Mildred Jefferson and the Right to Life Revolution of 1976

Dr. Mildred Faye Jefferson was an African American Republican who became a pivotal leader of the American conservative movement when she presided over the National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion organization in the United States, from 1974 to 1978. As president, Jefferson prioritized a lobbying campaign to cut federal Medicaid funding of abortion for poor, minority, and underage women. This paper focuses on Mildred Jefferson and the anti-abortion Medicaid campaign to illustrate how conservative minority women employed categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality to break down existing political coalitions and forge new alliances, paving the way for the Reagan Revolution of 1980.