The end of Roe requires renewed leadership.
The end of Roe requires renewed leadership.
‘T o the men of America: This cause is your fight, too. It’s not a women’s issue. It is a human issue.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal was talking about abortion. He wasn’t opposing abortion. He’s just about the furthest there is from a pro-life leader. He’s the lead sponsor of the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act, which would go beyond Roe v. Wade. His legislation would not protect the lives of unborn girls and boys. It would revive national pressure for abortion.
And yet, his language about men could have been at home at just about any of the pro-life events marking what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this January. Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in The Chosen series, spoke at the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., about the assault on virtue in our culture today that makes abortion commonplace. With the Sisters of Life, women religious who serve women and girls, including women who have had abortions and seek healing, the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization for men, co-sponsored the first Life Fest for young people the morning of the march. Men and women testified to what’s possible when people aren’t left to walk alone.
There was no whitewashing of the difficulties of life, but there was a heralding of what a gift it is, even in its challenges. Casey Gunning may have been the rock star of the day — she has Down syndrome and wants everyone to know that her life has value and is a joy. Louisiana lawyer David Scotton celebrated his birth mother for making the choice for his life — even while on a table in an abortion clinic. (Learn more about his story in the documentary I Lived on Parker Avenue.)
Vice President Kamala Harris was not at Life Fest or the March for Life, needless to say. In fact, in marking the Roe anniversary, she couldn’t quite bring herself even to use the word “life” when citing the Declaration of Independence. “Liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she intoned. She dropped “life,” the first right named by our forefathers. There was an honesty about dropping the word. For while Harris went on about a woman and women’s bodies, she has no regard for the life of the unborn child. There are two bodies in a pregnancy. In no small part for the convenience of men, the abortion industry, our politics, and our culture insist that women’s fertility is a disability when a child is not planned and that therefore the child is not a child, even though the child is a child when the child is planned. We are far from consistent about following the science.
The day after the March for Life, I spoke at the David Network, a conference of Ivy League students, about life after Roe. Most of the attendees for our breakout panel were young women — not all of them sure where they stood on abortion. We need young women and men to decide to stand against the violence in our culture that begins in the womb. We’re never going to see an end to the mass shootings, the gang violence, or the brutality on the streets or in the home if we do not insist on an end to pitting mother against child. I implored the young women to take the lead, because without a motherly approach to life, we have no hope of protecting, nourishing, and flourishing. And we need men beside them prepared to be men — to love them and to step up to the plate of fatherhood.
Chuck Donovan from the Charlotte Lozier Institute was next to me on the panel. He has spent his adult life in the pro-life movement. But his most important work is that of a father. Commenting on recent proposals to make birth free in America, he worried that it would only mean more men not taking responsibility for life and families. It’s a policy debate to be had, but his point is a critical one: Something’s got to change. We need to be raising men who want to be fathers, not boys who think that women are to be used and compared with the impossible standards of the pornography they’ve been watching on their phones since they got one in their hands.
PHOTOS: March for Life 2023
Speaking of responsibility, Kamala Harris offered a litany of horror stories to explain why we need to expand abortion in America. Except that a woman who has had a miscarriage and a woman with sepsis are not abortions — they are women who need actual medical care. Much of the media, and certainly Democratic politicians, are causing mass confusion even in hospitals. The medical profession has all but rejected the “Do no harm” principle of the Hippocratic oath. Across the border in Canada, physician-assisted suicide is considered a solution to homelessness. Once you’re not useful or productive, you may be considered expendable.
Into the Breach is a solution that the Knights of Columbus have offered. The program offers videos talking about how men can show women that they’re prepared to be fathers and providers and leaders. A revolution of virtue among men might free women from feeling that they need abortion or are expected to end the lives of their unborn children rather than go it alone.
It doesn’t have to be a mere daydream that the likes of Senator Blumenthal and Vice President Harris could rally behind men being men and not leaving the woman alone in her apartment to take an abortion pill she picks up at CVS. There are few to no incentives in politics — on either side of the abortion debate — to finding common ground. But human lives and the life of our culture insist we do.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.