The change in right wing attitudes towards abortion and contraception (regardless of consent) around 1970's-1980's is remarkable. It used to be promoted as a way to keep "undesirables" from reproducing, e.g. related to the precursor fears that led to what's now known as "white replacement theory." That changed once it was realized that adopting the "righteous" religious basis for anti-abortion activism would be a very useful political tool. And now those same general factions points to disproportionate use of abortion by non-white people as "leftist evil."

I love the history in the article by Jacqueline Antonovich. It’s fascinating. Here are some highlights:

In the early 20th century, leaders of the KKK argued that America was in decline due to the proliferation of not only the genetically unfit but the racially unfit. MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry (n. 8), 133.

Hiram Wesley Evans, the imperial wizard of the Klan in the 1920s, wrote that the “flood of inferior foreigners” had increased illiteracy and crime in the United States. Dawn, November 10, 1923; Rory McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 65.

Stoddard wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, in which he argued that nonwhite populations of the world would soon topple the established white hierarchy through unchecked population growth. “Sayings of Imperial Wizard,” Rocky Mountain American 1, no. 1 (January 30, 1925); Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920).

In Colorado, similar to other western realms, a number of people believed local and state government had been ineffective in combatting vice, crime, and corruption, which they rooted in racial and xenophobic conspiracies. Because of the power and autonomy of their grand dragons, the western Klan was able to place more Klan members in government positions across the region in the early 1920s. Western Realms that placed Klan members into numerous government positions include Washington, Oregon, California, and Texas. See Lay, Invisible Empire in the West (n. 8).

Colorado juvenile court judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey first achieved national prominence for his work with juvenile delinquents in Denver. For twenty-six years, Lindsey presided over the city’s juvenile court, pioneering a compassionate approach to addressing the problem of delinquency.

On the career of Lindsey, see Charles Larsen, The Good Fight: The Life and Times of Ben B. Lindsey (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972); Martin Joel Kretzmann, “The Kid’s Judge: Institutional Innovation in the Early Denver Juvenile Court under Judge Ben B. Lindsey, 1901–1927” (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1997); and Paul Colomy, “Projects and Institution Building: Judge Ben B. Lindsey and the Juvenile Court Movement,” Soc. Problems 42, no. 2 (1995): 191–215.

Lindsey’s juvenile court experiences not only taught him a great deal about the social effects of poverty, but also led him to develop radical views on a number of prevailing societal institutions. He openly advocated for women’s access to birth control, arguing that poverty combined with large families contributed to delinquency and abortion. He later published The Companionate Marriage, a book in which he argued that marriage should not be patriarchal but should be sustained only by mutual respect and affection.

Ben B. Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Companionate Marriage (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City, 1927). See also Christina Simmons, Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 105–77.

Lindsey was also a fierce opponent of political corruption and corporate greed. Beginning in 1909, he coauthored a series of articles for Everybody’s Magazine, accusing Denver mayor Robert W. Speer, U.S. senator Simon Guggenheim, and other political figures of financially colluding with corporate interests, such as the Union Water Company and the Denver Tramway Company. Lindsey referred to this corrosive union between politics and business as “The Beast,” and when published as a book in 1910, The Beast was considered as important as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, selling over half a million copies.

Ben B. Lindsey and Harvey J. O’Higgins, The Beast (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909).

In the two years the organization dominated Colorado government, Klan legislators introduced a total of 1,080 bills for consideration, including attempts to outlaw the use of sacramental wine, a proposal to fire all Catholics and Jews on the University of Colorado faculty, and a push to repeal Colorado’s rarely enforced 1895 civil rights law. The majority of bills, however, focused on reforming the state’s medical and public health legislation, including limiting contraception access, instituting eugenic sterilization, and abolishing then reinstituting state boards and commissions with Klan members at the helm.