Some people might have thought that the long-awaited demise of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 would end the need for an annual “March for Life.” The primary purpose of the yearly ritual from 1973 to 2022 had been to protest the noxious Roe decision, and to advocate for the protection of unborn children. But, of course, the Dobbs decision that vacated Roe did not end the war to defend unborn life. It merely shifted it to fifty-one different battles on fifty-one different fronts.
As most proponents of overturning Roe desired, state legislative chambers are now the primary focus of abortion regulation. But, as the January 19 March for Life in Washington illustrates, federal issues related to abortion are still not resolved. While the focus is now on the Capitol and White House rather than the Supreme Court, abortion regulation and related issues still involve questions for the federal government.
To address these issues on all fronts, we Catholics must expand our rhetorical arsenals and refine our political strategies. We transferred the political and legal geography of the issues. Now we must shift our language and policy priorities more effectively to advocate for expanding the theater of conflict. We must progress from a march for life toward a march for justice for the unborn, newborn and the mothers who care for them. Without losing focus on life at its earliest and most vulnerable stage, we must enlarge our vision and broaden our moral imaginations so that the dignity of childbearing and parenthood is acknowledged and sustained for the common good.
I suggest two broad ways to move beyond mere opposition to abortion. First, we must reconsider the language that we use to oppose abortion and defend unborn human life. Second, we must expand the scope of our advocacy and activity to care for infants and young children, and the mothers who support them.
Stop talking about “rights”
Overwhelmingly, the way that opponents of abortion frame their advocacy is in terms of the “right to life” of the unborn child. As a separate, unique human being — like any other except age — the unborn child’s right to life is not different from any other innocent human being. This is all well and good if “rights” is the proper way to frame the issue.
It is not.
In the United States, “individual rights” language expresses a very specific philosophical moral anthropology, or theory of the human person. It is a radically individualist philosophy, in which every person has an absolute and unalienable right to everything. That means that all humans simultaneously possess inherently conflicting claims against one another. The “natural rights” state of nature is thus a war of all against all.
We refrain from asserting our respective absolute rights only for the sake of living in relative peace. We make an implicit contract mutually to agree to restrain our claims to everything so that we can live harmoniously together. I agree not to take your stuff in exchange for your agreement not to take mine. But because no transcendent principle limits the basic claims, this agreement has no transcendent moral force. We voluntarily refrain from exercising our rights, but we do not surrender them. Thus, when there is a conflict — perceived or actual — nothing in the philosophy of rights language hinders us from asserting our rights against anyone else.
In the context of abortion, to say that the unborn child has a right to life necessarily implies that the woman who bears the child has an equal, conflicting right. The woman and child are, in this view, natural enemies. Rights rhetoric feeds this attitude. The mother might agree to bear the burden of the intrusion and inconvenience that the unborn child imposes upon her. But in a rights paradigm, she has no moral obligation to do so. If she perceives that her rights are being infringed by the intrusive child, she may assert those rights against it. Of course, no abortion opponent believes that she should do that. But most abortion opponents use language that is rooted in a philosophy that allows it.
We Catholics have a much richer moral vocabulary that defends the life of the unborn child without making him or her an enemy of his or her mother. Unlike individual rights language, it is also a moral vocabulary that is true. In Catholic moral theology, we are not individual by nature, and we have no absolute claims to anything. Rather, life is a gift rooted in the natural social nature of the human person. We call this social nature “solidarity,” and it is not only different from but contradicted by “rights.”
The doctrine of solidarity, among a host of other things, means that the natural arrangement of human relationships is one of reciprocal obligation and self-gift, rather than mutual antagonism and conflicting claims. Human nature is one, shared by every living human being. To injure one is to injure all. To protect one is to protect all.
By shifting our language of the unborn to one of solidarity and human sociality, we can begin to swing the public debate about the status of the unborn child, the mother, and the relationship they have with one another. Rather than enemies of one another, they are both participants in a story of solidarity and mutual dependence.
Offer free maternal health and subsidize at-home parents
Seeing the unborn child and mother as part of a social community of mutual dependence has natural policy implications. Children and childbearing women must be protected and nurtured. They contribute to the common good. Therefore, we must advocate for policy programs that support and sustain children from conception through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood.
By no means am I suggesting that anti-abortion activists ignore the needs of children and mothers after children are born. This is a slander from pro-abortion advocates. I am suggesting, however, that we who oppose abortion must step up both the rhetoric and policy proposals that emphasize care for children–born and unborn–and their mothers. Broadly speaking this entails two kids of social programs that we should all support.
First, we should advocate for free or highly subsidized prenatal care, child delivery, and neonatal care. Children are a gift to the entire community. Thus, the entire community has an interest in the proliferation and healthy development of children. This entails, of course, an interest in the health and security of mothers who carry children before birth and primarily care for them after.
This should not be seen solely as the realm of private charity, but rather of public policy. Within this basic impulse, we can have robust debates about the best way to implement the policy. But whether through specific deductions from taxable income, tax credits, in-kind benefits, or cash transfers, we should advocate for efficient programs that share the financial burden of bearing and caring for children to those who benefit from it, namely, all of us.
This should include policies that encourage (or require) paid family leave by employers of a certain size. The United States is the only one of its peer economic powers that does not have a federally mandated and subsidized regime of paid parental leave. For parents employed by smaller employers, state and federal programs should be implemented to subsidize the company or directly pay the parents for a period of paid family leave.
Second, we Catholics should be proponents of generous in-kind benefits and cash transfers for mothers (or, if the situation calls for it, fathers) who make the choice to stay home to raise children rather than returning to the workforce. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with mothers working outside the home, nor for both parents to do so. But social policy, and the programs that implement it, should incentivize and encourage a parent to stay at home with young children if she desires to do so. We should not discourage parents from returning to work. But we must allow them to stay at home. Again, this is not merely for the good of a particular family, but for the good of society–for the common good.
As with free birth and paid family leave, programs that incentivize and support stay-at-home parenting may take any of several forms. And it is fine to have vigorous discussions about what does and does not work. But the discussion should, again, be in the context of the public good of begetting and raising young children. Means testing and other eligibility criteria are fair considerations of course. But these should be in the context of a presumption that a parent should be encouraged to stay at home with young children.
Will these measures — changing our language and advocating for these social programs — put an end to abortion? Of course not. But they will be significant steps toward changing our national attitudes about unborn children and our care for them after they are born. Most importantly, these changes are rooted in the Catholic doctrine of solidarity, which mandates that we care for one another for the benefit of all.
March in support of unborn life, yes; but keep on marching after the child is born.
