The distinctive contribution of ‘Pity For Evil’, however, is that feminism need not be understood as synonymous with pro-abortion politics. A more historically rooted feminism grounds the value and dignity of women in their capacity for virtue and care, not in their ability to mimic male sexual appetites. In spite of the lip service paid to diversity, the progressive left has become intolerant of self-described feminists who oppose unrestricted access to abortion. Were Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Ida B. Wells alive today, they would politely be asked to refrain from joining the Women’s March, if for no other reason than their stance on abortion.

The organizers of the “Women’s March” made headlines in 2017 when they removed pro-life feminists as sponsors, prompting more than one observer to note with irony that if Susan B. Anthony were living today, she would politely be asked to step aside and let the “real feminists” have their day. As thousands gather again to march in January to purportedly “secure abortion access and counter far-right extremism,” the question that must be asked is this: Is it anti-woman to be anti-abortion?
This question of the relationship between women’s rights and abortion permeates Monica Klem and Madeleine McDowell’s timely book, Pity For Evil: Abortion, and Women’s Empowerment in Reconstruction America. In it the authors thoroughly and definitively debunk the myth that feminism is historically synonymous with pro-abortion politics. The reality, they argue, is precisely the opposite.
In today’s inhospitable political climate for transgressing woke orthodoxy, Klem and McDowell recall an era when women’s rights and anti-abortion politics went hand in hand.
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For Southern Baptists, adopting a revised and expanded version of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith was not an act of division but a means of ensuring unity. As Mullins explained, he believed it would “clarify the atmosphere and remove the causes of misunderstanding, friction, and apprehension.” The differences between Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions over the past 100 years can be explained many ways—but they cannot be explained apart from the question of confessionalism and the need for doctrinal fidelity. 

One hundred years ago, the nation was gripped by an antagonizing struggle over whether or not a Baptist convention had the authority to disfellowship a church for doctrinal drift. The church in question was the most famous in America—home to the Rockefeller family—and pastored by one of America’s most influential pastors: the brilliant and eloquent Harry Emerson Fosdick. How the Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions responded differently to questions of confessionalism and dissent determined their trajectory for the next century.
The question is, have we learned from their mistakes, or are we doomed to repeat them?
In 1925, the famous Park Avenue Baptist Church of New York City called Harry Emerson Fosdick to succeed the liberal Cornelius Woelfkin as pastor. Though ordained a Baptist, Fosdick had previously been preaching minister at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, until coming under investigation by the local presbytery for his liberal doctrinal views. Fosdick hoped that the autonomous nature of Baptist churches would provide greater freedom for advocating modernist positions.
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