When one conservative friend of mine heard the news about Dobbs v. Jackson, he said, “Well, it sounds like this country is finally going in the right direction.” As if in agreement, progressive media outlets have been running white-eyed headlines such as: “the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Next Target: Birth Control,” joining a chorus of voices convinced that the Supreme Court has been hijacked by a juridical theocracy.
If we were really witnessing a restoration of conservative moral norms, it would be very strange. An annual Gallup Poll on “the moral issues” reports that, in 2021, embryonic stem cell research was considered moral by 64% of our countrymen, fornication was considered moral by 73% of our nation, and divorce by 79% who dwell in this bitter land of license. All three statistics are at an all-time high over the past twenty years.
And yet when it comes to abortion, which has hovered doggedly in the 50/50 range for years, Dobbs is being celebrated as a tremendous victory for the pro-life movement. Should we break out the champagne? Keep the celebrations short as we rally ourselves to chase our routed foes?
Or, perhaps, a sober mind might force us to paraphrase Pyrrhus: if we are victorious in one more battle with the libs, we shall be utterly ruined.
Conservative paganism
To honestly and wisely assess our situation, we must understand abortion as a ritual of commitment. As Marc Barnes and Andrew Willard Jones have argued, “Abortion is maintained by a perverse kind of piety, because abortion is a sacrament of liberalism that signifies and effects our allegiance towards the social order that we have built.”
They argue that this piety is not an innovation of modernity, but the tired, old “national sin” of child-sacrifice which destroys “the revolutionary logic of the family.” The Scriptures called it the “abomination of the nations,” the burning of one’s children before Moloch, a practice defied and despised by the God of Abraham throughout the Old Testament. When every child—and, by extension, every weak and dependent human being—lives or dies at the whim of the powerful, the purpose of power is inverted in a diabolical, which is to say tyrannical, parody. Power, which in truth exists for the sake of the lowly, is severed from service and set towards selfishness: my body, my choice, a choice which need not consider the fetus struggling against the forceps; my money, my choice, an option intrinsically indifferent to the growling stomach of the beggar; my land, my choice, a decision which need not bow before the capacity of the earth over which we trod.
But if we are correct in calling abortion a pagan practice—and thus decrying the United States of America, which has federally protected and funded abortion for decades, as a pagan nation—then does the overturning of Roe mean that our nation’s pagan period is ended? Are the salivating Christian nationalists and the hyperventilating liberal feminists both correct about this restoration/cataclysm?
It would not be the first time that nation warred against nation. Indeed, this in-fighting should be expected in the City of Man. Just as the kings of this world, led by insatiable private gain rather than the tranquility of order, are in constant conflict, we find that the classical epics feature consistent theomachy: war among the gods. This divine bickering, carried on by backing human champions, results in mass death for mere mortals. St. Thomas notes that the cunning tyrant “encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely” (II-II Q42. A2. Re. 3).
The history of pagan in-fighting is not limited to the realm of half-historic heroic eras. During the reign of Caesar Augustus, as the new regime was codified and its ruler deified, political conservatives made notable transformations of Roman culture. And it is no stretch of the imagination to label these changes “conservative”: after nearly two decades of civil war beginning with the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, the Republic was reconstituted into the Roman Empire, and Augustus was intent on a restoration of cultural character which entailed religious piety, family values (adultery was criminalized in 18 B.C.), honoring soldiers, and patriotic devotion.
We even find specific condemnation of pagan practices involving sexual sin. During this time, the poet Livy wrote his famous history of ancient Rome, which includes a lengthy polemical narrative (Ab urbe condita XXXIX, 9-19) about the introduction and regulation of the Bacchanalia (c. 186 B.C.), which has its origins in the Greek “Dionysian Mysteries.” These secretive pagan cults certainly existed and involved initiation through religious rituals featuring ecstatic worship and dancing, copious wine-drinking, and (most likely) sexual acts. Livy, however, describes the Bacchic cults as part of a trend of moral degengeracy (a “way of corrupting the youth's morals”) and a front for an organized crime ring (“the cries of those who were being violated or murdered could not be heard owing to the noise of drums and cymbals”). While these cults were strictly regulated at the time (though not banned altogether), most historians doubt the accuracy of Livy’s description, written nearly two centuries later. Nevertheless, it is an excellent example of the ‘conservatism’ which could find itself entirely at home within a pagan regime.
It is also notable that the era of Augustus’ reigning conservatism was not part of a prefigured Christianizing of the Roman Empire. While the Bacchic cults may have been less favored for a time, the cult of Divus Augustus, and the worship of subsequent emperors as gods, was inaugurated. And the specifically lust-driven latria of the Empire did not subside: the cult of Bacchus (the latinization of Dionysus) gradually merged with Liber, god of both wine and semen (including an association with animal husbandry), whose festival was celebrated to mark the coming of age for young men. St. Augustine comments in the City of God on the “shamefulness” of the rite celebrated, in which a statue of a male “obscene member” was processed through the streets and crowned by an honorable matron in the presence of the city (“...a matron's being compelled to do in public what not even a harlot ought to be permitted to do in a theatre…”; VII, 21). The Church Father’s moral uproar against idolatrous rituals was not like that of the pagan Livy: for a Christian, the Kingdom of God does not demand the abolition of one or two pagan rituals, but the casting down of every idol. Thus, it is no surprise that within the very same book, St. Augustine can be found deriding the fact that Jupiter was also given the name Pecunia, that is, “money”:
What, then, ought the wise man to think of this theology, in which the king of the gods receives the name of that thing which no wise man has desired? For had there been anything wholesomely taught by this philosophy concerning eternal life, how much more appropriately would that god who is the ruler of the world have been called by them, not money, but wisdom, the love of which purges from the filth of avarice, that is, of the love of money! (VII, 12)
Shelter in the Shadow of Egypt
This brings us to the pro-life movement. In one sense the movement is rooted in the Catholic Church, given that Catholics run many of the most active organizations primarily dedicated to the movement, dominate the attendance at the March for Life, and likely hear the most sermons (in total numbers) on the immorality of abortion. In another sense, the movement is a product of the Republican Party, whose platform has promised an end to abortion since its largely pro-choice leadership made a play for traditionally Democrat-voting urban Catholics in its convention of 1976. Republican politicians and judges are the only ones who vote or rule against the expansion and protection of so-called “abortion rights,” and it is wealthy Republican donors who also form the backbone of support for pro-life causes. It is a common practice for crisis pregnancy centers, which provide resources and education to dissuade expectant mothers from abortion, to begin their fundraising process by contacting a list of the top GOP donors in their area.
A strange dynamic emerges between these two players: the Catholic Church provides the ethical and spiritual argument against abortion, seeking to change minds and hearts. The Republican Party provides the more coercive element, in the form of money and political power. But money and power are social structures constantly renewed by social deeds, and do not exist in a neutral form but as justice in the City of God or injustice in the City of Man. So let us consider whether the Republican pro-life movement is compatible with that of the Church.
For Catholics, the right to life for the unborn (and anyone else) is based on the doctrine of the imago Dei (that all men are created in the Image of God). Even for those who do not accept Scripture, we point to the natural law arguing that “we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which is destroyed by slaying him” and that the life of every innocent person “preserves and forwards the common good” (II-II Q64. A6. co.). In the Republican Party platform, on the other hand, one can find implicit arguments against abortion which cite the use of tax-payer dollars, the opinion of American voters, women’s health, economic progress, the pain felt by the unborn, discrimination, and opposition to (Chinese) population control. All these arguments can be made within a liberal paradigm, and indeed many of these principles are cited just as fiercely by pro-abortion Democrats.
Still, there is a strong showing of Christian identity at GOP rallies and speeches, and a slight tinge of Christianity in their guiding documents. The word “God” appears 15 times and the phrase “sanctity of life” three times in the 2016 GOP platform. Is this cheap talk, a genuine profession of faith, or at least enough common ground to work with?
Let us return to the Gallup Poll with which we began. On what issue do Americans express the most moral clarity, cutting across partisan and religious lines? Suicide? Not even close. 19% find it acceptable. Adultery? Much closer. 89% still find this sin immoral. But the American conscience is most united when it comes to birth control: 90% find it moral, and only 7% dare to disagree.
This means that not a plurality, not a majority, but a super-majority of the GOP pro-life movement, dissents from Humanae Vitae—not that they have ever heard of it. This doubtless includes many Catholics, some of whom likely know the name of their preferred primary candidates but not of their Bishop.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the initial court filing of Dobbs appealed to overturn Roe precisely because of the legalization and widespread use of contraception. The brief states,
The march of progress has left Roe and Casey behind… Today, adoption is accessible and on a wide scale women attain both professional success and a rich family life, contraceptives are more available and effective, and scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability. (pg. 4, my emphasis)
This is not an off-hand remark, but a central part of their legal argument, which comes up again when disputing the Casey ruling, which affirmed Roe in 1992:
And failure rates for all major contraceptive categories have declined since Casey [study cited] with some methods now approaching zero…Contraceptive developments undercut any claim that Roe is needed to enable “women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation” by “facilitat[ing] ... their ability to control their reproductive lives.” [quoting Casey] (pgs. 29-30)
For this reason, the Dobbs brief explicitly defends Griswold (which found a constitutional right to contraception for married couples) as a good precedent.
Griswold also vindicated our history and tradition of safeguarding “the marriage relationship”—which raises privacy interests “older than the Bill of Rights.”... Roe departed from prior cases by invoking a sweeping general “right of privacy” unmoored from constitutional text, structure, history, and tradition. (pg. 16)
It was this argument, and not any of the amicus briefs citing natural law, which the Supreme Court took up in its majority ruling. [1] While the leaked draft made brief references to Griswold as well as Eisenstadt (a 1972 case which found a constitutional right for unmarried individuals to procure contraception), the affirmation of these cases became even more central to the final overruling of Dobbs. Because the dissenting ‘liberal’ justices clearly recognize that the rulings of the sexual revolution are all intrinsically linked, the ‘conservative’ majority included an entire section assuring the nation that they had no intentions of consulting natural law.
…the dissent draws [an analogy] between the abortion right and the rights recognized in Griswold (contraception), Eisenstadt (same), Lawrence (sexual conduct with member of the same sex), and Obergefell (same-sex marriage). Perhaps this is designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights… (pgs. 37-38)
The intellectual absurdity of this position—which enshrines the right to redefine nature and neuter the body, except while pregnant—is more than an off-hand remark, but a fool’s mantra:
…it is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent because all of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.” (pg. 37)
We have also explained why that is so: rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed “potential life.” (pg. 71)
No matter how many times this sophistry is repeated, it will not create a polity nor a legal framework where both a) sexuality is libertine and b) the unborn are received as a gift. The two cannot go together: there is no culture of life without the virtue of chastity. Justice Kavanaugh, however, disagrees:
First is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and marriage [2] ... I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents. (Kavanaugh’s concurrence, pg. 10, emphasis original)
All these phrases deserve an equal level of ridicule as Justice Kennedy’s “Notorious Mystery Passage.” The idea that contraception does not involve “potential life” (the unborn) is only possible if sexual intercourse is intrinsically severed from proceation and marriage. Indeed, the natural law argument which St. Thomas gives to reckon fornication as immoral builds on an understanding of the natural purpose of the sexual act (II-II. Q154. A2. co.).
Given this, what is the conservative argument for, as progressives would frame the issue, “forcing a woman to bear a child against her will”? They cannot say that her will is disordered, tragically or otherwise, nor that pregnancy is a natural capacity of womanhood. The GOP pro-life movement accepts the liberal capitalist doctrine that the sexual revolution was good and necessary for the growth of GDP through the entrance of women into the commodified labor force and the entrance of non-familial wage-workers into the now-commodified “child care” sector. In this seemingly landmark case, conservatives have not uttered the slightest challenge to the idea that a career-oriented woman should see her body as a veritable serpent, to be drugged and spayed lest it fail to turn a profit. Rather, in an attempt to roll back abortion, the bitter fruit of the sexual revolution, they would pile even higher the precedent of the Pill.
Furthermore, to ban abortion (which, of course, Dobbs only permits, but does not do) without any jurisprudence of natural law, without any teleology of nature, and without ascribing any meaning to the human body is only accidentally similar to the Divine Law on one subject. We must thank God, profusely, for every life to be saved by this ruling, but we must recognize that He is—as always—bringing forth good from an evil regime. But banning abortion is entirely compatible with a pagan metaphysics of violence. Given that most contemporary Marxists are militantly pro-abortion, many are surprised to learn that the Soviet Union under Stalin strictly banned abortion beginning in 1936. Obviously, this was not done in submission to the dignity of human life or the limits of natural law, but for the purely pragmatic purpose of growing the population, so as to compete with the industrial and military “human capital” of the West.
So in the case of the Liberal State—where the mother and the unborn child are understood to be, possibly, at war—the sovereign government may grant the atomized autonomous right to abortion of the mother (in which case violence is approved, on her behalf, against the child who will be poisoned or dismembered) or grant the atomized autonomous right to life of the child (in which case violence is approved, on the infant’s behalf, against the mother who will become a breeding slave of the state for the next several months). Within this perverse paradigm, the decision will be popularly decided by two mirror versions of fear, for all liberal politics is based on a primal fear of scarcity: the fear of being killed (stoked by images of murdered fetal remains) versus the fear of bearing children at gunpoint (stoked by dramas such as The Handmaid’s Tale); and the decision will be ultimately decided by the maximization of monetary profit.
A Christian is certainly obligated to witness to the dignity of human life, but she should have little to do with such causes. Those loyal to the GOP may believe in the imago Dei, but without an appeal to our inherent nature, given by God and knowable by reason, their conviction is just another religious belief of “private conscience” to be violently enforced on their liberal countrymen.
The Pro-Life Position
Is all this enough to soberly assess our position? We need not even consider whether the GOP is guilty of promoting other intrinsically evil national sins, such as the maintenance of nuclear weapons, the operation of the stock market, and universal usury of the banking system. Large swathes of the lay apostolate of the Holy Catholic Church, which ought to shine as a beacon amid the stormy sea of history, have made a mockery of the Social Doctrine on both the left and the right. Only after a half-century hangover are we beginning (please God) to stagger out of our stupor. It is not so much that the “culture war” is lost, but that we were fighting the whole time on behalf of a pagan conservatism, throwing incense to Divus Augustus in the hopes that we could restore The Family without the difficult work of holiness, martyrdom, and evangelization. We placed our hope in originalists crying out “but from the beginning it was not so!” referring not to the Garden of Eden but to the Constitution. Behold the harvest of fifty years of such Christian politics! Birth control, no-fault divorce, vasectomies, and cosmetic surgery are bipartisan while conservatives cling to the tattered remains of gendered society in the bathrooms of public schools. Unless the Lord guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch.
The economic aspect deserves careful attention. Over the last 30 years, the top 1% of society, who are overwhelmingly more likely to support “abortion rights” and procure abortions, has centralized private property, siphoning up $21 trillion. Meanwhile the bottom 50%, who are proportionally more likely to be pro-life, to carry unwanted pregancies to term, and to admit reluctance or coercion about their abortions, have become increasingly propertyless, coming up $900 billion short over the same period. Such are the prospects of the pro-life movement: we built political PACs and charitable CPCs with donations from the deep pockets of Egypt, only to find her help futile and vain (Isaiah 30). The nostrums of the Free Market, ever more deeply entrenched in the Religious Right since the Reagan years, have exacted a staggering moral cost. Another “victory” and we will be utterly vanquished.
But on all these fronts, we can find satan overplaying his hand, highlighting the role that the Rite of Abortion plays in our present paganism. Culturally, the embryonic slogan “safe, legal, and rare” has been carried to term and born crying out “Shout Your Abortion!”, “On Demand, Without Apology!”, and—MacIntyre strikes again—“Abortion Rights are Human Rights!” We should be grateful that, setting aside the drone of partisan propaganda, the signs of the times are easily seen. Satan is sifting us like wheat and the dividing lines are being drawn: it is a boon that cowardly compromise positions, such as the 20-week ban, are no longer viable.
On one front, technological progress has swallowed up the middle ground. Where the local law might restrain abortion, the global technological regime will make it remotely accessible. Post-Roe, many flyover states have automatically activated their symbolically noble trigger bans; the surrounding coastal states are likely to settle on legal infanticide legal up to (and perhaps after) the moment of birth. But so long as the flyover states still want internet and online shipping, they will be inundated with the easy, anonymous shipment of recently developed “Plan C” abortion pills and Planned Parenthood’s automated counseling chatbot (named “Roo”). Abortion can be made illegal or difficult outside the metropoles of capitalism, but it cannot be made undesirable or impossible as long as we, like covetous Lot pitching his tent nearby, are dependent on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And on another front, the alliance between Mammon and Bacchus (and Moloch) has been unveiled for all to see. In 2018, the Financial Times published an opinion entitled “The 1960s were about capitalism, not radicalism,” arguing
…in its effect, if not its intention, the 1960s were a gift to capitalism. Its emphasis on the individual reinforced the market, not the revolution, which is an innately collective act, requiring a groupthink and ascetic discipline that the 1960s blew away (mostly for the better). Individualism led to sexual freedom, artistic innovation and a questioning of authority, but also prepared the ground for the economic reforms of the subsequent decades.
In 2019, the Washington Post published an open letter from 180 CEOs warning that abortion bans are “bad for business.” Equivalent headlines are increasingly common on the pages of Bloomberg, Fortune, Business Insider, New York Times, etc. And these declarations are not idle talk: Amazon has promised to reimburse its employees up to $4,000 in travel expenses to procure an abortion. Afterall, it’s hard to speedwalk around a fulfillment center or leap out of a delivery truck—always at the startling next-day-delivery speed of American consumerism—when one is expecting. The fact that the conservative lawyers of Dobbs must appeal to perfectly effective contraception is just another proof of what many billionaires are openly proclaiming: unplanned pregnancy is a disease to late-stage capitalism, and abortion is the cure.
All of this was evident from the beginning to Saint Pope John Paul II, who wrote in 1995,
In this way a kind of “conspiracy against life” is unleashed. This conspiracy involves not only individuals in their personal, family or group relationships, but goes far beyond… In order to facilitate the spread of abortion, enormous sums of money have been invested and continue to be invested in the production of pharmaceutical products which make it possible to kill the fetus in the mother’s womb without recourse to medical assistance. (Evangelium Vitae § 12-13)
A New, Old Strategy
If when we see civil strife within the City of Man we should not pick sides among them, then refusing to pinch incense when the gods are united should be a no-brainer. What would opposing Mammon look like in the pro-life movement? It would mean speaking truths uncomfortable to our current donor-base. It would mean putting our money where our mouth is.
First, take the case of Heartbeat International, a predominantly Catholic organization of crisis pregnancy centers. They held their annual conference for 2022 in the middle of Holy Lent...at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the Jackonsville Riverside. The steak dinners served by waiters are not normal for the poor mothers that CPCs serve, nor do they fit well within the Church’s prescribed season of spiritual purification through detachment from worldly things. Are we so enamored of luxurious fundraising dinners that we have abandoned our spiritual weapons? Our Lord warned of a certain demon, this kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting (Mark 9:29). Even setting penance aside, this sort of spending is certainly not in line with the virtuous practice of “Good Money” which requires investing, patronizing, and owning those things which build up the Kingdom, rather than the profit-driven multi-national corporations (in this case, “Ramsfield Hospitality Finance,” valued at around $2 billion) of the City of Man.
Second, the public demonstrations, exemplified in the March for Life. The national organization which runs this annual event (which my wife and I have dutifully attended for many years) has worked hard to keep up the seemly and positive public image of the March by cultivating a good relationship with the D.C. police and keeping fringe groups away from the limelight. For all this hard work, they have won no goodwill from liberal feminists and have abandoned the noble tradition of non-violent direct action in the process. A movement rooted in the Gospel should draw strength and guidance from the Lord’s words blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Third, the speakers of the movement. Abby Johnson, whose inspiring conversion made her the best-known speaker of the pro-life movement, provides an example of how electoralism can displace dogma. During the last election cycle, she became an official representative of “Catholics for Trump” and fanatically parroted his most disgusting rhetoric, all in the name of this “most pro-life president in history.” Put not your trust in princes, in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation (Psalm 146:3), lest their promises lead us astray from the Social Doctrine of the King of Kings.
And finally, the ecclesiastical leadership. It is only just now that a single Bishop has barred a single pro-choice Catholic politician from Holy Communion (Archbishop Cordileone’s full statement on his discipline of Nancy Pelosi can be found here). If there is sickness in the American Church, it is no wonder, when the shepherds of souls are withholding the spiritual medicine of excommunication (cf. Supplement Q22. A6. s.c.). All of these observations amount to the same: Do we believe the Gospel, in its orthodox and radical integrity, is compelling? Or that it needs supplemental advice from worldly wisdom? Do we trust in the folly of the Cross, or do we think Christianity requires horses and chariots to convert both souls and nations?
Despite the budgets that the board members of CPCs can boast, I am much more impressed with Lauren Handy’s personally providing the works of mercy to the unborn, living and dead, even when it means “illegally” rescuing the corpses of babies from for-profit “biomatter management” corporations. Despite the legal legwork of the Witherspoon Institute, I put more stock in the philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe, a Thomist who penned papers against carpet bombing, consequentialism, and usury; she was arrested twice in abortion clinic rescues.
In summary, the pro-life movement, which is Christian by birthright, has aligned itself with heathen conservatism, and its costly victories will continue to be self-defeating until it repents. We poor sinners are badly in need of grace and heavenly aid. Praise God then, that in His mercy, He has provided an obvious light and saintly friend for the renewal of the pro-life movement: Servant of God Dorothy Day.
I will not recite her full and fascinating conversion story here, only that while in her 20s, Dorothy, a worldly leftist enjoying the 1920s counter-culture of New York City, was pressured into an abortion by a lecherous lover. The then-illegal procedure left her physically and emotionally scarred, to the point of attempting suicide. Years later, after a dramatic conversion to Catholicism, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 alongside Peter Maurin, who instructed her in Catholic Social Teaching. The Movement, of which I am a part, has long practiced everything that I would recommend to pro-lifers looking for direction: studying and promoting the Church’s Social Doctrine in its entirety, personally practicing the works of mercy, living the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty, and obedience) in the apostolate of the laity, and, as Peter used to say, “building a new society in the shell of the old, with a philosophy so old, it looks like new.”
Moreover, Dorothy, who in all her public writings never explicitly spoke of the painful sin which was the central tragedy of her life, was a prophetic witness of the sanctity of human life. She was a uniquely compassionate enemy of the Sexual Revolution, having personally experienced its temptations and consequences. At a time when even theologically conservative Catholics were dissenting from Humanae Vitae, Dorothy wrote for Commonweal, “Thank God we have a Pope Paul who upholds respect for life, an ideal so lofty, so high, so important even when it seems he has the whole Catholic world against him.” And in 1974, she signed the Catholic Peace Fellowship’s statement of protest against Roe.
In Servant of God Dorothy Day (whose canonization paperwork was just sent to the Vatican last December), we have a timely patron for women who regret their abortion, for the protection of the unborn, and for the conversion of our country to the Gospel of Life.
Sean Domencic is contributing author for New Polity and the former editor of Tradistae. He and his wife, Monica, are involved in the Catholic Worker Movement and raising their children in Lancaster, PA. He prefers to write for free but would appreciate your support through prayer and alms. Donations can be made at patreon.com/tradistae
[1] The references to “unbroken tradition” of common law prohbiting abortion (e.g. pg. 25) are only invoked to say that Roe lacks precedent in "the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty." So while the precedent of natural law rulings is temporarily affirmed by the court, the natural law reasoning behind those rulings is rejected utterly. This flimsy foundation cannot be hailed as a “return” to classical jurisprudence, given that the Court has, within this very ruling, placed new safeguards around constitutionally protected contraception. Regarding the appeal to our "Nation's concept of ordered liberty," Schindler's discussion in The Politics of the Real, Chapter 2—that American liberalism is essentially premised on separating itself from the tradition that came before it—should be consulted.
[2] Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Obergefell are mentioned in particular. Since Loving is also named, it it worth emphasizing here that this is a very different ruling concerning not the sexual revolution, but a civil rights movement fight against “miscegenation” laws. While sexual sin is defied by natural law jurisprudence, the abolition of racial castes is demanded by the same. Second, given this abandonment of natural reason, the rest of Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence, which argues for a strictly neutral Court which is incapable of outlawing abortion or declaring fetal personhood, is less shocking. Procedure triumphs over prudence; judges are meant to be moderators of the zero-sum “democratic process,” not ministers of God’s justice.