The fierce reaction against the Dobbs decision clarifies that legal abortion will not be entirely banned in the USA, in the foreseeable future, through electoral politics. More significantly, it unveils how legal abortion is an essential foundation for the culture that has prevailed in our society for the last half century. Key structures of our culture that make abortion a necessity include: contraception, distrust of the male, individualism as a "gnostic" understanding of the Self, individualism as the breakdown of family/community, techno-idolatry, forgetfulness of God, and the flight from philosophy.
1. Contraception
The sterilization of sex, the rupture of it from marriage-family-fecundity, carries with it the necessity of abortion as back-up contraception. The progressive trust that widespread use of contraception works to minimize abortion has it backwards. Rather, the choice to contra-concept, which is unreliable in all its forms, carries the necessity of an abortion should the "protection" fail, as it does regularly. And so, it was inevitable that after the contagious spread of the pill in the 1960s that abortion was legalized in 1973. The progressive, sexually liberational, "blue" culture that prevails in the upper tier of our society makes the elimination of "choice" unthinkable to that demographic.
2. Distrust of the Male
"I am 100% pro-life and against abortion, but I don't see how a man, or the government, can tell a woman what to do with her pregnancy." No doubt a large majority of women, even devout Catholics blessed with good fathers and husbands, resonate with this statement. Resentment of and distrust of the male is pervasive across our society. It is understandable: misogyny in a variety of forms is (in my view) the most vile, widespread, and consequential evil in our world. Granting the rational basis for this reaction, it is a tragic mistake for a mother to reconfigure her maternal relation to her child in terms of a hostility to the male.
3. Individualism and the Gnostic Self
Perhaps the defining structure of our society is the sovereignty of the "Imperial Self," the isolated, narcissistic, lonely, competent self as the god, the idol, the definer of all meaning and purpose, the holder of inviolable rights but free of allegiance or responsibility to any higher power. This self is, furthermore, is an interior subjectivity, the agency of "choice," who is fundamentally free of any natural, moral, cosmic patterns, regarding the physical world and even the human body. So, the body and the world are neutral or hostile materials to be engineered by the isolated, detached, subjective self. And so, we no longer have a gendered person, defined by relationships (daughter, mother, sister, wife, etc.) but a distinct monad, unilateral agent of her own destiny, "empowered" against bonds of faith, family, responsibility, reverence. So, "choice" of the lonely, androgynous self is the defining sacred value.
4. Individualism and the Destruction of Family/Community
Inexorable dynamics of global capitalism, technocracy and expansive government have worked with the cultural trajectory to individualism to deconstruct the family (nuclear and extended), local communities, Church life, and much of the intermediary organizations. The more impersonal, mechanical, dehumanizing workings of mega-government-capitalism increasingly displace the smaller communities which nourish, support, protect and ennoble the person, who is always in relationship. And so again, " choice" and abortion become the option and right of the solitary individual, detached from family, faith, and community.
5. Techno-idolatry.
Huge technology, including industrialization, computers, dependency upon professionals in all life skills, has largely displaced the organic, personal, vernacular, local, creative, synergistic an convivial with the artificial and mechanical. The prudential, lay, commonsense intellect has surrendered itself to expertise in the techno-universe. And so, we no longer have procreation, fecundity, conjugality; in its place we have "reproductive technologies": abortion (including partial birth), surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic cell research, transgender chemicals and operations, sterilization, contraception and more to come. The discrete human individual...fetus, mother, bureaucrat, social engineer...is a disposable, replaceable, androgynous unit of production/consumption...stripped of bonds that are organic, personal, familial, historical, local, and religious.
6. Forgetfulness of God
Our Creator and our Savior are forgotten. Secularism and atheism reign unchallenged in upper, elite culture and reign over the society. There remains, in the lower tiers of society, a resiliency in religious belief and practice but the bonds that strengthen that awareness of God are greatly weakened so that many live as practical atheists, thinking-deciding-acting without engagement with God, although residues of Christianity remain. And so, we have the tragedy of the abandoned, lonely woman deciding in desperation to abort her child, bereft of a sense of God's presence, support and purposes.
7. Flight from Philosophy
Very few of us do academic philosophy but all of us work from an implicit, practical view of life. Here again, we need clarity that the pathology is inflamed at the top, elite tiers of society: entertainment, academia, wealth, media, Democratic politics. This toxicity "trickles down" to the lower tiers where it wreaks havoc on lives that lack the resources to compensate for spiritual/moral/social depravity. And so the flight from philosophy leads directly to a decadent, if unacknowledged world view: materialistic, nihilistic, despairing, Kantian (claiming that the human mind constructs what it knows, rather than actually seeing, understanding and engaging the real), and lacking childlike wonder/awe at the splendor of Being, of Creation, and the divine hand that offers this gift.
Diabolic Nature of the "Anti-Catholica"
The word "diabolic" means demonic or Satanic but its etymology means "to tear apart." And so, the culture of progressivism, of death, is fundamentally diabolic as it tears the individual away from: sexuality as unitive/procreative, the spousal communion and trust of man/woman, the soul/body communion, bonds with family/commuAgnity, the organic-local-historic-traditional-ethnic, God and all things heavenly and religious, and the philosophy of wonder/awe, realism, Being and Creation.
It is contempt for all things Catholic: sacredness of all human life, especially the powerless; the holiness of the male/female union; person as spirit-in-flesh; person as embedded in many layers of family/community; the organic-natural-convivial-personal-local-traditional rather than the engineered-artificial-mechanical; reverence for a Holy-but-Tender God; and philosophy of the True-Good-Beautiful.
Where From Here?
If the above is an accurate diagnosis, our path forward is simple and straightforward.
1. The persistent pro-life movement has born fruit marvelously in correcting the judicial calamity that was Roe. More important, it has labored over the last 50 years to assist women with troubled pregnancies. Thank God for all of that! At this point we do well to relax our political efforts at the national level; to remain vigilant and active, however, at the state and local levels. We need to resist initiatives from our opposition to reinstate Roe legislatively of course. But aggression to ban abortion nationally, given the nature of our culture outlined above, is at best futile and at worst counterproductive. It will provoke only more anxiety, hysteria, rage, and polarization.
2. Rather than casting the mother's rights against those of the child, we do well to care for the dyad: mother-and-child. What is a mother without a child? A child without a mother? Is not the best thing we can do for the fetus or baby to assist the mother? With this clear focus, we can imagine an alliance with the Left on things like child credits, maternity leave, and a strong safety net for the woman facing an unanticipated pregnancy with few resources and little support. In this we follow the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermule in which we detach from partisan allegiance to a specific party/ideology but work cooperatively in various alliances to enhance the common good and protect our values and interests.
3. Well beyond that important political agenda, we need a religious revival of us men: passionate, profound repentance for our violation of women. This is pervasive in forms obvious and hidden: lust, control, indifference, contempt, detachment, lethargy, cowardice, infidelity, pornography, prostitution, covetousness, disrespect, inattentiveness, contraception, cohabitation, and the faux-feminism of androgyny-choice-careerism-promiscuity. We need to storm heaven for graces of virility, tenderness, loyalty, steadfastness, humility, patience, gentleness, peace, appreciation, reverence, gratitude and generosity.
4. Lastly, a version of the "Benedict Option" is hopeful: rather than aspiring to create the broader society in our image, we focus most of our energies on our own Culture of Life: Church, family, schools, and all the concentric organizations the flow from and into family/Church, the two institutions specifically created by God and morally prior to the State.
To conclude: let us cultivate the virtue of longanimity. This means we play the long game. The abortion culture and all that goes with it has deeply planted itself in our society over the last 50 years; it will be here for a long time. We are talking many decades, generations, centuries (?). But in the long term, it is: sterile, nihilistic, despairing, unnatural, artificial. It carries within itself seeds of its own demise. So as we fight the Culture War, we are anxiety-free, confident, hopeful, joyous, serene, patient, as we are zealous, fierce, persistent and courageous. We grow in humility and magnanimity as we delight in the presence and providence of God, our bonds with the past and the future, and our engagement with the Beauty-Truth-Goodness of the "little here and now"...the concrete, organic, familial, personal, convivial and "Given."
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