“For as long as the religious right has mobilized against abortion, conservative politicians and religious leaders have constructed a narrative of people of faith overwhelmingly opposing abortion, and have asserted the Catholic Church and other religious institutions have always condemned abortion.
This is blatantly untrue, according to both Manson and Ruttenberg.
“This wedding of Catholic identity with anti-abortion politics, it only happened in the last few decades,” Manson said. “It’s a very reductive understanding of Catholicism. The tradition is much richer and more interesting than that.”‘