Abortion and the Female Cult of Self

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago, public support for abortion has only increased, both among Republicans and Democrats. A recent poll conducted by Gallup shows that more than 2-thirds of the public support abortion in most or all cases.

Not only does the public’s embrace of abortion over the past few decades reflect the failure of the right to make the case for life but also the moral decline of America’s fairer sex. In a post-Roe America, Republicans have learned the hard way that abortion is a losing issue, especially among women female voters who seem dead set on defending their option to kill the unborn.

While only a minority of women will ever have an abortion in their lifetimes, one must ask why there exists such a militant majority of women so fervently supporting it. Many attribute the abortion issue to economic anxieties, coercive fathers and marginal instances of rape and incest, but the truth lies in the increasing self-centeredness of America’s women. The moral hazard produced by abortion has created a generation of women who abandon their children in service of themselves, their careers, and the pursuit of hollow pleasure over purposeful sacrifice.

Since Roe v. Wade’s passing in 1973, the electorate’s sentiment around abortion has changed radically. Whereas in 1975, more women polled agreed that abortion should be illegal in all cases than accessible in all cases, today women view abortion as nothing more serious than a form of last-ditch contraception. The maxim of “safe, legal, and rare” has been abandoned from the political discourse and replaced with screeching demands for abortion up to, and in some cases, during birth.

This radical shift in attitudes is not just indicative of a shift among the Democrat Party, but American women as a whole. Whereas men are divided on the issue, a militant majority of women are united against life. And the Christian conservative is left dumbfounded by this shift, not understanding how it could’ve happened so quickly. It seems almost absurd that the maternal sex, who find themselves daydreaming over swaddled infants and babies in strollers, have so firmly committed themselves to the murder of the unborn. Yet this modern curiosity can be attributed to one factor, access to abortion allows women to maintain promiscuous lifestyles without owning up to the consequences of their vices.

As American women have become vastly more promiscuous at increasingly younger ages, inculcated with pornography in popular media and sexual “education” in public schools, they increasingly view sex as an outlet for hedonism. For all intents and purposes, the true purpose of sex, that being reproduction, has been usurped by gratification and gratification alone. American culture no longer regards children as the valuable aim of sex within the confines of marriage but as a discardable inconvenience. Skirting the natural consequences of their actions with contraception, and more egregiously abortion, women can live their most fertile years strung out on one-night stands and fleeting relationships in the sexual marketplace. The modern inventions of birth control and abortion go hand in hand in not just validating but incentivizing these behaviors. All of the prior restrictions on sex, establishing morality and purity, have been drowned out by the feminist mantra of consent. The woman has the final say as to what is right for her, and that extends to taking the life of her child if she chooses.

The moral hazard this dynamic poses is immeasurable, as the law proclaims that a woman’s immediate pleasure should outweigh her natural duties as a mother, the first of all being the preservation of her children. Abortion has taught women to prioritize pleasure and convenience over their natural and moral duties to their children, where consent is the only inviolable line that cannot be crossed. Never mind the consent of the unborn child, modern feminism seeks to abdicate women of the consequences of their actions, to free them from repercussions both natural and moral.

While the cult of self draws no moral lines, where the subjective feelings of the individual dictate all, the religious axiom of objective morality posits a radical alternative. Either murder is right, or it is wrong. Consent nor choice enters into the equation. Wrong is always wrong even if everyone insists it is right and right is always right even if no one acknowledges it. Abortion advocates posit that women may choose when it is appropriate to take the life of their child, with their subjective preference being the end all be all. Yet this subjectivity provides no clarity beyond empty campaign slogans.

The unignorable fact is this: where abortion is performed at the caprice of the mother, whether to advance her career or to alleviate the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, it always results in the taking of an innocent life. Even in marginal cases of rape or incest, no party is more innocent than the unborn. So, ultimately, what several decades of abortion access has taught women is that their individual happiness outweighs the lives of the innocent, no matter who is truly at fault. Upon this bloodied altar of consent, women execute the sinless to excuse their own license. Instead of devoting themselves to the wholly dependent and vulnerable child that has been placed in their care, they choose themselves first and foremost. It is clear that at the heart of the American woman’s fixation with abortion, is her fixation with self.

Yet, all hope is not lost, it doesn't have to be this way. If America’s women are to remove themselves from the secular cult of self and embrace the Cross, the ship can be righted. The antidote to this present crisis of selfishness is the selflessness of Christ on the Cross, that women should be willing to sacrifice themselves for their children instead of the other way around.