On the 49th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) joins pro-life multitudes nationwide, asking God for a post-Roe future.
The reason for this hope is that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon decide the fate of Roe v. Wade. The case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which was argued before the Court in December, is the most serious challenge to procured abortion in three decades.
Since 1973, Roe v. Wade has hidden behind a mask of “settled law.” This exalted status is completely undeserved by the shoddily written Roe. Indeed, there is nothing settled about it. For nearly fifty years, it has divided America, and over this half-century, the exhausted left has run out of arguments with which to defend it.
Regardless of pending judicial decisions, the legal underpinnings of this disastrous death sentence for more than 60 million unborn Americans are crumbling. Using more effective jurisprudence, the Texas Heartbeat Act has stopped most of the killing in the Lone Star State for a significant period. Other states may follow this good example. In addition, abortion is de facto unavailable in many areas of the nation because vast sectors of the American public reject it.
From every perspective, Roe has failed.
“Roe must go” is the full-throated cry from millions marching nationwide.
Step 1: Resist the Temptation to Go 1972
The temptation will be to turn a post-Roe America into the pre-Roe nation. However, pro-lifers know that nothing will be resolved if we only return to the pre-Roe situation of letting the states decide the legal status of abortion in their jurisdictions. Procured abortion is just as heinous in New York as in Mississippi. Pro-lifers have worked just as hard in California as in Missouri.
A post-Roe America must end all procured abortion nationwide. We cannot rest until all fifty states are freed from this moral scourge that stains the nation’s honor. How very true is the motto: “United we stand, divided we fall.” We must be well convinced of this. Being content with 1972 will only prepare another 1973 Roe decision. We must do better than 1972.
Step 2: Abortion Is a Non-negotiable Moral Issue
We must continue to frame the debate as a non-negotiable moral issue. This is our most successful strategy against the pro-abortionists. They had hoped to cast abortion as a simple women’s health issue. They failed. By highlighting procured abortion as a non-negotiable moral issue, pro-life America forced the public to make a right or wrong judgment: Is the slaughter of the innocent unborn a moral good or a moral evil?
Procured abortion is intrinsically evil. There can never be a shameful Pontius Pilate position regarding procured abortion—“What is truth?” (John 18:37). On this higher ground of moral debate, the left must admit its denial of God’s Law and objective morals.
Keeping the discussion in the moral realm is the only path to an abortion-free America.
Step 3: Procured Abortion Is One of Many Interconnected Moral Issues
A post-Roe America must realize that procured abortion is just one among many interconnected moral evils. How sad that the left understands this truth so much better than the right. This is why the left fears the pro-life movement. They see very clearly and entertain no doubts that opposition to procured abortion necessarily leads to a broad spectrum of moral issues, all of which must also be resolved if America is to be truly post-Roe.
Thus, first and foremost, a post-Roe America must be consistent. It must denounce the sins of impurity that gave rise to Roe. It must boldly challenge the sexual revolution of the sixties that ruined so many lives and families. It must contritely rebuild the now-destroyed social mores and institutions that safeguarded the family, society and religion.
Abortion made today’s apocalyptic social destruction possible by removing the consequences of the sexual act.
A post-Roe America must understand clearly that procured abortion is just the effect of a profound revolt against God’s moral law. There will be no end to the infections until we eliminate the cause of the infections. We must quell the rebellion against God’s Law and restore the moral order. A post-Roe America must unapologetically honor and reward modesty and purity. It must uphold and praise true marriage (the lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others) and the mutual fidelity of the spouses. Its young men must return to the practice of chastity. Once again, the beautiful white bridal gown worn by its young women on their wedding day must be that true symbol of their virginity.
A post-Roe America must reject the entire sexual revolution. From contraception and no-fault divorce to the present LGBTQ+ agenda in all its moral horror. Everything must go. Just as pro-life Americans must not rest while procured abortion remains legal in any part of the country, so also a post-Roe America must not rest until every last moral destruction wrought by the sexual revolution has been reversed.
With the same dogged determination employed to turn society against abortion, we must find ways to reintroduce these themes to the younger generations. They thirst for the certainties that only God’s moral order can provide.
Step 4: Return to God and Order
It is not just Roe v. Wade that is collapsing. The whole liberal order that gave us Roe is also crumbling. What will replace it? America is at a crossroads and must choose a road. The left wants to impose communism on the country. That is no direction for America to take!
Instead, a post-Roe America must boldly and unashamedly dream of a full return to God and ordered liberty. Like the Prodigal Son, we must dream again of the Father’s Home. A half return is no return. Nothing but a full return home will do.
Such a task is not impossible since the left itself is destroying the liberal premises upon which our promiscuous society is built. The left is extinguishing liberal certainties and freedoms and hurling the country down a dark path to nihilism. Above all, liberalism itself is dying because the disorder is such that we can no longer maintain the absurd fiction that the world can function without God. Both the lie and the world it created are coming apart.
A return to order, morality and God by a post-Roe America will not come by imposing a set of rules or court rulings (as the left does). It must come from conversion, like the Prodigal Son. This metanoia, this profound change of mentality, will result from a thirst for truth, an obedient return to the Ten Commandments, a quest for the sublime and the action of God’s grace.
Post-Roe America must address the very important existential questions that modernity never could solve. Now in the wasteland of our postmodernity, they come back to haunt us. If we satisfy the deep yearnings of so many restless souls for these eternal things, if, as a nation, we defend the good and repress the evil, then yes, America will remain post-Roe.
As we march this year, let us confide that Roe v. Wade will be reversed as the first step toward a post-Roe America. May God take our legal and peaceful fight to change hearts in America as a most ardent prayer. Through the merciful intercession of Mary Most Holy, may this fighting prayer burn continuously before Him, urging His prompt and decisive intervention.
The American TFP calls upon all Americans to look beyond Roe to a great return to order. As practicing Catholics, we turn to God and His Blessed Mother for succor and help. Let us confide in the triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, as promised by her at Fatima.
January 21, 2022
The American TFP
As seen on TFP.org