National Right to Life Committee
Worried about the growing climate of pro-choice politics, members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops recruited other pro-life activists to form the National Right to Life Committee(NRLC) in 1968. [1]The goal of the NRLC was to become an umbrella organization for a national right to life movement, providing material support and information to local and state organizations. By mid-1972, the NRLC had accomplished this goal, with approximately 250 local and state groups affiliated, the NRLC was recognized as the national voice of the pro-choice movement.[2] The NRLC supported a variety of movements, notably a founding member of their board organized the March for Life. The March for Life was a demonstration in Washington on the anniversary of Roe and has continued annually to this day.
Besides supporting activism, the first major initiative of the NRLC was to push for a ‘Human Life Amendment”, an amendment to the constitution founding the ‘right to life’ as a human right. The NRLC was successful in getting the legislation introduced to the house and senate, with many of their members being invited to testify in a series of hearings to congress. The Human Life Amendment was ultimately rejected by a Senate Subcommittee 5-2. The NRLC subsequently began to realize the difficulty and amending the constitution and adopted a new tactic of ‘incrementalism’.[3]
Quickly becoming the primary method of the pro-life movement, Incrementalism aimed to achieve incremental restrictions on abortion as opposed to large difficult changes like amending the constitution. Mobilized by their newfound political aim the NRLC (as many other pro-life groups did) created a Political Action Committee (PAC). The NRLCPAC did not rigidly support conservative anti-abortion activists but rather had a strategy of supporting anyone who was mildly pro-life and was running against a pro-choice candidate. These results are difficult to measure, but one indicator is the overwhelming support the 1980 Hyde Amendment, which was approved by Congress in a 292-100 vote.[4]
This article describes how various antiabortion groups, including the NRLC, were campaigning against a pro-life Senator, George Mcgovern. Towards the end, the article discusses Mcgovern's belief that anti-abortion groups are the ones primarily organizing and assisting his opponent, " I think the right-to-lifers brought Larry Schumaker up here from Texas and ae providing the organizational strength, the bodies, everything". This is an example of the 'incrementalist' strategy that began to be developed in the mid-1970s and pioneered by groups like the NRLC.