The SBC used to be very pro-Choice in its outlook (compared to now). According to polls conducted by baptist organziations, most baptist pastors were in favor of allowin abortions in certain circumstances.
In 1970, a poll conducted by the Baptist Sunday School Board found that 70 percent of Southern Baptist pastors supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the mother, 64 percent supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity and 71 percent in cases of rape.
Three years later, a poll conducted by the Baptist Standard newsjournal found that 90 percent of Texas Baptists believed their state’s abortion laws were too restrictive.
The 1971 resolution on abortions stated:
“We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
I got this from the Baptist Press, which is the SBCs news service
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/how-southern-baptists-became-pro-life/
So my question is what happened to prompt thsi shift? The article linked explains it was a grassroots movememnt within the SBC that eventually led it in more pro-Life direction.
Can any historians comment.
The film series Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (and companion book) happened.
To back up a little, during his 1972 re-election run, despite Nixon tilting towards a pro-choice or at least indifferent-to-abortion stance, he started actively courting the Catholic vote based on encouragement from his speechwriter Pat Buchanan (they were firmly in the Democrats before -- all those polls about Republican vs. Democrat abortion opinions from the 50s and 60s are a bit deceptive). Despite the consequent mention in the 1976 Republican platform...
We protest the Supreme Court's intrusion into the family structure through its denial of the parents' obligation and right to guide their minor children. The Republican Party favors a continuance of the public dialogue on abortion and supports the efforts of those who seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.
...evangelical Christians had up to that point been unmoved by the issue; the language above was only for them in the term government intrusion.
This was made quite prominent since the IRS was first instructed by Nixon in 1970 to investigate Bob Jones University, where when asked their stance on African-Americans they quite flatly stated they admitted no black students. This culminated in them eventually losing their tax-free status in 1976 (Carter got blamed, even though it wasn't really his doing).
I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.
That's Paul Weyrich, conservative activist and coiner of the words "moral majority" (long before such a thing existed). He had tried, behind the scenes, to get evangelicals to mobilize in politics; essentially, the standpoint beforehand was isolation, but once the "government intrusion" started, they became active.
Weyrich hit upon abortion as an extra issue to gain common ground and leverage, but using it required convincing evangelicals to have the same standpoint as Catholics. He got assistance from a Presbyterian, Francis Schaeffer, who used abortion as evidence of the moral failure of society. He teamed up with pediatric surgeon C. Everett Koop to make the film series. From the book:
What we regard as thinkable and unthinkable about how we treat human life has changed drastically in the West. For centuries Western culture has regarded human life and the quality of the life of the individual as special. It has been common to speak of "the sanctity of human life."
The essential logic of the film was apocalyptic. At about 11 minutes in the first part, a researcher checks on what appears to be some sort of cage. The camera pans slowly to show rows of rabbits, followed by mice, followed by more mice, and more rabbits, and then -- after excruciatingly long -- a human baby in a cage.
This led to arguments that the rise of "humanism" which could only be found by rejecting Christianity. This consequently denied the Bible's truth, leading to the logic that
The human race is indeed an abnormal wart on the smooth face of a silent and meaningless universe.
Essentially, this reframed abortion as part of a "moral threat" to Christianity; that the allowance of abortion allows the train of logic leading to humanism, so abortion itself must be denied.
Schaeffer took the film on tour, and it led to a widespread movement, where he himself noted: "we were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our 'unjust pro-abortion government'." It is even well-regarded as a landmark by evangelicals today. The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, R. Albert Mohler, wrote at the 25th anniversary of the film:
The challenges of the twenty-first century are even greater than those faced in the century before. This should make us even more thankful for the prophetic witness of Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop–and even more determined to contend for life.
...
Moore, A. (ed.) Evangelicals and Presidential Politics: From Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump. (2021). United States: LSU Press.
Sharkey, H. & Green, J. (ed.) The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom. (2021). United States: University of Pennsylvania Press.