No Mom Is An Island
Joan Frawley Desmond on Maternal Connections & the End of Roe
An optimist by temperament, I celebrated Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, as the beginning of the end for Roe v. Wade. As Rick Santorum, author of the bill, said: “For the first time in over 35 years, the Supreme Court balanced the interests of the two individuals directly involved in an abortion and found for the interest of the innocent child.”
But later I began to question my initial reaction. Perhaps the Justices were concerned not with advancing the rights of the unborn, but with something more subtle and ambiguous: upholding the moral value of the maternal bond. A second thought flowed from the first: Would a stronger emphasis on maternal communion result in a deeper appreciation for the human dignity of the unborn, or would it produce a sentimental side show, shifting the public debate from the main event?
For years, pro-lifers have publicized the devastating emotional and moral impact of abortion on the millions of women who have undergone the procedure. Just fifteen years ago, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice -Anthony Kennedy made implicit reference to post-abortion syndrome without using it to justify any significant -restriction on Roe. This time, the problem of maternal guilt was employed to underscore the extreme inhumanity of partial-birth abortion, establishing the boundary that distinguished a civilized society from its opposite.
“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child,” stated Kennedy in the majority opinion. “It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child.”
Acknowledging Harm
This is an important, if largely symbolic, achievement for the pro-life leaders who have struggled for years to inject into the law premises that will incrementally produce the overthrow of Roe. At the same time, Kennedy’s opinion does not lead the American public to face the incontrovertible truth that all abortions—tidy or not—involve the direct taking of innocent life. His language leaves our sympathies with the woman and her emotional turmoil.
This is not entirely a bad thing. Though unremarkable at first glance, any acknowledgment that abortion harms women attacks a key precept of hard-line activists in the women’s movement: the inviolability of individual autonomy. According to this position, legal abortion is essential for self-actualization, and thus women experience relief and not guilt when they undergo an abortion.
No surprise, then, that Justice Ruth Ginsburg, in her minority opinion, criticized Kennedy’s protective regard for the maternal bond as arising from “ancient notions about women’s place in the family” that have “long since been discredited.” Yet even as commentators advanced her critique in editorial pages and journals, their ire seemed misplaced and antiquated—an eerie reminder of the -cathartic utterances heard in 1970s consciousness-raising sessions.
Christian anthropology holds that, created in the image of the Trinitarian God, men and women are relational beings. A healthy conscience registers our moral responsibility for the treatment of others, especially those consigned to our immediate care.
In contrast, Ginsburg’s state of radical autonomy is a fictional existence. It defies reality, and erroneously implies the possibility—and the “good”—of achieving emotional and moral detachment from the needs of others. In his majority opinion, Kennedy implicitly grapples with this Christian truth, though God goes unmentioned.
Joan Frawley Desmond is a freelance writer who lives with her husband and three children in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She is a recent graduate of the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and the Family.
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more from the online archives
14.1—January/February 2001
A Sociologist Looks at Fatherlessness & Its Causes by David Blankenhorn
18.4—May 2005
The Idylls, Idols & Devils That Corrupt the Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian
22.5—June 2009
C. S. Lewis on Civilization & the Natural Order by Timothy L. Hall
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