Among my earliest childhood memories is my mother dragging us four kids around from studio to studio debating the heaviest pro-choice hitters on television and radio in the early 1970s. 

Attractive and articulate, she was well-positioned to play hardball for People Concerned for the Unborn Child (PCUC), one of the country’s first pro-life organizations. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, the office consisted of a rented corner store stuffed with picket signs, bumper stickers and pamphlets. The material was often gruesome, but it worked. Yet I wondered how long my mother would last.

Roe v. Wade has been overturned, but, clearly, the battle isn’t over. In the ’70s, it was a matter of showing that an unborn baby is truly alive. But what about today? 

I would argue that now, more than ever, it’s a matter of widening our sphere of concern to include the full breadth and depth of Catholic teaching on the family. Every attempt to protect the life of the unborn must be matched by a vigorous and unwavering promotion of the family.

The Church’s deep concern for marriage and family life in the modern world began long before the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that “the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision.” 

Already in 1880, Pope Leo XIII noted that “there are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection” (Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, 16). 

At that time, the Church’s main concern was the state’s allowance for divorce, which even then was a troubling trend — although at a level that would pale in comparison to today’s. Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (1930), arguably the most prescient papal encyclical ever written, added contraception, abortion, eugenics and marital infidelity to the list of grave threats against the family.

No one knew better than St. John Paul II the futility of fighting for the right to life without a robust teaching on the family. Even an assassin’s bullet couldn’t thwart his resolve to erect an institute whose purpose was to see to it that “the truth of marriage and the family … be given ever closer attention and study” (Magnum Matrimonii Sacramentum, 3). Hence the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family was born, the urgency of whose mission grows year by year.

Any political effort to protect the unborn and to assist families will always face an uphill battle. It is true, as British researcher Dr. Calum Miller argues, that the pro-life movement cannot afford to make any compromises now, since the pro-abortion movement will only re-mobilize its forces and bolster its tactics. 

But for Catholics, the issue must be more than simply coming up with better political strategies. Political parties will always compromise, always waver and always pursue a path that will lead to more votes. 

The Church, on the other hand, must not back away from showing human life to arise from a natural origin and point toward a natural end, however philosophical and abstract those terms may be. 

Perhaps it might be better to say that human life is “organically” and “integrally” tied to the family, though such terms are only slightly less abstract than the previous. 

Expressing it in this way in no way diminishes the supernatural origin and end of the family, but it does acknowledge that its supernatural origin and end are ultimately disclosed more through evangelization and personal witness than argumentation and proselytization.

There is an undercurrent in Timothy Carney’s wonderful new book entitled Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be suggesting that boldly living the fullness of natural family life is contagious. Have kids, have fun, and don’t be embarrassed. Some may get mad at you, but many will follow you. The supernatural grandeur of the human family will shine through its natural flourishing. 

From a political point of view, the limited strategy of standing against abortion always falls short of standing up for marriage as an exclusive bond between a man and a woman. 

Baylor University’s Julia Hejduk wisely observes that “arguing about the moral status of — what do we call them? — ‘fetuses’ or ‘pre-natal children’ tends to short-circuit fruitful interaction” with those who are “pro-choice.” But, she adds: “What we realize when we lay down our weapons is that helping women, babies and families to thrive really is a positive good that is in everyone’s best interest!” 

Raised on the front lines of the abortion battle in the ’70s, I was grateful for the opportunity to view it from a very different angle as a member of a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat team more than 30 years later. 

Almost all of the women who had come to a weekend retreat seeking post-abortion healing had been abused by a family member as a child, or at the very least had come from broken, dysfunctional homes. Those memories were as distressing as those of the procedure itself. 

Many of these women realized that the sexual activity they were engaged in later in life — often in a series of relationships — was spurred on by a quest for acceptance and to fill a traumatic void in their hearts. 

The home — the place meant to be filled with comfort and love — had been turned into a house of horror, shame and fear because of the sick predation of an uncle, brother, grandfather, stepfather or even father. If abortions don’t occur in a vacuum, neither should the pro-life movement be carried out in a vacuum.

Pope Francis should be commended for his admonition to the world to have more babies. On several occasions, he has argued vigorously for the need to promote higher birth rates. He laments that many have tried to convince the world that it has too many people — something, he insists, that has absolutely no scientific basis. He notes how shocked he is when experts flippantly speak of people as a problem. 

“Human life,” he insists, “is not a problem, it is a gift.”

“Therefore,” he writes in his new book La esperanza no defrauda nunca (“Hope Never Disappoints”), “every time we look into the face of an expectant mother, we know that the true hope of the human race is growing within her.”

The next four years will certainly have their ups and downs for the pro-life movement. So will the four years after that, and the four after that. As in all things, the Catholic view is for the long term. Indeed, it’s for the eternal. And the eternal transcends any particular political party or agenda, however important they might be. 

As the years pass, I am continually more impressed by my mother’s tireless fight for the unborn in her younger years. Now married with four children myself, I am even more impressed by her and my father’s 60 years of marriage, for that’s the witness that will last.

Daniel Gallagher is a lecturer in literature and philosophy at Ralston College in 

Savannah, Georgia.