IF WE'RE SERIOUS ABOUT DEFENDING MARRIAGE:

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage.

State laws on divorce began to be implemented in the late 1960s, but today have been absorbed into the legal and cultural mainstream nationwide. The logic of no-fault divorce is that spouses should not be trapped in marriages that make them unhappy, or forced into the expense and psychological trauma of proving "fault" in divorce court. If one spouse wants out, the judge's mandate is to manage the breakup of the family and to protect the interests of the children.

Like the increase in abortions after Roe v. Wade, divorce rates increased significantly with the onset of the policy. As with Roe, there were other contributing factors, especially the sexual revolution, which multiplied the "liberating" effects of the new legal regime. The clear losers in both were children--aborted in ever increasing numbers after Roe, and wounded socially, economically, and spiritually in the wake of no-fault divorce.

The other casualties, far less studied, have been abandoned spouses, the institution of marriage, and American society itself. A dearth of transparency and accountability within family courts, and a consequent lack of data, have discouraged the study of causal connections between no-fault divorce and its effects on women, rates of cohabitation, and rates of out of wedlock births.

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