The Evil of Anger

Gloria Steinem died last week at the age of 92. I do not know much about her other than what most people know: namely, that she was one of—if not the—fiercest proponents of abortion, even to the extreme of celebrating the act. I am not going to spend this post denouncing her; I think that would be purposeless for readers of Crisis. Rather, I shall try to offer an understanding of her—and not only of her but of many like her. Her ferocity for a cause so evil should make us ponder: How did something so evil come to be defended to the point where it is now accepted by so many? 

Armchair psychology can be dubious, but it seems to me that the driving spirit behind Steinem and the abortion movement was—is—anger. Over the course of my life, I have come to see people with “anger issues” as people angry not so much at something or someone else but angry at themselves and needing to justify it. 

In some sense, the feminist movement had a point. If one looks at Western culture, particularly American culture, in the post-World War II era, women were portrayed as sex objects. Granted, this was a result of a general “sexual liberation” earlier in the century giving license to men. Then women, wanting to be treated like men, wanted their licentiousness as well. And if there ever were a case for strange bedfellows it is the case of Hollywood—and the media in general—going whole hog in its propping up of women as sex objects on the one hand and their support for “women’s rights” on the other. It was a “win-win” for the devil. 

Like most parents (I suspect), I have regrets about how I raised my child. I see times when I was too strict and other times when I was too lenient; times when I should have just let things go and times when I should have said, “No.” For some of these, I can excuse myself. I did what I honestly thought was best in the situation. For other occasions, though, I have to admit I was at fault. Pride or anger got in the way in some instances; laziness or the fear of what others—particularly my child—may think, made me shirk my responsibility in other instances.

When I realized it was my fault, I faced a choice: I could either go to confession, admit that I had failed, and try to make amends, which may involve further strained relations with my child, or I could brush it under the rug. If I did the latter, I usually found myself not only still trying to justify my actions but, also, in a sense, “championing” them; my pride would get me to the point where I would get angry if anyone suggested I had acted wrongly. I would be back to the point where I had to ask myself, “Why am I getting angry about this?” only to have that still, small voice of conscience tell me it was because I was trying to justify something I shouldn’t. And, again, back to the confessional. So much for personal disclosures.  

What does this have to do with Gloria Steinem and abortion? In 1956, Gloria Steinem became pregnant. She was single and in the midst of a stellar academic career. She had graduated from Smith College and gone on to study in Geneva and at Oxford. She had been awarded a prestigious postgraduate Chester Bowles Fellowship for further work. Clearly, she was an intelligent, up-and-coming woman with a bright future ahead.

Although abortion was illegal at the time, she, with the help of the father of the child, found a doctor in England who performed the abortion. (Steinem admitted that she had, in the interim, tried to “self-abort” by throwing herself down the stairs.) She then faced a second, and perhaps more terrible, choice: she could admit that what she had done was wrong or she could try to justify it. 

Now, you parents who know you have done your child wrong by some action of yours (and again I include myself), think of how you felt when you realized this? It’s terrible, isn’t it? We have failed the one person (after our spouse, if we’re married) we are supposed to love, cherish, and protect above all others.

Now think of how you would feel if you had murdered that child? I can’t. I can’t even begin to comprehend what the actual mother would feel because there are differences between men and women and between fathers and mothers. The absolutely crushing sense of guilt would, it seems to me, be almost suicidal. The only thing greater is God’s mercy, and not many people know this or have the opportunity to experience it. So, the alternative is to justify what was done. Anger is often simply another word for self-justification. 

Then, of course, you must get others to support your anger. You get them to do what you’ve done because the more who have done it, the more it must be right. When they’ve done it, or helped others to do it, they, in turn, need to justify it. (By the way, when those others can get money or political power from it, you’re on to something.)

You make up euphemisms such as “choice” or “reproductive freedom.” You blame it on “systems” or make it into something political rather than moral. The one thing you don’t do is look in the mirror. 

It reminds me of a story I heard about Fulton Sheen. He was at a dinner with a young priest in the ’60s, and the young priest, true to the revolutionary fervor of his generation, was railing at the Church’s “waste of money on chalices and precious vestments.” Later, Sheen got the young priest alone and asked, “So, how long have you been taking money from the collection plate?” 

I can’t think of any person more courageous and humbler than the woman who admits, with due repentance, she has had an abortion. She lives with a weight I cannot fathom. She also, I pray, has had an experience of God’s mercy that would make the angels sing. Who knows what Gloria Steinem would have become had she looked in the mirror and admitted she had killed her child. She might have become another Dorothy Day, who also had an abortion but who, through God’s mercy, found her way to the Church and God’s peace. 

I say all this because it allows me to have some compassion for some of those like Gloria Steinem. (For others, particularly men who have used abortion for money, power, or to cover up their own infidelities, I have little, if any.) So many of them have a visceral anger about them. They would say it is justified anger; I would call it self-justification, and it is deep and raw.

We are now on the third, perhaps fourth, generation of the Gloria Steinem revolution. How many women have had abortions and must justify it? How many mothers have had abortions and have used their own act to justify getting their daughters on birth control or taking them to the abortionist? How many fathers, not wanting to admit they once “got out of a jam” or shirked their own responsibilities by aiding an abortion, take the road of “understanding” and “compassion” and, “not wanting to get in the way” of their daughter’s bright future, have wiped their hands of their grandchild’s blood? 

It’s so ludicrous and so sad. Like the child who has had a tantrum and won’t look at the furniture he wrecked, the culture that wants to “follow the science” will do anything but look at an ultrasound. The politicians who get votes by promoting “choice” and the media industry that makes billions spewing pornography won’t lift a finger to help women who want to hold on to some shred of self-respect.

Many who saw in the women’s movement a campaign for dignity can’t face the injustice of the garbage bin behind the abortion mill. And, yes, even in the Church that is so sensitive about giving women their “proper place” and “hearing their voice,” there are those to be found who are blind, and willfully so, to what the sexual revolution has done to women. The anger simmers, deep down, and the voices become all the shriller. 

What Gloria Steinem saw on the other side of the grave is not for me to judge. It may have been a mirror too ghastly to face. There is an anger in our culture now, though, that froths. While it has a smiling face on the covers of magazines and on television, it foams at the mouth on social media posts, at parties, or at political rallies when abortion is mentioned. It is trying to justify what can’t be justified, and the proof of its evil is in its anger. 

[Photo Credit: Tara Todras-Whitehill]