In the last few years, I’ve published several books that often seem contrary to each other. On the one hand are The Anti-Mary Exposed and The End of Woman, which hit the toxic femininity that saturates our culture; on the other hand are the Theology of Home books, which consider the meaning of home and its connection to family and faith.

One colleague, noticing the contrast in these books, commented that “it seems like there are two Carries.” Another said, “It’s like you’re both Mary and Martha, trapped in the same body.” The reality is that these books are much more integrated than first meets the eye.

The effort behind The Anti-Mary Exposed and The End of Woman was to get to the root of the problems in today’s culture, not only abortion but also the panoply of maladies that plague women. While getting to the source of these issues, specific ways of healing or moving on from these problems became clear. It can be likened to going to the doctor: We don’t go just to find out the ailment, but a remedy is also expected. My books, then, are both diagnosis and remedy.

As a result, here are three specific ways to combat feminism’s corrosive ideology driving the cult-like belief in abortion that underpins the culture of death. All of these are directed mainly at women because, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “woman is the measure of the level of our civilization,” meaning that if women are base, then the culture is base. If women are striving for sanctity, the good, the true and the beautiful, then the culture will also reflect that. If we can get the women, then we get everyone. Satan has known this since the Garden.

Beware of Emotional Manipulation

The most effective way women have been “captured” by radical ideologies is through our emotions. As early as 1897 socialist groups, in a journal called Lucifer, promoted the idea of stirring up anger in the heart of women: “Preach the gospel of discontent to women, to mothers, to the prospective mothers of the human race.”

Three decades later, Clara Zetkin, the founder of International Women’s Day, recognized the value of angry women to swell their numbers for a future communist revolution. She wrote, “Female employees, especially intellectuals ... are growing rebellious. ... More and more housewives, including bourgeois housewives, are awakening. ... We have to utilize the ferment.”

And utilize they have.

For more than a century, radical socialists and communists have used feminism to manipulate women’s emotions — particularly anger, envy and resentment. Consciousness-raising groups, which were wildly popular in the 1960s and ’70s among feminists, were first used in the late 1890s by the socialists. These groups — which were later used in Communist China, lending them an air of mystery — were a way to talk about experienced injustices. But they did not have the goal of healing, resolution or forgiveness. Their purpose was simply to stir up anger and a sense of victimhood to be utilized for political purposes and to promote a gospel of discontent.

Daytime TV, magazines, Hollywood and unscrupulous politicians have also worked hard to target women’s emotions. The incredible success of emotional manipulation is still on display today, with victimhood having achieved high political status. Fear, envy and encouragement to manipulate others — and even the fear of “missing out” — are common ways the feminist ideology uses our human nature against us.

Gratefully, the gospel of discontent need not have the final word. The Gospel of Christ, supported by 2,000 years of Church teaching and the sacraments, can free us from these controlling emotions.

Don’t Fear the ‘M’ Word: Motherhood

Women have been groomed to fear motherhood for decades, with precious little being said about the positive side of motherhood. Most women today spend a good portion of their lives fearing they will become pregnant when they don’t want to and then fear they won’t be able to get pregnant when they do. This strong emotion is driving the lucrative industries of fertility control, including birth-control pills and devices, abortions, IVF and surrogacy industries.

Beyond the fears associated with fertility, we are also trained to be afraid of motherhood itself as a vocation. It has been painted by feminists for decades as a cult, or some kind of mental issue (like codependency), or simply the quickest way to make your life miserable (no more flying first-class).

Women have bought into it so deeply that we no longer even associate motherhood with womanhood, which is why most cannot define what womanhood is, while men can call themselves women and be taken seriously.

Motherhood was slowly and steadily replaced with the goal of independence and a life supposedly animated by lots of friends, cash and time. Meanwhile, this independence has led to international crises, like the birth dearth, 44 million abortions internationally in the year 2023 alone, and huge spikes in depression, suicide and substance abuse among women.

Despite the attractive trappings of independence, women were made to mother, which is the root of much of women’s current malcontent. The desire to mother another is evidenced dramatically in the rise in pet “parenting,” with pets now more numerous in U.S. homes than children. Americans spend $700 million annually on pet costumes for Halloween.

Our culture would be well served by helping women reintegrate the idea of motherhood into their sense of self, not just biological motherhood, but also the psychological and spiritual iterations. Again, not motherhood in a controlling, devouring or codependent kind of way, but in a healthy understanding of the amazing things mothering love provides — nourishment, safety, space to mature, comfort, warmth and affirmation. The world is starving for these key elements.

The Catholic Church has millennia of women of every vocation, married, single and religious, who have modeled this kind of love distinctly and brilliantly. It is time to help our culture “remember” the beauty, goodness and healing offered by women who understand motherhood.

Create Cultural Projects Women Already Like

The most challenging aspect of the post-Roe world is watching state after state get steamrolled by big dollars and savvy messaging to eliminate pro-life laws. The Roe era was rightly focused on the political and legal battles, but pro-lifers did little to fight the battle on a cultural level.

We are witnessing the fruit now. The cultural elites daily spoon-feed women the lie that happiness is best attained by a career and the abandonment of the most tender, precious and strong bond of mother and child. Through manipulating emotions and maligning motherhood, the new idea of a fabulously free female was erected, focused on work and self.

Abortion is the key to this myth. This revolution in womanhood stuck not because women were reading Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, but because they were thumbing through Cosmo and watching Oprah and The View.

Gratefully, Catholics are making strides in the culture with new films, music, novels and architecture, filling in the cultural gap of the ’70s and ’80s when felt banners were considered the pinnacle of Catholic culture. Even so, a quick look at secular culture tells us that women have specific ways in which they like to absorb information, namely, magazines to thumb through, home shows to watch while folding laundry, blogs to read and podcasts to listen to on commutes or shuttling kids, or rom-coms to watch on long flights or to unwind after a long week.

This is an area where Catholics can improve greatly with a handsome payoff.  Women are hungry for solid content, including the 35 million Catholic women in the U.S. who are a vastly underserved demographic. If done well, this kind of solid content will spill out to those who still need to know what healthy womanhood looks like, away from the left’s shorthand of The Handmaid’s Tale that so many have come to believe is a model of the pro-life women. The truth about real womanhood is far more compelling, engaging and fun than most have been led to believe possible.

Women were never intended to live in isolation or to live just for themselves. They are meant to be in relationships — thick relationships with husbands, children, God, extended family and spiritual children. The quicker we can get women to stop believing the lie that they were made to live for themselves or just a career, the quicker a pro-life culture can return. The best way to do this isn’t through long arguments or more academic papers, but by meeting women in familiar places. Convincing them need not be arduous. As one of my bosses used to like to remind me, honey attracts.