The truth behind organized religious opposition to Roe and abortion

[Timeflyer]

From book The Power Worshippers, by Katherine Stewart, 2019, chapter 3, “Inventing Abortion.”
“As the historian and author Randal Balmer writes, ‘It wasn’t until 1979---a full six years after Roe---that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.’
“More than a decade later, Weyrich recalled the moment well. At a conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by a religious right organization called the Ethics and Public Policy Center (to which Balmer had been invited), Weyrich reminded his fellow culture warriors of the facts: ‘Let us remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.”
(Author Randal Balmer wrote of this in his book Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America.)