Without abortion, women can't be free.
It's murder.
America's anti-abortion movement is gaining ground fast
and it's white evangelical Christians on the front line.
We will see Roe v Wade consigned to the the ash heap of history,
where it belongs.
I promise you.
They are a strident force in the pro-life movement
but not so long ago this group was completely indifferent
on the issue of abortion.
So what happened?
This is how a group of men turned millions of disengaged Americans
into the most powerful political force in the country.
It's hard to believe now but abortion hasn't always been the political firestorm
that it is today.
Early on, before Reagan, the Republican party
was actually more abortion-friendly than Democrats.
The Republican party was conservative, didn't like state intervention
and people's personal lives and so forth.
This meant that in 1973 the landmark Roe v Wade decision
would legalise abortion across the country.
The decision to end a pregnancy belongs to the woman and her doctor
not the government.
The only significant group to object was the Catholic church
and they had always done so.
White evangelicals were then, as now, the biggest religious group in the country?
They made up 26% of the population.
But unlike today, they were ambivalent on the issue of abortion
and politics in general.
Evangelicals regarded abortion as a Catholic issue.
And it was really irrelevant to who they were and what they cared about.
They were more interested in evangelism, that is bringing others into the faith,
and they had really no interest in politics.
Politics was dirty, was considered Satan's ground to some degree
and they didn't want to be involved in politics at all.
Certainly not in any organised way.
Until a man called Paul Weyrich got involved.
It made no sense to me.
They need to be unified.
And I began to think, what could you do?
Political operator Paul Weyrich team up with influential preacher Jerry Falwell.
The two men looked at churches filled with believers
and saw political and financial opportunity.
The 60s were a time of political revolution,
with the civil rights movement, feminism and the LGBT cause
pushing their way into mainstream politics.
And Weyrich's mission was to crush the liberalism that was threatening conservative white America.
Paul Weyrich really was a visionary because he saw the potential way back in the 1960s.
Weyrich and Falwell first managed to mobilise Evangelicals when changing laws
around school segregation put all-white Christian academies at risk.
The two of them really came together to form the basis for the religious right.
When the evangelicals lost the segregation fight,
the two men were on the hunt
for any issue to keep the momentum going.
Paul Weyrich said, as I recall, that there was a conference call among these various leaders
after they had mobilised and somebody said,
'We have the makings here of a political movement,
what other issues can we talk about?'
And several people made suggestions and finally a voice at the end of one of the lines said:
'How about abortion?'
So I think, you know, I think our family was involved in
helping to launch a horror show.
Weyrich and Falwell enlisted the help of philosopher Evangelist and cult figure,
Francis Schaeffer.
My father Francis Schaeffer was a well-known evangelical leader.
And I made a film series with him called Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
And we went on the road with this series and had a series of seminar tours
that put it in front of about 150,000 people in 20 different venues.
It is a human rights issue, an issue that concerns the human rights of unborn babies
who by the hundreds of thousands are being murdered.
I flew around this country in Jerry Falwell's private jet.
We have a threefold primary responsibility,
number one, get people saved, number two, get them baptised,
number three, get them registered to vote.
In just a few years, abortion went from a non-issue
to a massive moral concern for millions of evangelicals
and this passive group was transformed into a political force.
This gave them an entree into places like the White House and other places
because they could bring millions of voters with them and then the thing became a juggernaut.
The biggest person that we helped talk into taking a stand was Ronald Reagan.
He went from the governor who had legalised abortion in California to becoming a pro-life advocate
for only one reason.
Polling indicated that the Reagan campaign was still losing rather badly
and it's at that point, early in the fall,
that they began to step up the rhetoric on abortion.
I happen to believe from all the study that I have been able to do,
all the information that I have been able to get,
that when you interrupt a pregnancy you are taking a human life.
And that appears to have helped them with evangelicals
going into the election day in November.
Ronald Reagan won the election.
And in the year 1980, America had its first president with the pro-life agenda.
This massive shift in abortion sentiment among evangelicals
and then the president himself, proved that Weyrich and Falwell had realised their vision.
They had created a religious right that they could use
to set the political agenda for an entire nation.
Paul Weyrich I think was a … I sometimes call him an evil genius.
He was a visionary and he saw this as being a potent electoral force
capable of redirecting the political direction of the country.
And I think in a large measure, his vision, his aspirations have come about.
1980 is when we see the political triumph of this movement getting an important seat
at the Republican table,
and they've been there ever since.
You really think about Christ and redemption? All people are precious.
I was wrong in the past, this was while I was governor.
I'm not going to apologise for the fact I became pro-life,
Ronald Reagan took the same course.
I stand for the sanctity of life.
It's no secret that I'm pro-life.
As the political power and the ability to deliver of the pro-life movement became so clear,
there just was no place anymore in the Republican party for people who were pro-choice.
There used to be a group called Republican Women for Choice,
I mean, they disbanded,
I mean, they just don't exist anymore.
I'm very pro-choice.
And we are proudly defending the sanctity of life.
There's no way to undo the damage that we did.
I mean, you know, I look at Donald Trump
and part of my brain says, 'Part of this is your fucking fault.'
The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor,
and then the doctor and the mother
determine whether or not they will execute the baby.
I don't think so.
I mean, this is a case study of … it doesn't matter who you are,
or what you personally have done, if you make clear that you support the pro-life position,
they will support you.
Abortion is the law of the land.
And we are trying to change that.
Three states are trying to overturn Roe v Wade right now.
I think it's very possible that the supreme court,
given its current composition, will reverse the Roe v Wade position.
However, should that happen I think the backlash would be furious.
I think the backlash probably has an even greater potential of bending American politics,
than any action by the part of supreme court.
Yes, I would say that millions of white American evangelicals have been manipulated
in ways they don't understand.
And evangelicals, their story is a footnote to a larger story now.
Can we ever depoliticise abortion?
My imagination stops there.
I don't think we can.
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