An Effective Teacher

The Dehumanizing Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Note: Although, in my last newsletter, I promised to continue discussing the topic of marriage, the events of last week made me feel like the elephant in the room needed to be addressed and marriage could wait another few weeks. I’ll send out Part II to “Tending the Garden” soon. Also, this newsletter is missing the normal fun stuff—book and TV recommendations, recipes, etc.—because the kids and I are once again sick. Yay. Hurrah. All for you, Lord.

Last Friday morning, our houseguests were packing up their seven children and preparing to leave, while I was sweeping, tidying, and trying to restore some semblance of order to our first floor. I was in constant motion that morning, trying to calm my anxiety with busy movement.

It wasn’t working, though. I knew what was coming that day. Or what wasn’t. And there seemed so much to be anxious about.

I was anxious that the Court would punt on issuing a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, delaying the ruling to another day, week, or month. I was anxious they would cave to the angry protests, wild threats, and the near attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life. And I was anxious about what would happen if they did the very thing for which I have been praying all my remembered life: overturn Roe v. Wade.

Roe, the Teacher

It's not that I didn’t want them to overturn Roe. I did. Desperately.

I knew overturning Roe wouldn’t end abortion; it would only relegate the question to the states. But law is not simply a police officer, stopping us when we do wrong. It’s also a teacher, shaping how we think about right and wrong.

For 49 years, Roe v. Wade has done that. It sanctioned injustice by inventing a constitutional right to killing defenseless, vulnerable human persons. Then, in doing so, it helped form us into a people who believe such killing is fine, teaching us that some lives matter less than others; that inconvenience, fear, sickness, and poverty are legitimate reasons to take a life; and that personal autonomy is more important than human persons. It also helped us forget that sex, at its heart, is a baby-making event.

People have learned those lessons. They’ve acted based upon them. And they have been wounded by them—deeply, profoundly, brutally, horrifically wounded. In their bodies. In their souls. In their intellects. Even if they don’t know it.

This is why, last Friday morning, no matter how much I wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned, I also was dreading it. I knew a people so desperately wounded could burn the world down in their outrage … and in their joy.

Because it’s not just those who support Roe or who have suffered through an abortion or who have aided and abetted an abortion who have been wounded by this wicked teacher. Those who are against abortion, those who recognize the personhood of unborn children, have been wounded, too. We all have been formed by a culture that pits mother against child; that dehumanizes the little, the weak, the different; that glorifies individualism; that fetishizes violence; that encourages selfishness; and that discourages sacrifice. Those lessons have touched all of us in some way. And it shows.

It shows in how we talk to friends and strangers online, spewing vitriol through our keyboards that we would never spill through our mouths.

It shows in how we drive, putting ourselves and our schedules ahead of all the lives around us.

It shows in what we watch on television, spending hours every week viewing programming that takes real people, with real problems and real wounds, and holds them up to be mocked, judged, hated, and envied.

It shows in how we treat children, complaining when their parents have the audacity to bring them into restaurants or onto planes.

It shows in how we order our days, budgets, work lives, marriages, and families, with relationships and community so often taking a backseat to money, power, and material markers of success.

It shows throughout our culture in a million small ways, like microfractures in glass, and we are seconds aways from shattering.

As a people, as a culture, we don’t know who we are. We don’t know our dignity or the dignity of our neighbor. We pay a tremendous amount of lip service to compassion, but extend it only to those we deem worthy of receiving it, usually those most like ourselves. Or those deemed most worthy of it by the media.

On Friday morning, before the ruling came down, I saw the storm coming. Now it’s here. The terror, the trauma, the anger, the lies, the cruelty, the fear-mongering, the self-righteous posturing, the ignorant shaming of vulnerable women, the bigoted attacks on people of faith, the refusal to extend mercy to those suffering—it’s all raging, destroying what remains of civility in our society. Roe was an effective teacher. We learned its lessons well.

Which is the deepest crisis we now face.

A Different Kind of Work

One of the most common refrains we’re hearing this week from those who are pro-life is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade doesn’t mean the work is over; it’s only begun. The work they are talking about is the work of better supporting mothers and children and empowering those facing challenging pregnancies to choose life. They’re not wrong.

I am an adoptive mother. I walked through two pregnancies with the abortion vulnerable mother of both my oldest child and my youngest. I carry in my heart the story of another abortion vulnerable mother—the mother of my second child. So, I can never forget the obstacles they overcame to choose life. Those obstacles were never abstractions to me. They were deadly real. They easily could have robbed my children of life. Because of the love of their birth mothers, those children are here. And they are miracles. They are holy gifts of grace. They also are the children who so many—even people who are generally against abortion—think it would have been understandable to kill.

Every one of my children were conceived or born under the kind of circumstances routinely used to justify abortion. Half the world and maybe more would have had their birth mothers abort them. Those brave women chose the better part. Toby, Ellie, and Becket are here because of that choice. I honor their first mothers by loving well the children they entrusted to me. I also honor them by doing everything I can to help other women give their children the same gift my children’s birth mothers gave them: the gift of life.

So, yes, I understand that for women living in poverty, it can be a monumental task to choose life with no health insurance or no home, no paid sick days or no maternity leave, no help with childcare or no support system. Finding ways to get women in crisis the help they need, through both private and public efforts, is absolutely critical.

But, even with all that being said, getting women that help is not the most difficult work we need to do. Nor is it the most important.

If we really want to help women choose life, if we really want to make abortion not only illegal in all 50 states, but unthinkable, we have to help people unlearn the lessons of Roe. We have to teach them differently: that their life and every life is precious; that every one of us has a dignity surpassing the angels; that we all were made to shine like the sun; and that the path to shining that way will always be a path of selfless sacrifice. It will always be the way of Calvary. We also have to help people see that the glory of sex and the beauty of sex is not the fleeting pleasure it brings, but its power to make one flesh of two souls and, through that union, create a third.

This is the most fundamental and most important work ahead of us. This is our greatest challenge. Rolling back pro-abortion legislation is good. Babies will live because of it. New lessons will be taught because of it. But it’s just the start. If it doesn’t go hand in hand with helping people to grasp the dignity of every human person, this victory at the Supreme Court won’t last but a moment, and women who are abortion vulnerable will never get enough help. A people as profoundly selfish and self-absorbed as we are won’t give it.

Doing My Part

In my most redheaded moments, I blame the Church’s leadership for the crisis we’re in. Too many priests and bishops have been fiddling while Rome burns, more interested in redecorating their rectories or making googly eyes at seminarians or covering up for their brother clerics, than proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But the Church isn’t made up of just priests and bishops. We too are the Church. I am the Church. And if I want people to know who they are, then there are more important things for me to do than be angry with the broken men who lead Christ’s Church on earth. Starting with knowing who I am. That’s the first step to doing this work. I have to truly grasp the Father’s love for me. I have to see myself as He sees me. I have to let Him heal all the broken parts of me that hold me back from loving as I’m called to love.

I also have to beg for the grace to see others as He sees them—to gaze upon people who vote and think and speak and look different than I do, to gaze upon people who hate me and think I am the enemy, to gaze upon people who say and do the most horrific or mind-numbingly stupid of things—and see God in them. I have to see their beauty, their hurts, their likeness to myself.

Then, I have to treat them as God calls me to treat them. With respect. With compassion. With mercy. With genuine love. Turning the other cheek when they insult me. Forgiving them when they wrong me. Giving them more than they ask of me. Considering them better than myself. Laying down my life for them if needs be.

I am a long way from being able to do all that. But I am going to keep trying. Because if I can learn to witness to my dignity and the dignity of others through my words and actions, then, like Dobbs, I too can be a good teacher. Even if only one person learns the lessons I’m teaching, that’s still something. For they can teach another. And that other can teach another. And slowly, with time and grace, we can help form a different kind of people, who want different kinds of laws, laws that enshrine human dignity instead of denying it.

This is what I can do right now. This is what you can do, too. While the world burns, we can love the people doing the burning.

 I don’t know if it will be enough to stop the fire. Hence all my anxiety. The flames are hot and fierce, and the smoke is thick. There are so many lies. There is so much misinformation. There is so much blindness, rage, and pain.

But if there is anything that can tame the fires, it’s love. It’s Christ. It’s transformative reverence for His living image, in ourselves and in every human being on this planet, born and unborn. That’s the only hope I have. It’s the only way I see forward.

So, I am going to keep trying. I pray you do too.

This was a free edition of Emily Stimpson Chapman’s monthly newsletter, Through A Glass Darkly. If you liked what you read, feel free to pass it on. And please consider becoming a paying subscriber.

In Case You Missed It:

Tending the Garden: Understanding God’s Plan for Marriage

Welcoming the Wholeness of Women: The Catholic Vision of Human Dignity

Smashing Idols: The Deadly Danger of Being More Catholic Than the Church