Expecting Fathers to be Fathers (and Married to Mothers) — the Post-Roe Revolution Needed

Delano Squires, writing on the Institute for Family Studies website, wants to see conservatives talk more about fatherhood in the wake of Roe:

The most important thing conservatives should be doing to support motherhood is using every ounce of political and cultural capital to reconnect marriage and childrearing. There is no greater example of privilege in America today than a child who grows up with his or her married biological parents in a stable and loving home. Given the relationship between marital status and abortion (i.e., most women seeking abortions are unmarried), now is the time for conservatives to bring a distinctive pro-life message into the public square that is built on the foundation of marriage and responsible fatherhood.

Pro-life politicians and social commentators need to make it clear that men are responsible for the children they create, not the state. They need to consistently promote the link between marriage and positive social and emotional outcomes for children. They need to reorient our society away from the contemporary model of family formation characterized by casual sex, conscious co-parenting, and commonplace abortion.

What conservatives should create instead is a comprehensive pro-life agenda built on the foundation of marriage that sees children as blessings to be enjoyed and celebrated, not burdens to be managed and overcome.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, Michelle Obama published a message on social media that expressed her heartbreak for a “teenage girl, full of zest and promise, who won’t be able to finish school or live the life she wants because her state controls her reproductive decisions.” The former First Lady expressed the primary driver of the American abortion regime with crystal clarity. The main issue is not healthcare, day care, or paid leave. It’s not about rape, incest, miscarriage, or ectopic pregnancies.

The biggest contributor to abortion in America since Roe was decided is a low view of children, especially among women who have been told that their exclusive ability to bear and birth children is an oppressive drag on their career aspirations and life goals. This is why babies are so often referred to in abortion discourse as a “consequence” of sex instead of the natural result of reproduction.

A man and woman who stand before family and friends to commit to one another for the rest of their lives typically see their children as a gateway to future generations. This is a much different orientation toward children than what one would expect from two people who enjoy being “friends with benefits” but have no intention of making a lifelong commitment to one another.

. . .

Roe is no more, and none of us know exactly what will come next. That is why now is the perfect time for conservatives to extol the benefits of marriage and speak life into an area of our culture that has been marked by death for far too long.

He’s right, of course. But it’s got to be more than politics driving an appreciation of the goods of marriage and motherhood and fatherhood. Children growing up in brokenness, with the adults around them buying into all kinds of confusion — consuming porn and listening to songs that tell them to use or be used — often have no chance to know they have dignity and worth beyond what they have to offer sexually.

A few years ago, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who was then bishop of Phoenix, wrote an exhortation to men about their necessary roles in the world and the family. It began:

Fatherhood changes history. In the Gospel according to Matthew, where “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. . . .” Forty-two (42) fathers lead up to Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus. In the words of St. John Paul II, fatherhood is essential to the flourishing of the world:

In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God (cf. Eph 3:15), a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family: he will perform this task by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother, by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife (cf. Gaudium et spes, 52), by work which is never a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability, and by means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church.²⁶

All men are called to fatherhood in some way. . . .

The Knights of Columbus then put together a video series talking about what it means to be a Christian man in the world today. It was meant as a help to facilitating conversations among men, but especially among fathers and sons.

I don’t know how you get such a thing mainstreamed, but something has to show boys and men that they have a sacred duty to themselves and the women in their lives and that fatherhood is a noble calling.

The scenes outside abortion clinics in America of young men and boys waiting for their girlfriends is a great shame — that our culture has led them to think that this is what they are supposed to do, that this is what a man does. No! And yet that’s what the culture says. That’s certainly what politics says all too often. What if men — and Democrats, please — talked about abortion as the abandonment of the responsibilities to their child and the mother of the child? That would be a way for politics to be a help.

But would Planned Parenthood ever allow it? Or should they have changed their named to No Parenthood a long time ago?

One of the worst parts of abortion in America now, of course, is how much of it doesn’t even require going to an abortion clinic anymore. He doesn’t even have to stand outside and wait until his child has died. Will he at least text her as she looks at their child in her bathroom toilet? This is the freedom we’re told women and girls need. Men need to be equipped to say: I owe her something better. She deserves better. That’s going to take some courageous witness.