Repeal Politics: The Abortion Debate in Austin, Texas 1960-1973

In the 1960s, Texans engaged in conversations regarding abortion access, wrote to national abortion networks, and demanded local abortion rights chapters’ form in the Lone Star State. Excluded from existing national dialogue, Texans used the advice of national organizations, such as the National Abortion Rights Action Legal (NARAL), to begin their own fight for legalization a decade before Roe v. Wade, but it would take until 1975 for Texans to form their own state-wide abortion rights organization. The exchanges between NARAL and Texans prove that no single type of pro-choice activist emerged; rather the people who wrote to NARAL spanned a variety of backgrounds, differing in age, religious affiliation, race, gender, sexual orientation, and political beliefs. While the political and social history of abortion typically focuses on a battle between conservatives and liberals, presenting it as a legal dispute which depicts democrats as unanimously pro-choice, and republicans as devout anti-choice zealots, the letters between Texans and NARAL from 1960 to 1979 depict a complicated political and social climate, one not automatically polarized by party affiliation. This poster traces the establishment of pro-choice grassroots networks and formal organizations in Texas. Most importantly it analyzes the five most prominent reasons Texans fought for the repeal of abortion regulations: women’s liberation, eugenics, population control, religion, and student activism.