Two weeks ago today, hundreds of thousands of people trekked to the bustling leviathan of Washington, D.C. for the annual March for Life. Even though I intern in the Capitol Hill area, the only signs of their presence I encountered were occasional sightings of men in black vestments, some isolated pro-life leaflets strewn on the ground, and a slight increase in traffic on Thursday night.
I was aware that the March for Life had occurred, and I was thankful to see many of my fellow classmates come out for the March. But in the midst of the March and the flood of articles in conservative publications, I sensed that many pro-life activists honestly believed that overturning Roe v. Wade was the panacea for ending abortion in America.
I admire their optimism. But if the goal of the pro-life movement is to eradicate the deplorable crime of abortion, why should Roe v. Wade receive all of the attention? Is it even the root of the problem?
Roe v. Wade was decided in the wake of the sexual revolution — a movement that redefined rights and justice, championed the idea of self-expression over self-restraint, and engendered the breakdown of the family. The case itself relied on precedent from Griswold v. Connecticut (1968), the decision that struck down a state ban on contraceptives by famously ruling that all citizens have a right to privacy based on “penumbras, formed by emanations” in the Bill of Rights. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that actually means. The Griswold decision kicked off a series of cases in modern civil rights jurisprudence that contorted the 14th Amendment in accordance with the sexual revolution.
Additionally, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society initiated several welfare programs in the years leading up to the Griswold and Roe decisions. Though Johnson himself understood the importance of the family and the crippling effect its denigration could have on society, his massive expansion of the welfare state actually diminished the importance of the family. When the government both then and now increases its financial assistance of millions of individuals, the family and community are pushed aside as the primary means of support.
The real battle here is not against the votes of nine individuals. It’s against a movement that deemed the family optional and generated the social acceptance of pre-marital and non-marital sex, contraception, and the killing of the unborn.
According to the most recent report from the Centers for Disease Control, of all women who obtained an abortion in 2011, 14.5 percent were married and 85.5 percent were unmarried. This singular statistic provides an insight so basic, yet so informative, on how the pro-life movement should proceed — being married matters when it comes to abortion. The positive correlation between marriage and choosing life for unborn children should receive serious attention.
The government has a fundamental interest in marriage because marriages typically produce children. These precious lives are the future of society. The government will have trouble “securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” if the posterity is not cared for.
Some government policies are contrary to the protection and encouragement of marriage and intact families. No-fault divorce laws insinuate that “till death do us part” is insignificant. Fathers can be easily pulled away from their families with false allegations of abuse. For single mothers, a plethora of welfare programs can take the place of a husband who provides.
Yet many pro-lifers are mute on these issues. If marriage and choosing life are positively related, why not focus on reforming welfare policy and protecting the family?
The attitudes of a people may be more difficult to reform than a Supreme Court decision, but without the restoration of the institution of the family, the March for Life is incomplete.
