McGrath Institute Blog

Every year, Catholics in the United States commit to pray for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children on January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in the Supreme Court. “In all the Dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or January 23, when January 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life and of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion.”¹

In this week leading up to the March for Life, our focus understandably turns to the topic of abortion. However, living a consistent ethic of life and building a pro-life household goes beyond the ramifications of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Below are some of the ways my husband and I have tried to live and hand on a consistent ethic of life to our children.

A friend told me in college that she couldn’t be pro-life because “not all mothers have the support they need to choose life. Pro-life people need to take care of the mothers, too.”

Until that conversation, I thought the issue of abortion was straightforward. (In many ways, it is: Life is a precious gift from God and should be treasured at all times, from conception to natural death.) But my friend opened my eyes to see beyond the babies to include the mothers carrying those babies in their womb.

The trailers for the Netflix Original, Reversing Roe, suggest that the documentary casts new light on the contentious legal battle over one of the Supreme Court’s most controversial rulings. Instead, it travels a familiar path and ignores whatever lies outside its predetermined narrative framework. The film details much of the legal history since the Court’s 1973 sister decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton; however, over the course of the 99-minute documentary, neither decision is ever actually articulated in its entirety. The film also doesn’t deal with the heart of the legal battle, which is whether or not the preborn fetus is a human being and what society’s responsibilities are to both the preborn and the mother.