My own remedy for a stop to abortion is ecclesial. First, the titular leaders of the Catholic Church should stop being ashamed of its biblically-based teaching against all unnatural forms of birth control and against all forms of sexual intercourse outside of marriage. They should have a campaign to educate and solicit cooperation from non-Catholic churches to spread the covenant theology of the marriage act. Every sexual act ought be be exclusively a marriage act. Within marriage, the marriage act ought to be a TRUE marriage act, a renewal of the faith and love and permanence of the marriage covenant, for better and for worse—including the imagined worse of possible pregnancy.
If this were taught loudly and widely to students beginning in their adolescence, they would see that there is real meaning in the human sexual act. They would see that it is dishonest to engage in that act outside of marriage. And they would also see that unnatural methods of birth control are essentially dishonest because the contradict the “for better and for worse” of the marriage covenant.
When the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate drops to what it was in 1965 when Daniel Patrick Moynihan raised the issue of the black family that had an illegitimacy rate of 24%, eight times higher that the white rate of only 3%—when that happens, the repeal of Roe v Wade may be possible. When the illegitimacy rate drops to what it was about 1940 or so when the black rate was lower than the white rate, then there would be no perceived “need” for abortion, and repeal of Roe v Wade would be certain, and state laws would become effective once again. That, of course, would still leave New York, California, and Kansas with liberal abortion laws on the books, but those laws would soon be changed by a relatively chaste culture.
John Kippley
NFPI President and Volunteer