Absolute Convictions - Moral Decay - Abortion

"Absolute Convictions" Buffalo, Press believes, was "just the kind of place" where anti-abortion groups could attract a following. By the 1970s, the city's once-powerful unions had far fewer members and much less clout. As the gap between rich and poor grew, conservative strategists used culture wars to trump class consciousness. They linked the insecurity of blue-collar Americans to the "snooty elite" that supported abortion rights, homosexuality and gun control. Entrenched in the mainstream media, universities and government, this elite was responsible for the nation's moral decline.

A realignment occurred in the 1970s and 1980s as working-class Americans, in Buffalo and around the country, gravitated "from the brotherhood of labor to the fellowship of Christ" and from Roosevelt to Reagan

future Buffalo, New York, mayor Jimmy Griffin. "I suppose I'm a square," Griffin said around the same time, "but I see these plans to liberalize abortion as another sign of the permissiveness, the decay of our society."

The other pragmatists in this story are the patients, several of whom Press interviews at his father's clinic. Catholic "Jessica" had passed out pictures of aborted fetuses to high school classmates a few years back. Her positive pregnancy test had changed her views. She tells Press that, at age 19, "I'm just not ready to be a mom." The two others, already mothers, can't afford to add another kid's worth of expenses to their debt. To these women, abortion is not a symbol.