With Roe Undone, What Will America Look Like?

The future of Roe v. Wade is coming to a close. Abortion is de facto unavailable in vast areas of the nation, having been rejected by an enormous sector of the American public. And so it will remain. The Texas Heartbeat Act, for example, effectively stopped most of the killing in an entire state, paving the way for more states to follow suit. Regardless of the judicial decisions still pending in the Supreme Court, the legal underpinnings of the disastrous death sentence for millions are crumbling.

No amount of legal gymnastics or expected judicial betrayal is going to change this picture. Whatever happens, America is irreparably divided by the issue. The seemingly impossible task has been accomplished: “settled” law has become unsettled.

Thus, we must think of the post-Roe America that approaches. We must employ the same strategies to change mentalities in the other areas that made Roe possible.

An Abortion-Free America

The temptation is to turn the post-Roe America into the pre-Roe nation. However, pro-lifers know that nothing will be resolved if we only return the availability of abortion to the states. Procured abortion is just as atrocious in New York as it is in Mississippi. Pro-lifers have worked just as hard in California as in Missouri.

The post-Roe America must end all abortion. We cannot rest until all of America is freed from this scourge. Like the pro-abortion side, we must be convinced this is an all-or-nothing proposition. Going back to 1972 will only prepare the way for another 1973 decision.

Looking beyond Roe, we must continue to frame the debate as a moral issue. The pro-abortionists hoped to make abortion a simple women’s health issue. They failed. By elevating abortion to a moral issue, the pro-life side forced the public to make a right or wrong judgment. There is no comfortable middle or neutral position regarding abortion. The left cannot win moral debates because it must scandalously deny objective morals exists. Keeping the discussion in the moral realm is the only path to an abortion-free America.

Abortion Is Not a Single Issue

A second consideration for a post-Roe America is to realize that abortion is not a single issue. The left perceives this truth well, better than the right. And that is why it fears the pro-life movement. They know that opposition to abortion necessarily leads to a broad spectrum of moral issues that must also be resolved if America is to be truly post-Roe.

A genuinely pro-life position must attack the moral issues that gave rise to Roe. It must challenge the sexual revolution of the sixties that unleashed a destruction of social mores and institutions that safeguarded the family, society and religion.

Abortion made this destruction possible by taking away the consequences of the sexual act. It is not the cause of this destruction but the effect of a revolt against the moral order. Thus, any future effort to combat abortion must deal with these causes. We must address positive issues like modesty, purity, honor and marriage. It also presupposes opposing the enslaving influence of promiscuity, contraception, vulgarity and unnatural vice.

With the same dogged determination that we turned society against abortion, we must find ways to re-introduce these themes to the younger generations that thirst for certainties that only a moral order can provide.

Exposing the Errors that Deceive Society

A final consideration about the coming post-Roe America is the need to keep exposing the errors of the other side. The pro-abortion advocates long lived off the lie that everyone supported its distorted worldview, and only a backward minority opposed it.

By creating the impression of an overwhelming consensus, the pro-abortion movement hoped to ramrod abortion upon America with little opposition. It especially spread the myth that most young people and women favored the killing of innocents.

The pro-life movement defeated this lie by recruiting the people who were supposed to oppose abortion. The movement swelled its ranks with women. Many of its youths even proudly proclaim themselves the pro-life generation.

The Collapse of the Liberal Order

We must make the same effort to expose the errors of the crumbling liberal order that deceives everyone into thinking that life has no meaning and purpose beyond our own gratification. This fundamental premise lies at the foundation of abortion. Only when it is defeated will America be safe from the return of infanticide.

Such a task is not impossible since the left is destroying the liberal premises upon which our promiscuous society is built. The left is extinguishing liberal certainties and freedoms and thus, hurling us toward a dark nihilism. Above all, liberalism is dying because the disorder is such that we can no longer maintain the absurd fiction of a secular world that must function without God.

Thus, a post-Roe America must embrace a return to order, morality and God. This change will not come by imposing a set of rules or court rulings (like the left does). It will involve much effort and suffering. Indeed, this profound change of mentality will result from a thirst for truth, a quest for the sublime and the action of God’s grace.

Post-Roe America must address the very important existential questions that modernity never wanted to solve. Now in the wasteland of our postmodernity, they come back to haunt us. If we satisfy the yearnings of so many restless souls for these eternal things, America will remain post-Roe.