- The Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion.
- IRS policies threatened the tax-exempt status of private religious schools.
Among other factors, two specific controversies drew evangelicals into politics. First, in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that laws prohibiting abortion violated a woman's constitutional right to privacy. The decision had powerful implications for gender relations, women's health, and family life (forty-six states had some statutory limitation on abortion in 1973). To evangelicals, who deplored many of those implications, Roe made the federal government an active agent in the spread of sinful behavior. The ensuing abortion controversy also forged an important alliance between evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics two traditional foes in American culture and politics. As the decade wore on, political controversy about race also pulled evangelicals into the political fray. Evangelical Christians mobilized in opposition to IRS policies that threatened the tax-exempt status of private religious schools over questions of racial integration.