Post-Roe

I’m currently traveling, so have limited time and brain power to comment. I’ll have much to say when I return, which is probably for the best – let all the knee-jerk reactions work themselves out before spending time on this.

But I will say this:

As many, many scholars on both sides of the abortion issue have pointed out over the decades – including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and countless others who are supportive of abortion rights – there is no explicit “right” to abortion in the Constitution, obviously, and Roe’s (and subsequently Casey’s) imaginative retcon did, first of all, great damage to Constitutional reasoning, federalism and legislative process in this country. Even aside from the specifics of abortion, it will be fascinating to see the fallout from this decision in this regard.

Secondly, the Catholic response to this deserves some sustained examination, and I’ve been pondering this since the leak of the decision some weeks ago.

My short hand for a lot of what I’ve seen is….ackshually….

That is:

People anxious – almost desperately anxious – to separate themselves from the pro-life movement and, of course, as per usual, to castigate it. Abortion is icky, but so ackshually, so are pro-lifers. Please know that I know this. I don’t sit at their table. Did you think you saw me sitting at their table once? That wasn’t me! Promise!

The denigration of pro-life activists is, of course, an ancient pasttime, but it’s been taken up by more and more public Catholics since the Trump presidency – but it preceded that, of course.

As I have said many times, I’m a student of social movements – my graduate work was focused on 19th century feminism and American Christianity – and I am no stranger to the ins and outs and evolution and fractures in any and all movements, including the pro-life movement. In any movement, you will always have disagreements on process, emphasis and goals. In the American pro-life movement, the serious disagreements have been centered on support of legislation and politicians: is supporting half-measures a sell-out or just realistic politics? And of course, a fundamental disagreement about process: should politics or culture be emphasized? You can trace these disagreements back decades.

But there’s never been any disagreement that helping women and their children is central to the pro-life movement. And this is what is so annoying about those in the Catholic world who are busy declaring, Well, ackshually, pro-lifers (eew) you DO know that just because Roe is gone…that doesn’t mean abortion is going to end tomorrow, RIGHT? Ackshually….you DO know that the REAL work starts now, right?

Friends, I have been involved and an observer of the American pro-life movement for forty years now, from local agencies to Feminists for Life in its early days to National Right to Life, and I have never met a single pro-lifer who viewed this issue bombastically or unrealistically. Most of them have been touched by the issue personally in some way and those who are involved on a daily basis are, for the most part, involved with actual women and their children, listening to their stories, embracing them, working tirelessly to find them the support they need, fully aware of the dynamics and tensions in the lives of these girls and women.

The ackshually, you DO know that it’s super important to build a Culture of Life trope reflects either a deep ignorance of what some folks are claiming expertise in or just simple bad faith and virtue-signaling. The conversation about an abortion-resistant culture has been ongoing for fifty years, but a huge part of that conversation has always been the role of law in any potential life-affirming culture. Can you even begin to build a robust culture of life when it has been declared that abortion must be legal through all nine months of pregnancy? Can you?

Because, you see – as people who have reflected for a long time – what Roe did was to institutionalize, at a federal level, atomization and individualism. A caring society built on the common good and care for the most vulnerable cannot be built – especially in a diverse, post-Christian world – when the law of the land undergirds extreme individualism and a definition of “human being worth my care” in terms of “my opinion about this creature’s humanity.”

In other words: a society built on Roe is going to be a society that shrugs at the plight of a pregnant girl or woman and concludes: Your choice, your problem.

And yes, there are issues with the pro-life movement. As I said, there always have been. There are always grifters and weirdos in any movement. But the choice to focus on them instead of the children is…an interesting one.

I will never forget, decades ago, I was in a crisis pregnancy center office, and one of the steady volunteers there, a middle-aged woman who clearly did not agree with everyone else in the office on every detail of politics and society said, in some context or other, “It’s about the kids. That’s what I focus on. Saving a life. This is hard – but it’s not hard.”

It’s a sensibility I also say in the early Feminists for Life, back in the 80’s, women who had to sometimes had to struggle to have their voices heard in the mainstream movement. It didn’t matter what other feminists or some pro-lifers thought. The cause was right, and the women and children deserved truth, justice and a real culture of support.

So no, this is not new. Back then, the ackshually critics shrank from be associated with Reagan, Reaganites and Phyllis Schlafly. Yes guys, I’m super old. I even went to a debate between Schlafly and Sarah Weddington (who represented McCorvey in Roe) at UT – it was a kind of…tour they were doing. Odd now that I think about it. So now it’s Trump and the MAGA devils I guess. But it’s the same dynamic: Placing yourself and your anxiety about how others perceive you ahead of the actual issue at hand.

Of course everyone is and should be open to criticism and critique. As I said, every movement has grifters, opportunists and weirdos. Sometimes right at the front lines. If you see something, say something! That’s a good thing. Being held accountable is always a good thing. Change and adaptation in a movement is inevitable and good. Grifters and counter-witnesses should be encouraged to stand down, to say the least.

And it’s also a good thing to challenge a movement in terms of its associations, both with other movements and other causes. This has been a huge issue within the pro-life movement, and no it’s not new. It’s also where the Catholic holistic sensibility makes a big difference. Getting stuff done requires making uncomfortable alliances and maybe coming to a point where you recognize that “uncomfortable” was actually “damaging.” Yup.

But…do you really think this is a brand new conversation that no one noticed before you posted a 20-slide Instagram story on it from the coffee shop yesterday? I mean, go for it, but also, no you’re not some lone brave prophetic voice here. Maybe benefit from the dialogue on this as it’s been going on for a while. Maybe.

So what I’m seeing, in general, a lack of engagement with these issues as they have been experienced and discussed within the pro-life movement for literally decades. Yes, abortion existed before 1972. Yes, there are realities, well documented, about access to abortion procedures by the poor and the wealthy, realities about the persistence of abortion no matter what the law is, tensions about how to account for those realities in law and policy.

This is not news. Ackshually.

Can we blame social media? Sure. Let’s. Once again, we see the possibility of the amplification of the personal voice and the encouragement to be a personality on the digital stage – to center that as the purpose of one’s presence there, rather than the subject matter you started off sharing or the cause you started out trying to promote.

Folks – it’s okay. I’m not going to get you mixed up with Abby Johnson, if she’s your devil of choice, or Donald Trump, if he’s the one. You can stop the frantic declarations.

So, to conclude this early morning meandering from a kind of an odd guest house in Edinburgh:

Much of the conversation I’ve been seeing about a post-Roe world from some public Catholics has been characterized by:

1. A lack of engagement with the conversation about abortion, law and society as it has been happening in general and particularly within the pro-life movement for half a century.
2. A lack of engagement with the realities of the work of the pro-life movement on the ground, in the present moment, beyond a few pubic personalities.
3. Anxious, vain virtue-signaling.

Whether 1 and 2 are due to ignorance, laziness or malice, I don’t know and I won’t declare. But I do know that I know a lot of people working in the pro-life movement on the ground – and as glad as they are about this decision, their tone today is not triumphalist. It’s a tone characterized by gratitude, but woven through, as always, with realism, a little bit of hope, but always, given the suffering they witness every single day – sorrow.

But marveling, at the same time, that this decision was handed down on the day on which we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, this year at least. How strange, and sort of marvelous.

A child in the womb recognizing the One who is love – a day that reminds us, above all, that the reason any of us exist is because we are loved by the (deep breath)…Creator of the Universe. No matter what the circumstances, each of exists on purpose because we are loved. Climbing back out of a landscape built on something quite different – that your existence is dependent on the opinion of others, and therefore only as valuable to the extent that they value you – will be a challenge, to say the least. But perhaps this timing means something. Perhaps that challenge is met with another – the challenge to always keep love – of the child, of the mother, the father and the entire family – at the forefront rather than our pride, vanity and side agendas: You are here, no matter who you are, where you dwell, or how old you are, because you are beloved.

May our treatment of all – unborn, born, aged, disabled, imprisoned, in flight, in need – reflect that powerful message of this date:

We recognize you. We see you. You are beloved.