Building a “World Coalition for Life”: abortion, population control and transnational pro-life networks, 1960-1990

Abstract

This thesis traces the emergence and evolution of transnational pro-life Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) between the late 1960s and early 1990s. The U.S. pro-life movement is generally understood almost exclusively in terms of changes to domestic laws, but such depictions fail to acknowledge the long-standing and at times politically powerful transnational alliances that pro-life activists forged from the 1970s onwards. Within the constellation of the U.S. Christian Right, it was these groups that have provoked a paradigm shift in the politics of family life, particularly with respect to U.S. foreign policy. U.S.-based pro-life activists found it difficult to secure tangible legislative gains even after Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration. While some groups vented their frustrations by turning to direct action protests, others sought out a third way, building on transnational networks forged by an international coalition of pro-life activists since the 1970s. U.S. pro-life activists were not simply exporting their domestic cultural conflicts, however; instead, local conservatives in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa were not only receptive to overtures from U.S. pro-life activists, but often requested their assistance. The reasons for this openness to transnational collaboration can be found in globalization's impact on local communities worldwide from the 1970s onward. I therefore contend that globalization provided the catalysts for the emergence of the global pro-life, pro-family movement as a surprisingly powerful player in national and global political arenas by the 1990s. This thesis therefore complicates prevailing depictions of the growth of transnational civil society by demonstrating that globalization not only gave rise to progressive NGOs, but also spawned a “dark side” of global organizations that participated equally actively and adamantly in local, national, and global political arenas. To comprehend the persistence of moral conservatism as a driving force in both transnational civil society and U.S. society and politics, historians must therefore endeavour to situate these cultural and political phenomena within their broader global context if the U.S. pro-life movement was, as Ronald Reagan suggested, the “conscience of the nation,” then global pro-family NGOs certainly aspired to be the “conscience of the world.”