It wasn’t a matter of inadvertence: the conservative majority deliberately withheld the premises that are vital to the pro-life movement in going forward now, in the States as well at the federal level, in acting through Congress. Most notably, the majority held back from recognizing the human standing of the child in the womb.
I recall a story from the desert fathers about a vision of hordes of demons going off to the remote places of the hermits while the city had only one lazy demon sitting on its ramparts. The explanation was simple. In the city most of the people were enslaved to vices, so demons had little work to do there. The hermits, on the other hand, presented a genuine obstacle to the powers of hell, and they were accordingly targeted and assaulted.
God promised Noah that He would never more punish the earth with a deluge. But, in His justice, He has many times visited the sins of men with a scourge which, in more senses than one, bears a resemblance to a deluge: the invasion of enemies. We meet with these invasions in every age, and each time we see the hand of God. We can trace the crimes that each of them was sent to punish, and in each we find a manifest proof of the infinite justice wherewith God governs the world. (Volume IV, p. 167)
In these destabilizing times, we need to denounce the crimes, care for the victims, and think about how to prevent such horrors from happening again. But we must also be careful not to give in to despair. We mustn’t delude ourselves that all these revelations are just bad dreams that will eventually pass; but we must also have the strength to move forward and rediscover the flavor of the Gospel. This alone will enable us to overcome these terrible difficulties.