Can anyone doubt that reproductive freedom has arisen because women, fully human and created by God, were treated and continue to be treated as objects? What historical response has there ever been to the abuse of women that has protected them? What attitudes were changed?

But has reproductive freedom succeeded either? Let’s only consider the developed nations, where there is the greatest chance for it to succeed as a strategy promoting the protection and equality of women with men.

Why is it considered a success of reproductive freedom that through abortion the most intimate parts of a woman’s body and psyche — the things that define her most indelibly and beautifully as a woman, her very womanhood — are violated in a manner that can only be characterized as supremely violent? The truth is, abuse of women hasn’t been stemmed by reproductive freedom; it has simply shifted ground and become more silent, systematized and vicious. It then becomes impossible to evade the truth that when we accept abortion as a reasonable outcome of reproductive freedom, we take part in an assault on womanhood and furthermore assert by our silence that it is sometimes okay to kill an innocent baby as well.

However, the destruction of life is only one aspect of the carnage enacted. War produces many men and women who are the walking wounded, victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. But abortion produces legions of the walking wounded, men and women who do their best to carry on with psychic and emotional wounds for which we make almost no allowance as a nation.

I conclude that reproductive freedom not only fails to empower women or to assure their equality, it takes violence against women to new heights and also results in genocide on a truly breath-taking scale.

— Charles Lovekin