She saw the most inconvenient truth

There is an amazing artricle today in National Review Online about an amazing woman, written by a brilliant friend of hers. I have long admired them both. I was fortunate enough to be her colleague on the Women for Faith & Family editorial board, and the host of a radio show on which he visited to share his exceptional insights about secularism, faith and reason.

In this tribute to Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Princeton Professor Robert George captures her personal and professional essence beautifully. It’s so loaded with the exquisitely accurate understanding of culture and faith that both Betsey and Prof. George are known for, it should be run on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the other major influential power media of the day.

They could learn a lot from this, from both their intellectual thought and strong and charitable character.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was a scholar as notable for her bravery as for her brilliance. After what she described as her “long apprenticeship” in the world of secular liberal intellectuals, it was careful reflection on the central moral questions of our time that led her first to doubt and then to abandon both liberalism and secularism. Needless to say, this did not endear her to her former allies.

At the heart of her doubts about secular liberalism (and what she described as “radical, upscale feminism”) was its embrace of abortion and its (continuing) dalliance with euthanasia. At first, she went along with abortion, albeit reluctantly, believing that women’s rights to develop their talents and control their destinies required its legal permission availability. But Betsey (as she was known by her friends) was not one who could avert her eyes from inconvenient facts. The central fact about abortion is that it is the deliberate killing of a developing child in the womb.

That simple fact is the most inconvenient truth of all.

For Betsey, euphemisms such as “products of conception,” “termination of pregnancy,” “privacy,” and “choice” ultimately could not hide that fact. She came to see that to countenance abortion is not to respect women’s “privacy” or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die. In a statement that she knew would enflame many on the Left and even cost her valued friendships, she declared that “no amount of past oppression can justify women’s oppression of the most vulnerable among us.”

She modeled the bravery of following a position or argument through to its logical conclusion, facing its truth and being changed by that reality, no matter what.

Betsey knew that public pro-life advocacy would be regarded by many in the intellectual establishment as intolerable apostasy — especially from one of the founding mothers of “women’s studies.”

And especially given what “women’s studies” has become on America’s campuses today.

And though she valued her standing in the intellectual world, she cared for truth and justice more. And so she spoke out ever more passionately in defense of the unborn.

And the more she thought and wrote about abortion and other life issues, the more persuaded she became that the entire secular liberal project was misguided. Secular liberals were not deviating from their principles in endorsing killing whether by abortion or euthanasia in the name of individual “choice”; they were following them to their logical conclusions. But this revealed a profound contradiction at the heart of secular liberal ideology, for the right of some individuals to kill others undermines any ground of principle on which an idea of individual rights or dignity could be founded.

That paragraph alone is worth re-reading a few times. It forms the foundation of what should be the debate with anyone who advocates abortion or euthanasia under the language of “rights” or “choice.”  But Betsey’s path represents the best and ultimate solution to the cultural wars over hot-button issues of morality — a changed mind and heart, and a commitment to teaching others.

Betsey leaves us many fine works of historical scholarship and social criticism — works admired by honest scholars across the political spectrum. Even more importantly, her life provides an unsurpassed example of intellectual integrity and moral courage. Her fervent witness to the sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage and the family will continue to inspire. May the living God who drew her to Himself comfort her bereaved husband and grant her a full share in His divine life.

Amen.