal government solutions.

The demise of the ERA was multifaceted and complex, but likely would not have occurred without Schlafly and her mobilization of anti-feminist women (Critchlow 2005). Ironically, their gender-conscious countermovement organizing undermined feminist attempts to institutionalize specific legal protections for women, demonstrating the necessity for scholars and activists to disentangle the conflation between feminist and women’s interests. The next section offers further evidence for this claim.

Like opposition to the ERA, women’s engagement with pro-life efforts and organizations did not happen in a vacuum. Indeed, the history of abortion politics shapes and continues to shape how and why women get involved and how they frame their positions (Burns 2005; Meyer and Staggenborg 2008; Munson 2008; Staggenborg 1998). For example, anti-feminist activism against the ERA tapped into and helped mobilize anti-feminist opposition to legal abortion. Like ERA, the rise of the New Right also provided resources and muscle to pro-life activism (Ziegler 2013).

The pro-life movement began in full force as a countermovement in the late 1960s to challenge pro-choice successes at the state level (Lo 1982; Meyer and Staggenborg 2008; Woliver 1998). Currently, women are a majority among pro-life activists (Kelly 2012) and have been deeply involved since the movement’s early days (Burns 2005; Conover and Gray 1983; Luker 1984; Munson 2008; Woliver 1998). Many national pro-life organizations are currently headed by women (e.g., American Life League, American United for Life, Feminists for Life, National Right to Life Committee, Susan B. Anthony List). Generally, these groups lobby for legislation to limit access to abortion and/or make abortion illegal, and oppose federal funding of most domestic and international family planning programs. While many pro-life groups are single-issue organizations, multi-issue women’s groups, including CWA and Eagle Forum, have also been actively involved. Their positions on reproductive health issues are consistent with socially conservative views about fetal rights and the “sanctity of life” (Daniels 1993; Roth 1999), but pro-life women also hold that support for abortion and family planning programs hurts women. That is, they are gender conscious in their explication of why they oppose abortion and frame their messages to reflect these gendered perspectives. To this end, pro-life women and the groups to which they belong have distinct gender-identified tactics and goals.

This pro-women framing is not inconsequential. How abortion gets defined has implications for both pro-life and pro-choice movements (Rohlinger 2002; Woliver 1998). Talking as women, about women’s interests, enables pro-life groups and actors to tackle pro-choice advocates who have long argued for attention to women’s bodies and lives in reproductive health-care debates. In other words, these women’s activism demonstrates how a group of “gender-conscious” women can be anti-abortion and do so from a “woman’s perspective” (Kelly 2012, 2014; Rose 2011; Schreiber 2002; Siegel 2008; Ziegler 2013). In her study of women working at crisis pregnancy centers (i.e., facilities aimed at convincing pregnant women not to have abortions), for example, Kelly finds that gender essentialism and consciousness are unique resources that give pro-life women activists agency. She describes their work as a “woman-centered” venture that provides these religiously conservative women authority over men in this realm (2012: 224). Women-centered pro-life activism may mobilize those who are ambivalent about abortion and its effects on women. Public opinion polls do show that many people favor some restrictions, but most are reluctant to support laws that make the procedure completely illegal.⁷ Pro-life women activists tap into this uncertainty about abortion and challenge the feminist assertion that, when it comes to abortion rights, it is in the interest of women to be pro-choice.

One way that pro-life activists appeal to women is to translate social conservative arguments into those that are more consistent with feminist claims about women’s health. This has been a consciously articulated strategy on the part of these activists (Kelly 2012; Rose 2011; Schreiber 2002), as noted by CWA on its website:

when pro-abortion advocates understand we are not attacking women, they are more open to communication. Focusing on the woman begins conversation on abortion in the public arena. If you help the mother, you help the baby.

(Hurlburt 2001)

Pro-life women thus signal that opposition to abortion protects women’s physical and emotional well-being. In this logic, women are “abortion’s second victims” who will suffer from “post-abortion syndrome” (PAS) and are also at greater risk of diseases like breast cancer (Wadkins 1999: 2). Likened to post-traumatic stress disorder, PAS is shorthand for what pro-life activists claim are a litany of negative physical and psychological effects that women face after having abortions. For example, CWA writes that

[p]‌ost-abortive women may: require psychological treatment/therapy, suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, experience sexual dysfunction, engage in suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide, become heavy or habitual smokers, abuse alcohol and illegal drugs, acquire eating disorders, neglect or abuse other children, have relationship problems, have repeat abortions, re-experience the abortion through flashbacks, be preoccupied with becoming pregnant to replace the aborted child [and] experience anxiety and guilt.

(Wadkins 1999: 6–7)

Feminists have responded by noting that the “syndrome” is not recognized by any association of medical professionals, nor have researchers been able to demonstrate the level of emotional distress that advocates claim abortion causes (Bazelon 2007; Cooper 2001). Nonetheless, speaking as women about women’s health interests enables pro-life women to tackle pro-choice advocates, who have long argued for attention to women’s bodies and lives in reproductive health-care debates. CWA, for example, declared of the pro-choice National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League that “any campaign that pushes abortion promotes the pain abortion inflicts on women.”⁸ Invoking women’s health needs in these cases neither overrides nor overshadows pro-life women’s concerns about fetal rights. Nor are these narratives antithetical to their religious missions. Instead, they coexist with and expand the boundaries of conservative arguments about abortion.

By framing abortion in terms of women’s emotional well-being, pro-life women adeptly shift the focus from religious discourse about the fetus to one that might resonate with any woman who has had or who may choose to have an abortion. In contrast, although pro-choice groups may not deny that having an abortion is difficult for a woman, they often fail to directly address the challenges women face after having the procedure for fear of drawing attention to the downside of the process. Since feminists have long argued for redirecting attention from fetal rights to women’s health concerns in abortion debates (Daniels 1993; Roth 1999), framing the issue in terms of women’s interests enables pro-life women to counter feminist claims.

Whether or not women’s health frames have actually mobilized more women has not yet been tested, but pro-life women’s health frames have been cited by candidates, legislators, and even judges, suggesting that they have impacted policy outcomes (Kelly 2012, 2014; Siegel 2008; Thomas 2012). Perhaps most disturbingly from a pro-choice perspective, Justice Anthony Kennedy referenced this view in his opinion in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision, which upheld a federal ban on a later term abortion procedure. In the ruling, Kennedy argued,

While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.

(cited in Kelly 2014: 24)

It is not only national organizations and activists who appropriate women’s interests frames to advocate pro-life positions. In the United States there are approximately 2,300 crisis pregnancy centers (CPC), run by an estimated 40,000 women who serve over one million women annually (Kelly 2012). Kelly documents how their work is both service oriented (many of the CPCs try to connect women with social services) and intensely political. CPCs are explicitly pro-life and the women involved with them aim to convince pregnant women to forgo abortions. Women who work in CPCs are mostly religious conservatives who believe that abortion “violates a universal feminine nature centered upon nurturance and motherhood” (Kelly 2014: 18). Like those who opposed the ERA, these activists “accept culturally specific definitions of womanhood and motherhood espoused by evangelical Christianity” (Kelly 2014: 20) and promote essentialist notions of womanhood. Like their counterparts in national organizations, they try to convince women that abortions cause PAS, in part because denying childbirth violates women’s natural desires to be mothers. Pro-life feminist Fox-Genovese summarizes the sentiment as such:

Bearing children is what women can do and men cannot, and what makes perfect “equality” between the sexes a deceptive goal. By trivializing and even denigrating women’s ability to bear children, legalized abortion has stripped women of their distinct dignity as women; it has shredded the primary tie among women of different classes, races, ethnicities and national origins. (2004: 59)

She concludes that “legalized abortion begins as a war against women” (60).

In addition to framing opposition to abortion in terms of women’s health and maternal issues, women pro-life activists have appropriated feminism to promote pro-life views and policies (Ziegler 2013). In these cases, gender identity is still central, as is an attempt to co-opt feminist activism and history. In the 1970s, pro-life feminists were generally more unified with feminist movement organizations and goals, but the rise of the New Right and other conservative organizations propelled a shift (Ziegler 2013). As noted, pro-life movement organizations and advocates, including those identified as pro-life feminists, joined forces with other conservatives to take advantage of collective resources and momentum. This alignment means that pro-life feminists are now more consistently affiliated with conservative movements and the Republican Party.

Pro-choice feminists would consider pro-life feminism to be oxymoronic. However, groups like Susan B. Anthony List (SBA-List), a pro-life political action committee, maintains otherwise. SBA-List contends that our feminist foremothers, including U.S. suffragist Susan B. Anthony, opposed abortion and thus, opposition to abortion is actually pro-woman and ultimately feminist. Like those claiming that opposition to abortion is a women’s health issue, framing anti-abortion policies as being feminist counteracts pro-choice feminist claims that they represent women’s interests. Such reasoning is elucidated on SBA-List’s website:

Did you know that many of our nation’s most legendary women leaders were pro-life? The often untold truth of history is that the very women who fought to earn the right to vote also promoted a consistent respect for human life. Courageous women leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton recognized that authentic women’s rights could never be built upon the broken rights of innocent unborn children. They believed that abortion was just a tool of oppression used against women.⁹

SBA-List president Marjorie Dannenfelser labels this perspective as “authentic feminism”—a feminism that represents women who want to be “inclusive of the other human beings in her life … the unborn child, certainly her children, certainly her husband” (Schreiber 2015). “Authentic feminism” derives from Pope John Paul II’s theological proclamations related to the Catholic Church’s expectations of women’s roles¹⁰ and may mobilize Catholic women. It can also attract women who are pro-life but might support feminist policies (e.g., paid family leave) to groups like SBA-List. Indeed, Dannenfelser was recruited to start SBA-List by a former leader of Feminists for Life (FFL), a group that supports some feminist economic policies but mostly works with conservatives to oppose legal abortion.¹¹

The history and current state of pro-life women’s activism is broad and multilayered. Pro-life women run national organizations, CPCs, and political action committees. They seek to influence women through elections, service provision, and in public debates. Acting as women and making representative claims about women’s interests ground much of their work. While they have not secured sweeping and decisive outcomes like anti-ERA advocates, they have had some success at the state level and even in national battles over issues like late-term abortions and federal funding of women’s reproductive health.

This chapter has provided an overview of the gendered organizing of anti-feminist, anti-ERA and pro-life activists. As noted, these countermovement activists seek legitimacy as representatives of women’s interests, and their actions reflect this. Their efforts should be regarded as dynamic, and it is thus important to recognize how they interact with, and respond to, their conservative allies and their feminist opponents (Lo 1982; Marshall 1995; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996, 2008). In the cases presented here, conservative women negotiate between engaging in feminist-inspired strategies, such as promoting women’s issues and interests, while at the same time refuting the credibility of the feminist movement. In addition, they aim to appeal to their respective conservative constituencies and allies, while seeking to mobilize a broad range of women, including women who have benefited from feminist goals and achievements (Marshall 1995; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996; Zald and Useem 1987).

Although scholars have offered critical insights into these movements, further research would be beneficial. As anti-feminist women run for office and generally become more involved in electoral politics, studies comparing what issues they support and how they fare relative to feminists would provide important data. Specifically, scholars could examine how conservative and feminist women invoke their gendered identities and how (or if) this affects electoral outcomes. In addition, research should explore how conservative women vote and if candidates who explicitly frame issues in terms of women’s interests benefit from their strategy. In other words, would the gender-conscious strategies of anti-ERA and pro-life women activists also work for conservative women candidates and office holders?

In terms of specific issues, as documented here, much has already been written on the ERA. Nonetheless, current surveys that home in on how different women view federal legal protections and women’s rights, with particular attention to ideological differences and how these intersect with race and class, would provide important data about social and cultural changes and how movements could mobilize these shifts. For example, White women were more likely than women of color to oppose the ERA; does that trend still hold? And if so, why? And even more broadly, why might conservative politics appeal to White women? In 2008, for example, a majority of White women supported the Republican McCain/Palin ticket for U.S. president/vice president.¹² Future research could explore why these women choose these candidates over Democrats.

As noted, race and class differences factored into support for ERA. Understanding this aspect of conservative politics has implications for evaluating other identity-based conservative efforts, and how race, gender, and ideology intersect. While their numbers are small, there do exist some national conservative organizations that center around racial concerns. For example, the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), led by the former director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Linda Chavez, is “devoted exclusively to the promotion of colorblind equal opportunity and racial harmony.”¹³ CEO takes conservative positions on issues of affirmative action, immigration, and bilingual education. Groups such as this one specifically seek to represent and organize people of color to support their conservative positions. Conservative women of color must convince lawmakers and the public that they really represent the identity group for which they claim to speak. That is, they bear a unique burden, one that differs from their White conservative counterparts. For example, in opposing affirmative action, the predominantly White, conservative Heritage Foundation might frame its message differently from a group of conservative African Americans claiming to speak on behalf of people from that racial community. For now, there is a lack of attention to this phenomenon (for an exception, see Dillard 2001), which leaves us with incomplete explanations for why conservatives act as they do. Future research should attend to how ideology intersects with race, gender, class, and sexuality and could shed even more light on the tactics that matter to groups making identity-based claims and the competing influences that shape organizational actions.

In terms of women who work to oppose abortion, studies assessing the impact of pro-life women’s health, maternal, and feminist frames would yield important findings about the relative effectiveness of these strategies and how women understand their relationship to the issue. Comparing the influences on women versus men would also provide insights into how gender matters in terms of resonance and issue salience. Finally, an intersectional approach to understanding pro-life women’s activism would fill in scholarly gaps. Indeed, we know very little about how intersectionality factors into pro-choice politics. Kimala Price argues that because of lack of attention to issues of racism and classism, for example, “many women of color, as well as poor, working-class, and lesbian women, believe that their needs have not been adequately addressed in the mainstream ‘pro-choice’ movement” (2011: 556). Given this sentiment, do conservative women of color, for example, feel the same about the pro-life movement? Do they too feel that their experiences are overlooked or undermined by middle-class White activists?

This chapter has provided an analytic review of literature on anti-feminist, anti-ERA, and pro-life women. Some of the specific policy battles are now decades old, but their relevance to understanding contemporary identity politics is still fresh and significant.