ABSTRACT
Abortion was described as a "national sin" in 1984. Seeing abortion as a deadly sin, Christian anti-abortion activists cast themselves as lifesavers. In Denmark, the Lutheran state church accepted the abortion law of 1974, which allows women the choice to seek an abortion during the first trimester. Within a decade ofJane Roe v. Henry Wade, a majority of Protestant denominations had renounced their former liberal attitudes and joined the Catholic Church in the fight against legal abortion. Pope Pius XII categorically condemned the use of contraception because it hinders pregnancy, whether the pregnancy was wanted or unwanted was not the Church's concern. What started the conservative Christian anti-abortion activism was the decriminalization of abortion in the United States. Conservative Protestants joined the Catholics when they realized that legal abortion had become a symbol of their resistance to secularization and what they saw as an increasingly immoral society.
